# Vending Machines and Wrinkled Dollars **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 29, 2000, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359 "2000-03-29T16:14:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zeus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zeus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeus)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/1 "2000-03-29T16:14:00Z")
Why don’t the machines accept my wrinkled dollars? This is bullshit. * * * “I say God DAMN!” ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/2 "2000-03-29T17:20:00Z")
Maybe you don’t have the contrast set properly on the Xerox machine. The mechanism compares your funny money against an image of what it knows a $ is supposed to look like. Wrinkled bills have a tendency of folding up (especially at the corners) inside the mechanism, and the machine just won’t accept something that doesn’t look like a genuine complete dollar bill. I have heard people say that these mechainsms used to be so stupid that you could cut the corners off of a $20 bill, glue two of them to one end of a dollar and feed it into a change machine & get $20 in change back. Since you still have two more corners from your ruined $20 bill, you can do this one more time, netting you $18.00 by the time you’re done ($40 minus the ruined twenty and the two singles you fed in disguised as twenties). I hope that’s not an UL… ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/3 "2000-03-29T17:38:00Z")
I always thought it was just a mechanical thing, that the rollers jam on the wrinkles or something. IMHO, Zeus, I think it’s BS, too, but whatcha gonna do? Either carry around lots of quarters, or just never buy stuff from a dollar bill vending machine–that’s what I do. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/4 "2000-03-29T17:40:00Z")
That’s why we need dollar coins! You never have a problem with a coin. ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_Hey\_Paula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hey\_Hey\_Paula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_Hey_Paula)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/5 "2000-03-29T17:42:00Z")
## Try the water trick: rub a little water onto both sides of your old, wrinkled dollar bill, and the machine should take it. “The analyst went barking up the wrong tree, of course. I never should have mentioned unicorns to a Freudian.” – Dottie (“Jumpers” by Tom Stoppard) ---
**Author:** ![torq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dfb087/32.png) [@torq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/torq)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vending-machines-and-wrinkled-dollars/9359/6 "2000-03-29T19:16:00Z")
If the ink has rubbed off in the wrinkles, you’re probably not going to have much luck getting the machine to take it. The vending machine here at work takes ones and fives, and I always spend the oldest looking bills in stores and keep the fresher ones for the vending machines. However, if it’s just been wadded up and other than that is in pretty good condition, you can usually straighten it out enough for most machines to accept it by holding each end and rubbing it over a corner… almost like you were shining a shoe with it. I don’t generally have this problem with the machine at work, but I’ve run into some that don’t like new fresh-from-the-FRB bills. Crinkling them slightly and then doing the shoeshine trick often helps in this case. Being sure the corners are completely unfolded seems to help a lot; often, even just a small fold in the unprinted segment of the corner will stop the machine from taking the bill.