Rotoray Dial Vs. LED Push Button On Mter Box's

[washregal]

Hello - Adding Meter box's to my wash - very excited about this as I have been all cash for the past 13 yrs of owning the wash.

Going with Mars 2600 validators - IDX - Micro coin / slugbuster II?? on coil acceptance and wash Remote on Credit card system.. Hoping to see a nice jump in revenue. Any thoughts on coin acceptors?

On that not e- I want to go 12 pos. add more features to keep customers in the bay and on the dial longer.. .Looking to add a bug / salt type product - a UV protectant type wax - and want to add Air shamee dryers.

Any thoughts on these three?

My biggest hurdle is rotary dial or Led push button - cost is approx 900.00 more per bay to go LED push button - is it worth it? What is the consensus? - big issue here as I will use this same door for all my wash's moving forward as I do not see mixing / matching.. once I commit.. I am all in.

Would greatly appreciate feedback on the above..

 

[chaz]

Slug buster 3, air dryer, rotary dial, count up on credit card

 

[Ric]

Rotary switch

 

[MEP001]

Unless someone has come up with a pushbutton system that is bulletproof, I would stick with rotary switch. I've converted a lot of bays back to switches because the buttons were unreliable and expensive to repair, and it's almost all been failures and not vandalism.

 

[washnvac]

Agree with rotary, for sure.

 

[DavidM]

I prefer the push button. I believe it appears more modern to the customer, the layout of the meterbox looks better. Trying to fit 10-12 functions around a rotary knob isn't ideal. In a self service environment, the meterbox is one of the main points of customer interaction, it should be as good as possible in both function and appearance.

The LED push buttons that we use have been very reliable. The designs have been greatly improved from the originals in the 90s

David

 

[pgrzes]

Push button, bill and CC acceptors, stay away from IDX!! They "USED" to be good product! No longer reliable and "ZERO" customer service. Air blowers, bug cleaner in summer switch to De-Salt in winter. I have 11 bays with Ginsan Ultimate touch doors. I think we have had to replace 3 switches in 5 1/2 years. Very happy with them and customers like the interaction.

 

[JMMUSTANG]

Triple Foam Polish Wax gun, round foaming tire cleaning brush, Armorall round tire brush, De-Salt, air dryers, 2 minutes bonus time with $5 or $6 purchase.

 

[mjwalsh]

Push button, bill and CC acceptors .... Air blowers, bug cleaner in summer switch to De-Salt in winter. I have 11 bays with Ginsan Ultimate touch doors. I think we have had to replace 3 switches in 5 1/2 years. Very happy with them and customers like the interaction.

I am with David & pgrzes on this. I will acknowledge that the original touchpads from Specialty were a serious problem with their too thin of membranes, discontinued support & parts replacement of both the membranes & the distribution boards.

We rolled up our sleeves & found some durable stainless steel momentary push buttons & used our existing boxes. Dan from GinSan had a board that would work & to their credit they were willing to work with us on that portion of the upgrade. Zero trouble with the durable stainless steel push buttons for over 7+ years now. We had minor trouble with some of the GinSan boards bought through Kleen-Rite. I believe they are staying on top of & improving the siliconed in distribution boards because those minor troubles seem to have gone away. They were good about warranty & hopefully the quality of the board will continue & possibly even improve.

A little added bonus ... let's say one of your 12+ selections has a temporary problem such as tire-motor or whatever. It seems like it is easier to cover that specific button, label & led than to do the same with rotary switches. Appearance wise IMHO that process with the almost 100% vandal proof buttons is better.

It's possibly "water under the bridge" with possibly too strong of a politicized current now but I am among others with the Canadian Self Service Operators when they say they are glad that they were not forced to put in bill acceptors like in the USA. During our upgrade instead of bill acceptors I would have gone with another MicroCoin QL coin mech wired in parallel to provide even more customer friendly redundancy with the waterproof dollar coins. With our 2 bill changers customers did not need to bring those so-called weighing soo so soo much dollar coins with them. Much better fit for our extremely wet environment. Too bad there was so much misleading information propagated by mostly the merchant fee 100% cashless advocates. Maybe it is not too late ... considering the overwhelming support from the much higher in numbers more public interest minded self service laundromat owners.

Depending on your manpower ... I would not rule out building your own self service blow drys & "cherry pick" the components like we did. We gained that ability ... thanks to a car wash forum operator's private message to me based on a post by me several years back.