Bill Acceptor Paper Tokens or Whatever They are Called

[mjwalsh]

Bill Acceptor Coupons or Certificates Users,

Has anybody done anything at all with paper coupons for their Coinco Vantage's or for other brands? We haven't but hope to eventually. It would be nice to have our specific wash name more noticeable & even advertise a bit on them --- it seems like with the right rubber stamp or printer alignment & ink it could help. We are also debating on tying the printing to a database print job that would number the printings as we print --- for tracking eventual age of the coupon & for knowing the ones that eventually are destroyed by us --- because of deterioration --- & also for tracking the ones bought but not used.

MJ

 

[Reds]

I use the printed coupons in my Mars acceptors. They are not cheap. And "custom" coupons are very expensive. I bought the starter kit from Mars and printed my name and a number on each one. But I had trouble getting my printer to feed the coupons correctly so I had to do each one individually. Very time consuming. I only dispense them to fleet customers ( D.O.T., police, etc ) and track the usage with a spreadsheet. Since the customer and I are both interested in accurate tracking of usage so that the invoices are correct they treat them like money and rarely lose them or damage them.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Bill Acceptor Coupons or Certificates Users,

Has anybody done anything at all with paper coupons for their Coinco Vantage's or for other brands? We haven't but hope to eventually. It would be nice to have our specific wash name more noticeable & even advertise a bit on them --- it seems like with the right rubber stamp or printer alignment & ink it could help. We are also debating on tying the printing to a database print job that would number the printings as we print --- for tracking eventual age of the coupon & for knowing the ones that eventually are destroyed by us --- because of deterioration --- & also for tracking the ones bought but not used.

MJ

Bought the stock Coinco coupons. Also bought a Pre inked rubber stamp with info and i use that on the coupon for the wash name etc. (There is an area of the coupon you can't mark but plenty of space for the stamp info. ) The coupons are not cheap but are reuseable. (You can get custom made, but they are pricier.)
You can also buy a sequential numbering stamp. Seems like a lot of work to number and keep track of them.

I offer a "Buy the Bunch" discount.

 

[mjwalsh]

Bought the stock Coinco coupons. Also bought a Pre inked rubber stamp with info and i use that on the coupon for the wash name etc. (There is an area of the coupon you can't mark but plenty of space for the stamp info. ) The coupons are not cheap but are reuseable. (You can get custom made, but they are pricier.)
You can also buy a sequential numbering stamp. Seems like a lot of work to number and keep track of them.

I offer a "Buy the Bunch" discount.

Thanks Earl,

I was hoping you would respond since it was your lead last summer that kind of tipped the scale with going with the Vantage vs the Mars. I do still have 3 Mars 2612 that I will put to really good use ---- just not with coupons. You don't happen to have anything specific info-wise on that inked rubber stamp ---- like the brand or some other lead? I am thinking that a water resistant ink would be necessary. Ball park wise what do you think the average life of the coupon is --- do the coupons last as long as dollar bills even in the damp car wash environment? I have a couple hundred of both the $3 & the $7 from Etowah but have not started to offer them yet --- other than a tiny cloud "gift certificates available" on a few print ads with no bites. I am kind of concerned about how much I want to encourage their availability since there are many other options for building up the number of people coming to the facility. Of course weather here is the biggest factor like everywhere else.

We won't be preoccupied or obsessive with tracking the sequentially numbered coupons --- it just seems it would be nice to have a better handle on them if the need would ever evolve. It would be just a simple spreadsheet database type of tracking --- with one field possibly a fleet account's name & when the batch was sold to that specific fleet --- we would have a hint to how many they used & possibly some other potential little subtle bits of info that could turn out to be worthwhile to know! One nice thing about a database table it can be sorted by whatever field info that is pertinent. If we sold them in our mega vendor then those could be tracked as that specific origin vs a specific raffle fund raiser or whatever. In our case we might target the Humane Society type of fund raisers with our 2 stall dog wash --- to get people to try it for the first time.

MJ

 

[Earl Weiss]

I don't know how long coupons will last. Unlike dollar bills, since they represent the business they get retired if worn looking.

I ordered the custom Stamp on line from Rubberstampchamp.com.

No issues with Ink and moisture on the coupons.

while number tracking is easy for the first go round because you simply have coupons numbered 1-100 for whomever you sold it to, when it comes to reusing them, sorting, organizing and recording #s would be a pain.

 

[mjwalsh]

quick dry ink?

I don't know how long coupons will last. Unlike dollar bills, since they represent the business they get retired if worn looking.

I ordered the custom Stamp on line from Rubberstampchamp.com.

No issues with Ink and moisture on the coupons.

while number tracking is easy for the first go round because you simply have coupons numbered 1-100 for whomever you sold it to, when it comes to reusing them, sorting, organizing and recording #s would be a pain.

Thanks Earl,

So in other words ---- you did not use the quick dry ink & there still was no smudging issue whatsoever???

We will give the sequencing some more thought. Since we recently got a really fast autofeed scanner with automatic OCR ---- it is possible we might be able get the coupon ID "into a database table" down to just a few quick steps. From there we could use a drop down table which would mean that the followup re-assigning of the coupons should be a non issue with almost no typing! I need to get back into playing with database stuff anyway ---- so hopefully I will come up with something to make the "re-use" practical. We definitely do not want to get into the "trap" of being a control freak though! We will have to think about the potential gains a wee bit more.

I know there have been discussions about change of ownership liability of honoring still in the field coin tokens ---- maybe the paper tokens with straight forward tracking could be useful in that respect???

MJ

 

[pitzerwm]

IMO numbering in tracking seems like a lot of time and I'm not sure I see any advantage. You might look at using different colored ink for the stamp, then you could give different colors out to different promotions/groups etc.

 

[MEP001]

while number tracking is easy for the first go round because you simply have coupons numbered 1-100 for whomever you sold it to, when it comes to reusing them, sorting, organizing and recording #s would be a pain.

If you have the room on the coupon, you could perhaps use a black marker to conceal the old number and stamp a new one next to it. I'll bet it would be faster and less trouble than trying to keep track of which number coupons have been reused.