How Many Quarters Is Too Many?

[edredtop]

As start-up prices reach $5 and more, has anybody wondered at what point they will stop accepting quarters?
Safes can only hold so many coins, acceptors have an ever-increasing chance of jams with the sheer number of quarters rolling through, and do our customers really have 28 quarters with them to wash for $5 and vacuum for $2? What if they want an air freshener, Armor All, and a towel?
That's another 28 quarters at my place. 56 quarters is nuts... isn't it?
Dollar coins are about as common in our customer's pockets as a $2 bill so that's not the solution.
Banks are making it more and more difficult to deposit them.
Since we don't take pennies, nickels, or dimes as payment, when will a quarter join the ranks of unacceptable coinage?

 

[Randy]

I that magic number is $3.00 or 12 quarters, any higher and it becomes cumbersome for the customer to be getting anymore than $3.00 worth of quarters. We pull coin vaults often so over flowing coin vaults is not a problem. Hopefully I can find a buyer for my car wash soon and then I can say goodbye to all this craziness.

 

[Axxlrod]

I've never accepted quarters at my SS locations. Been that way for 20 years. Customers can buy tokens valued at one dollar or insert bills directly into the meter boxes or use crypto pay.

One of the reasons that I made the decision to not accept quarters, besides not wanting to count/sort/deal with them, is I didn't want my customers to think of my car wash as a "quarter car wash". I wanted them to think in terms of dollars. This isn't 1987 anymore.

I have never seen a customer pull into a bay, and then leave without washing due to not taking their quarters. Then ones that pull out a coffee can full of quarters suddenly find another method of payment once they see they can't use their quarters.

My vision for the future is to increase my startup price to $5. It is currently at $3 for cash/tokens and $4 for crypto. Then I will look into possibly removing cash/tokens altogether and be card only.

 

[cantbreak80]

Nearly all of my customers dispense $1 coins from their changers. With MicroCoin acceptors in every device, they also accept customer's quarters.

I converted to $1 coins in 1999...with $3.00 to start the bays. That didn't stop the customer's quarters from pouring in. Instead of regularly restocking "drive off" quarters from the laundamat & apartment dwellers, they were all deposited in the bank.

12 quarters take a "long time" for the customer to drop in the slot. Three $1 coins...not so much. Perception is reality.

Yeah, $1 coins disappear, too. But they seem to come back from the regular customers.

My site's current owner reports 85% of the gross is now credit card. And, he just upped the start-up price to $4.00. It's trending that way for all my clients.

 

[Earl Weiss]

"Problem " to an extent is self correcting if you accept Credit cards and if ight for you paper$. If quarter useage dwindles to X% of revenue you can delete then as a payment method.

 

[HeyVern]

I have dollar coins in the changer and accept customer quarters. About 80% of sales are credit card quarters are about 40% of cash sales. My start price is only $2.00 though.

 

[JMMUSTANG]

What does a cup of coffee cost?

We‘ve been $2.50 to start in the bays for over 20 years and $1.00 for vacs for 4 minutes.
Four years ago we raised the1.00/ 4 minute vacs to 2.00 for 10 minutes.
We did because of all the tunnels being built around us.
Customers love the extra time. We have increased in customers usage.
We are now changing the bays startup time to $4.00 for 4 minutes.
We will offer 3 FREE minutes when they deposed $8 or more.
We have always had this offer and the customers love it.

We accept $1-$20 bills, Quarters, and credit cards.
I have found that the foreigners use the Quarters a lot .