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Dollar Coins

The new issue of Northeast Carwasher (summer 2011) has an article about a collection of groups lobbying to eliminate the paper dollar. They believe eliminating the paper dollar can save the government half a billion dollars a year.
 
DavidM said:
The new issue of Northeast Carwasher (summer 2011) has an article about a collection of groups lobbying to eliminate the paper dollar. They believe eliminating the paper dollar can save the government half a billion dollars a year.
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Exactly why the Canadian government did it.
 
Thumb, yes, you are right! Right along with all of the money that they take from you and me in the near future..
 
Dollar coins

Regarding: " I don't want to use tokens."

I do not understand why someone would consider dispensing $1 coins but reject dispensing $1 tokens. I've dispensed $1 tokens for 6 years now and have never received any complaint about them .... period.

At .33 cents cost per $1 token, I can fill my changer with 2400 tokens and I have about $800 tied up in the changer for the convenience of giving change. If you dispense $1 coins, you have $2,400 tied up in the changer.

Now, to the crime issue. A thousand or more tokens in a changer is not a crime target, at least for anyone beyond the total moron stage. Of course the bills to buy tokens would be. But a changer that gives out $1 coins? woo hoo. Now that's a crime target-- coins with value and bills with value.

I'd revisit the $1 token angle and communicate with some folks who have done that. And, btw, I dispense $1 gold coins as *change* from my Shurvend. So I am not opposed to $1 coins but just see $1 tokens as superior in many ways.
 
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Sequoia said:
Now, to the crime issue. A thousand or more tokens in a changer is not a crime target, at least for anyone beyond the total moron stage. Of course the bills to buy tokens would be. But a changer that gives out $1 coins? woo hoo. Now that's a crime target-- coins with value and bills with value.
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Not to mention tokens in the equipment means no value to a crook. A wash in a bad area with lots of coin box break-ins would be better off with only tokens dispensed from the changer.
 
Tokens

Good point on the dollars in the coin boxes.

I don't do many token promotions, but I have sold quantities of tokens at discounted prices in the past for charity car washes. That would be a different animal with dollar coins.

And, lastly, there is the walk off. I bought 5,000 tokens for about .30 cents each, or about $1,500. Within a few years I was getting low and had to re-order tokens again due to the walk off. So I paid $1,500 for the tokens and sold them for $3,000 or so. That's more net profit than I made in my vending machine.

I did have to change my vending to "force vend" because of the gold dollar coins I provide as change. I had people coming to the vending machine, inserting a $5 or a $10 and then hitting the refund button. They liked the dollar coins so much they were cleaning out my vending machine of all the dollar coins without buying anything. Turning on "force vend" (which requires a purchase to be made) stopped that.
 
Sequoia
To have tokens "walk off" means that: 1) you made money on the tokens and
2) your customers lost real money to buy tokens that they can not use elsewhere.
For me it is an easy decision, unless you are in a high crime location ( which forces you to use tokens), do what is good for your customers-dispense dollar coins.
 
Every now and then some one has left over tokens and doesn't want them, and when they call i tell them to leave Name and address and tokens under the door and send them a refund. Hard to sell anything but tokens at a discount or to corporate customers. To me the high crime car wash starts with boxes of Dollar coins , waiting to be stolen
 
Here’s a new wrinkle. Has anyone considered accepting the competitor’s tokens at face value in the wash bays only? We are seriously considering that. We occasionally get a few now, when we get enough we use them to buy vending products. It would nice advertising to have a sticker on our coin box that said “Now accepting XYZ Car wash tokens” We have 4 car washes in the area that we get tokens from now and then.
 
JIMT said:
My bank told me that soon the presidential dollars will be silver instead of gold.
Jimt
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Jimt,

I would have asked "who told them that"? It is very unlikely that the US Mint or our leaders will let that happen --- unless they are listening to some really weird input. I assume they were referring to the "color" because there is no gold in them other than color as far as I know. The gold color is very important to avoid confusion with quarters like the Susan B's.

I do have some "not so pleasant" memories of a city editor of our mainstream daily newspaper who seemed fixated against dollar coins unless they could be made large like the 50 cent pieces or an Eisenhower dollar. People who have those biases --- in positions --- that select what we see in the media are not ideal for our livelihoods or for the general economy --- from my experience.

MJ
 
Dollar coins

Regarding: "do what is good for your customers-dispense dollar coins."

If the bar is set to "doing good for customers", then you must abandon both $1 coins and tokens. $1 coins are very inconvenient as excess coins not used in your wash can't be used in video games, the laundramat, or many vending machines. So, dispensing quarters only would provide maximum customer convenience and utility.

Umm, was it an unfriendly decision when I stopped giving quarters as change because local merchants were cleaning out my changer every weekend to fill their cash registers? And, although it didn't happen during my ownership, would it have been unfriendly to have tokens in the coin boxes when the criminals broke into all the vaults and caused damage that shut the car wash down for a week while causing thousands of dollars of damage?

I will re-state what I originally wrote: If you seriously consider dispensing $1 coins, it is a wise and appropriate to at least ... consider ... $1 tokens as well. You may well consider them and decide otherwise; my point is that the tokens at least deserve consideration if you want to examine all angles for your business and location.
 
"So, dispensing quarters only would provide maximum customer convenience and utility."

Duane, I respect your opinion, but in this case you are off the mark. Back in the old days when I dispensed only quarters, the complaint I heard virtually every day was "I don't want all these #@!%ing quarters". Now it NEVER happens and I virtually never have to break a large bill for customers. As stated before, I also have a token machine right next to the "real money" changer. Hands down, the customers prefer real money to tokens, no contest. While tokens have their valid attributes (mainly for the operator), customer convenience ain't one of them.
 
I have both $1 tokens and dollar coins. They are dispensed from a dual changer. The tokens are dispensed at a discount on the left hand side and the golden dollars are dispensed at face value on the right hand side. Customers prefer the dollar coins. We sell dramatically more dollar coins than tokens.

We use both for the reasons mentioned above. Tokens give us marketing opportunities and the dollar coins make our customers happy.

One the subject of accepting a competitors token.... I too have considered it but what bothers me is the quality of the token they use. If it is a cheap token and I program my acceptors to take it, I will probably also begin getting arcade tokens.


David
 
Well, I wrote my earlier post poorly, as I certainly didn't mean to advocate for quarters.

I think I was trying to say that if you cite customer "inconvenience" as a way to nix using $1 tokens, you could apply the same argument to dollar coins as well. Doing that doesn't make sense to me-- I dispense $1 tokens and am very happy with the result.

Selling $1 coins and $1 tokens from separate changers on the same property is new to me. I haven't seen that before.

Personally, I like the $1 coins, and I wish they were more predominant in currency and that paper $1 bills would be withdrawn. Early into owning my wash, I very much wanted to dispense $1 coins only, for some of the reasons cited here. But, after an analysis, I settled on the $1 tokens instead.
 
I called the US Mint at 1-800-872-6468 and talked to a realy nice lady there and she told me that the US Dollar coins will NOT be changed to a Silver color. They are Gold in color by law.
 
Sequoia said:
$1 coins are very inconvenient as excess coins not used in your wash can't be used in video games, the laundramat, or many vending machines. So, dispensing quarters only would provide maximum customer convenience and utility.

my point is that the tokens at least deserve consideration if you want to examine all angles for your business and location.
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Duane,

The dollar coin transition is on the front burner of most laundromat owners like myself. It seems the main problem is that the mainstream laundry equipment manufacturers still seem to think that customers enjoy staying on the quarter only. Quarter preference has not been my experience during my partially completed changeover to dollar coins & quarters on every piece of equipment including the self serve car n dog wash & 4 vacuums that we have at our facility. If they want quarters before they leave for whatever ---- they can break the dollar coins down at our 2 changers. More recently we have found that it is more likely they will get one dollar coin for 4 quarters --- which we also provide the ability for them to do.

Secure tokens may be a good fit for you & ---- like you say others should look at them --- to see if they would be a better fit for their specific situation than dollar coins. I truly believe the Susan B & slug mixing fiasco is behind us. A good question to ask individuals seeking election is to ask & politely work in ----- where they stand on dollar coins because it gives people within the USA another option besides just quarters, credit cards,bills & whatever else comes along. It may fall on deaf ears within key media but at least we can say "we tried". Hopefully, eventually enough of them will see the light if we are careful how we demonstrate how they are actually better for the economy as a whole.

MJ
 
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