Coinmach is evil (kinda lame, but I've had it)

My apartment complex uses coinmach cards in the laundromat.

To get started, you have to buy a coinmach card. It’s five dollars, payable only with a five dollar bill. Coinmach keeps two bucks out of that, so for your fiver you get a card worth… three dollars.

Use that three bucks up? Join the club… that will generally get you through a single washer load, and you still have to dry it. Even though you spent five bucks, after you’ve used three, you have to put more money on the card.

Good luck.

Coinmach does not accept singles. Neither does it accept the new tens or twenties (but even if it did, I’d advise against it… more on that later). You really need to use another five dollar bill.

This is in a place where stores close early, and even the ones that are open usually don’t have five dollar bills (those being much in demand… guess why).

But let’s say that you planned ahead. Good. I’m all for that. Life requires planning, especially laundry. You did have the foresight to bring two five dollar bills so you could do a single load of laundry.

You put the first one in and lose two bucks. You stick that coinmach card back in and insert another fiver.

But the dryers will only deduct from your coinmach card in fifty cent intervals. You need to fuck that coinmach card slot about four times before the dryer will even start. But after you’ve gone in and out twice, you usually get this message from the 1980s style LED readout:

“Err.”

Yes, you bought the card for two dollars less than an hour ago. And yes, you did just stick another five bucks on the card. But nonetheless, that coinmach card is now as inert and worthless as a baseball card featuring, say, me.

You go in and out with that card a few more times, hoping it will work because you’ve got a mountain of wet clothes and you don’t have another five dollar bill, and you don’t have a way to get another one until 6am tomorrow morning, and in any case you’re out about seven bucks, and you swear brutally at the dryer, and all the dryer has to say is this:

“It’s not my fault. I’m just a dryer. Err.”

Coinmach has to die. I will be circulating a petition in my building tomorrow. It must accept singles, and it must develop cards durable enough to last through one single cycle of laundry. Or it’s gonna be gone.

Sorry if this is a lame rant… but I’ve fucking had it. Fucking god-damn well by the festering shit of Satan had it. Bad enough things cost too much, worse that some companies (MTA in New York, you’re fucking well next) make it impossible to pay for services.

Well if it is any consolation I laughed really hard.

You think you have it bad?

We remodeled our half bath downstairs to install a shower, and took some room out of the laundry room to make space for it. That meant that we had to buy a brand new stackable washer and dryer, since we now had far less room for them. The perfectly good washer and dryer we were using, which were only a few years old and in good running order, are now in the garage and we won’t get much for them when we sell them.

This has us out about thirteen hundred bucks more than if we had just been able to reuse our old appliances.

I’d be happy to have problems right now with a two dollar card.

Never heard of coinmatch. My laundry room uses a different card system. It’s every bit as bad.

I’ll insert the card an average of 20 times before I get anything other than “Error.”

Holy whatthefuck!?? They force you to use their fucked up service, and then they charge you 40-fucking-percent ??

Hell yes I’d be circulating a petition. And in the meantime, I’d be going to a different fucking laundromat.

Yes, I did meet my quota of “fucks” but that’s only because I was fucking incredulous.

Man, am I glad I got out of apartment living before they thought up this crap. Back in my day, you only had to worry about the quarters jamming every now and then, and usually the bigger hammer theory took care of that little problem.

To be clear: The idea is supposed to be that you are charged two dollars for the card. When you add money to the card after you’ve purchased it, all the money is added, not just a percentage.

-FrL-

Wow, the biggest problem I’ve had with the cards for my apartment’s laundry room is that the management company which owns the complex has changed since I moved in. This means that in late November, I went over to put money on the card and there was a sign saying “We’re in the process of selling this complex to a different company. After the sale, new cards will be issued, and refunds will not be available. Be careful”

They swapped out the machines in January. So, one cold snowy January day, I trek over to the office building, find out I need to exchange my card, do so–took 30 seconds, tops, mostly for the lady to cross my name off her list and accept the old card–and have used it without problems since then.

Never lost either card, never had as much trouble as the OP in using them. And my dryer charges me $1.25 a use, which is about 50 minutes. If I did lose my card, it would cost more than $2 to get a new one, but so far it functions just fine.

I would love a card system, as opposed to the “scrounge around for every available quarter” system I currently must employ.

The last apartment building I lived in used Coinmach, and the thing worked a treat, as the Brits would say. Certainly a world better than the next building where there was no service company and it was always a crapshoot if the machines would work, and there was that whole quarter-hoarding thing.

Tenants were given one card when they moved in, and additional or replacement cards had to be purchased. The recharge machine took any currency from a one to a twenty, as well as ATM cards, so you could really charge the thing up for a marathon of laundry. Oh, that two bucks or whatever it was? Simply a deposit that we got back when we moved out.

Otherwise, do you really think life would be any better with WEB? Or would you prefer to have no service company and be left to wondering if the landlord got around to fixing the dryer?

Anyone else open this thinking now how could she be evil? You know, the gymnast, Nadia Coinmach.

This is what I have to do, except I go to the bank once a month or so and buy about five or six rolls of quarters. (It costs me six bucks each week for the two loads I do, so there’s no way I can find 24 quarters in change each week. ) The building formerly used a stored value card and I prefered that system.

Oh, I get you. I thought it was buy a card for $5 and get $3 worth of credit on it. What can I say, it was early. :smack:

I occasionally had problems with the quarter-fed laundry room in my old apartment complex. However, the biggest problem is that someone had shit-infested laundry that they’d wash with all the shit in it, then leave the washing machine full of shit. They’d never use the same washer twice, and people had a bad habit of filling up every washer BUT that particular one on any given day.

We lived surrounded by some disgusting, ghetto people.

Oh my sweet Og… I see how life could be worse.

Anyhow, to those who are as tired of scrounging for quarters as I am of scrounging for five dollar bills (usually twice per load of laundry)… I agree that in principle a card system is better. Heck, I wouldn’t even mind having to buy a card for two bucks if I only had to do it once… just so long as the system works. And a cash-only system that doesn’t accept most forms of cash? That’s not an example of a system that works. A system that forces you to buy a new card every time you do a load of laundry because the cards don’t last? Another feature of a system that doesn’t work.

In any case, I can’t even post a petition because I’m subletting. So I guess I’ll have a service do it for me from now on.

The crappy card fed laundry facilities are one of the main reasons I am moving out. Roll on June 1st.

See, this is why I really wish dollar coins had taken off. It’d be a snap to pay for laundry with, say, six dollar coins, rather than 24 quarters. One coin in the little tray, faSHUNK, and off ya go.

You think you have it bad?

The other day Cook had a tiff with the gardener, and this upset the second parlour maid, who has been having a thing with the chauffeur, Tuffins. Well, she took it out on Tuffins, who drove like an absolute ass through the town on the way to pick up Lord Cholmondeley-Poffleton from the station, and, on his return, with His Lordship in the car, clipped and overturned a cartload of apples, injuring the apple seller’s horse, and putting a bally great scratch down the side of the Bentley. Now I have to pay for all the apples, the veterinary bills, and I expect an enormous invoice from the garage - not to mention the extra Château de Boursalt we had to pour into old Poffles to stop the steam coming from his ears, what what!

I’d be happy to have problems right now with thirteen hundred buck appliances.

:wink:

Yes, it definitely sucks less – but you can never really avoid the stupidity.

When I do my laundry, I typically use one triple-loader and one double-loader for my colours, and a single-loader for my whites.

The triple-loader is nice – three dollar coins and you’re good to go. The single-loader is one dollar-coin and one quarter. (I guess the 25% extra is to pay for the agitator beating the shit out of your clothes.) The double-loader, though? Eight quarters, in an awkard-to-load tray with an overhanging ridge a few centimeters above it, purpose-built to make you drop your quarters and lose them under the washer.

Let me use my two-dollar coins, dammit! :mad: Eight quarters. Jesus.

You think you have it bad? Just this morning … Nope. Can’t top that. Good show, and thanks for a jolly queer belly snorter, or whatever you Brits call a laugh these days.