I’m not a frequent customer of snack vending machines. Once a month, I make a trek down to my surgeon’s office in Baltimore (about 2 and 1/2 hours to the East), and along the way we stop for a snack. In the year I’ve been doing this (buying one or two snacks per trip, depending on how hungry I am), the machine has never failed to dispense the snack.
Again, ye, it has happened to me several times in my life a few of which when I was young and I used up all my money on the first one so I couldn’t just buy another one to get both of them. OTOH, I have also bought something several times where someone else apparently got burned before on the same product and one shoots out forcefully as soon as I hit the button and then mine comes out as the coils turn.
It happened to me once. Far worse, however, is when the person who fills the machine leaves a few blank spots. You don’t really think about it. You see that the crap is there, and it’s a little further back than usual, but so what? Your work-addled brain doesn’t take the time to warn you that the spiral will turn just once, and not as many times as necessary to shove the crap down into the bin. So it turns once, advancing the crap to the front, where it stops. Anyway, fool me once…
Beadlin, given your location, I gotta ask - are your vending machines supplied by D&R Vending? They do ours at work, and there’s not a week that goes by without me having to shake the ever-loving crap out of a machine to get my snack.
One of the machines has a personal vendetta against me. I’ll buy chips, and it will refuse to drop them. I’ll shake the hell out of it, and it will fall … but then get stuck again a few rows down. On more than one occassion I have had to use my tape measure to cunningly reach up into the machine and pull down the loot.
Oh. It has happened to me. I haven’t kept count, but it happens. One of our machines is next to our classrooms and once in a while I’ll hear someone pounding and cursing the machine for keep the snack stuck. As a matter of fact, it happens enough times, that machines have those stickers that state to please not to tilt fwd the machine or else you are in danger of injury due to machine falling on top of you.
Or people beating the hell out of their machines.
A friend of mine used to own and run a vending machine business, and as part of it was the re-stock guy (it was a small, small business). He always told me that it was, indeed, usually the fault of the restocker, but not always. There are some products that are more prone to stickage, and he’d not always be able to guess accurately whether or not a new product would be a problem. He’d have to wait until he got enough complaints to notice the pattern before yanking the product from his machines. It was that or never offer anything new, which people complained about also.
He got a lot of bogus complaints, as well. When his coins matched the number of bags gone from the machine, he would not believe everyone who claims coin loss. He did keep track of his inventory, y’know.
I used to order the candy etc for the corporate lunchroom, and was called whenever something jammed, and believe me, every single machine choked at some point during the year. Some types of things very often.
What causes it mainly is having items that are a lot thicker or thinner than the spiral is designed for. The candy guy will put flat bars or puffy bags in a medium slot and either the candy will slide out of vertical or the bag will snag on the end of the spiral. But he was only there for a few minutes and left without noticing anything unless I happened to see him and tell him. He’d shrug - he didn’t have time to change the spirals, and he only brought certain size things in with him.
Basically, if each row performed to some degree that was close enough
I’ve had it happen.
One place I worked there was a machine that would just take your money (not spin the corkscrews at all) about one time in 10.
I was working one Sunday, and the thing did it to me agoin…I pushed the button again, and it then spit out TWO items. I tried another button…SCORE! So I went back to my desk and got a box. I cleaned that damned machine out, and put the box by the coffee pot with a sign inviting anyone (which was everyone) who had ever been ripped off by that machine to enjoy a bit of payback.
The only other person working that Sunday was the department kiss-ass. (I think he worked every Sunday) He thought he would get me in trouble, so he told our department head what I had done. The department head went and got a brownie, then walked into my cubicle and gave me a high-five.
FWIW, if you ever have something stuck in a candy/chips spiral-style vending machine: shaking the machine side-to-side is much more effective – and safer – than back-and-forth. Often, you don’t even have to rock the machine very much at all going side-to-side.
This was a common problem with the snack dispenser in the break room at a retail job I had mumblety mumble years ago.
It was so common, in fact, that eventually we didn’t even bother putting money into the machine. We’d just station somebody on watch at the break room door; the two strongest guys available would tip the machine forward, lift it off the ground, and hold it face down and horizontal, and then shake a few dozen items out of the retaining slots, which would be distributed to everybody on shift.
I left that job shortly after this practice began, so I don’t know if there was any (heh) fallout.
It happens so often here at work that a while back, the vending guy actually ran out of pads of refund slips.
Heh. I’ll have to check, BlackKnight. And I love the tape measure solution!
I had a different problem recently. I wanted a bag of Sun Chips. Bag came off of the coils fine - but then fell across the bottom part of the machine instead of in to it. I couldn’t get to the bag. Very frustrating - I wanted the chips!
And I have had the coil not release problem. Solved it with a quick hip check to the machine.
Susan
Happened to me more than once at the same machine (different coils/selections). It’s gotten to the point where I go to CostCo and get a batch of individually sealed bags of chips/pretzels/what-have-you and bring them to work instead.
The far right side portion of my brain is saying, “Forget the rules. Hollow out the side wall in your office and transform it into a snack dispenser.” 
I’ve had it happen to me several times, but it balances out as I’ve also been on the receiving end of the ‘double-dropper’ (when you receive your goodies as well as the previous persons stuck goodies)
All the snack machines where I worked in the Netherlands were like that. I had never seen that technology in US vending machines and I was reeeeeeeeeally impressed.
(It’s also very convenient to be able to pay for the snacks with your chip-card instead of coins, but that’s another story.)
Well, that wouldn’t always work, though. Say I put some coins in, and fail to get my chips, and register a complaint. The next guy comes along, puts in the right number of coins, and gets the chips he wanted, plus mine. The money and inventory works out, but I’m still out my money, y’know? I don’t know a real answer to this dilemma, though. I know that some people are dishonest jackasses who will claim a loss where there is none, just so they can “get one over” on someone. Idiots.
This is my experience as well. Happens all the damn time with M&Ms.
M&Ms and chips are the only things I consciously WON’T buy from vending machines, knowing their likelihood of getting stuck from past bad experiences.
Yes. In fact, just the other day I tried to get a candy bar and the machine ate my cash, and kept saying I didn’t have enough money. I even tried putting another quarter in-nothing. I tried getting my change back-no dice.
And when I’m at work, I’m always giving change back for money stuck in the machines, then going down to the cafe to get refunds. Fucking machines.