Customer's $1.00 lost in your equipment... What do you do?

[Buzzie8]

I have two washes. The older wash has no way to give a code for a free wash. When my machine eats their 4 quarters because of a malfunction, I offer a refund, but sending out a check for $1 or $2 seems ridiculous. Many times I let them know what hours I will be there so they can get refunded in person. Not sure if there is way to handle this efficiently and still make the customer happy. I was curious what other unattended self-serve operators do in this case.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

I've been mailing cash for 20 years, never a problem. I just write out the same apology note every time and fold the money up inside it.

 

[Kevin James]

We have a very nice form refund letter we send out along with a cash refund, all the secretary has to do is change the name and date. We only send out a refund after we verity that there was truly a malfunction with the equipment, this prevents the people who think they can score a little extra cash from getting a refund. No verified malfunction, no refund. We very seldom have to send out a refund as we have very few malfuntions.

 

[pitzerwm]

What I use to do was (I had tokens) send double the loss, a form indicating what I found was the problem, and a towel. Yes, it cost me a lot of extra money to send the refund. However, one day a guy drives up to me as I was cleaning up the place and asked me if I was the owner. He then said that he had lost .25 and that I knew that it cost me a lot of money to send him that .25, and he would always wash his car at my place.

My thought was that you need to WOW them, to override the anger of getting ripped off.

 

[zepher]

I send them a nice letter and a token good for the highest priced wash we offer.

 

[MEP001]

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it's not illegal to send a small amount of cash in the mail.

We send a cash refund and enough tokens for the top auto wash ($8 worth).

If someone comes up to me and says they lost a dollar in something I just give it to them. If they claim they lost $5 or $10 I start asking questions and usually figure out pretty quickly that they're lying.

"I called the number on the door but the guy never called me back." Yeah, the voice message is that of a woman.

"I put $10 in the changer/automatic and nothing happened." Strange, it hasn't been $10 over.

One guy said "I put $5 in one bay and nothing worked, so I moved to another bay and put $5 in it and nothing worked." He claimed to have left a message so I told him I'd check. While I was on the phone checking he went and talked to the two customers using the bays he claimed took his money, then came back to me and said they both told him the time was too short. I checked with both customers who told me in these exact words: "He's full of s***". Even after I told him this he still wanted me to just hand him $10. I told him to get lost (He had also lied about leaving a message).

 

[Earl Weiss]

I also have aform letter . Send them cash and a free air freshener.

 

[jprb]

I send out a check for the amount lost, and two tokens for our top automatic wash. I also include a form letter which thanks them for reporting the problem and thanking them for their business.

My reasoning for the two tokens is that I read somewhere that people create a habit after going to your business twice. I figure that they will use the tokens I send them, no matter how mad they were when they lost money. I have gotten many calls and thank you cards for going above and beyond for them. Seems to make the customers happy.

JPRB

 

[Buzzie8]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I will give washes away when I have customer problems with my automatics. But when someone loses a couple quarters in a vac, I think it's hard to justify, but, maybe giving a $10 wash would be a good practice to appease a disgruntled customer. A couple years ago, I think there were a group of young kids who knew I would give washes if they complained about something. That's when I began scrutinizing issues before I would give away a wash. Maybe that's the cost of doing business though.

 

[Waxman]

Sending $1 costs no more than $1.50.

Just send the cash. Bill P is right; you will WOW the customer this way and they will be back.

 

[MEP001]

A couple years ago, I think there were a group of young kids who knew I would give washes if they complained about something. That's when I began scrutinizing issues before I would give away a wash.

I had that happen many years ago when I was an attendant. I was instructed to give a refund, no questions asked, to anyone who said they lost money. It didn't take long at all for word to spread, and after a while I'd have three people a day claim they lost $5 in the changer. I put a stop to it myself when someone claimed to have lost $5 in one changer "yesterday" I assume because he saw an out-of-order sign on it - the changer had been down for more than a week. I simply refuse to become an easy mark again.

The reason we send an excessive refund is to encourage people to call when there's a problem. Two out of three calls we get now are "just wanted to let you know" calls when the changer is down or a coin acceptor is jammed, and many don't even leave a name or number for a refund or callback if they've only lost $1.