nam

Welcome again Mettle and glad to see you off and running already with your first machine. Sounds like you have done your homework and have the basics down. I would suggest if you are going to buy a triple head machine that it have removeable cannisters like the Vendstar you bought. I'd rather have that Vendstar than a metal machine without changeable cannisters. If you can find some 1800's you'd really like them! Look forward to hearing more from you in the future. nam

Gary, You got a great deal on those 1800's and you could probably double your money if you wanted to sell them. I'd put their value at $100 each not just $75 if they are in really nice condition. That was a drive well worth making and wish I could find another deal like that within 500 miles and I'd be on the road again. lol I love those 1800 machines! Congratulations! nam

Mark is in Australia so the currency they are referring to isn't the same as our quarter. It is pretty common to vend for a dollar in Australia so what we should be comparing is the number of average vends rather than the amount of money the machines would bring in each month. Our average is $7 per head per month so that would be 28 vends per month or for Mark $28 average not $60 if we used our averages. Australia doesn't have anywhere near the number of vending machines that we have here in the US so his average number of vends will be much higher than ours. I'm not familar with the company or machines he is talking about the numbers being presented may not be that far off. I would be skeptical simply because in our country most these companies are business opportunities and they are notorious for exaggerating the numbers or just outright lying! The safer bet would be to take the time to search out the used market and wait for the right deal to come along. This would allow you to test the water so to speak with far less risk and if you should decide vending isn't what you were hoping, then you can sell the used machines again for the same thing you paid for them and have no loss. You might even consider running your ad on Craigslist that you are wanting to buy vending machines. Just a thought. nam

I gotta jump in here and side with Kevin on this thread. Don't get me wrong - I'd much rather have 1800's but Vendstars are ok in the right places too. I like how light weight they are to carry and how fast and easy they are to break down into smaller sections. It's a lot easy to go out locating with a bunch of these in your Honda Civic. lol I also agree with Kevin that these plastic machines hold up pretty well and in some cases much better than some of the steel counter parts. I'd rather have Vendstars than a lot of other cheaper steel machines. Really! nam

I run some U Turns and have no problem with jams. Antonio is probably right in that it's the mini eggs you are vending and not the machine. Lurtsman is right on the price being too high even with the location and the numbers are terrible for an 8 select machine. Of course you might be able to change several products in the machine and change those numbers for the better. Just pickup some more gumball wheels used or order some new ones from U Turn for $15 each and load those top four cannisters with Zoo Mania, Plastic Rings, Rubber Balls and whatever else you like in the 1" capsules. I've even got them vending capsules in the smaller bottom cannisters. lol Anything is better than filling that big thing up with candy! I hate breaking down those machines and setting all those cannisters somewhere to get to the lower sections and pull your quarters. They suck to service and take too much time to service but that being said, I still like them. Great if you have the right location to vend toys out of it instead of candy. If they'd just ad a coin door like a 1800 to get the quarters out easier I'd really like them. nam

There was a post here in the forum about them several weeks ago. I responded and sent for a info pack from them. I received a little info but haven't ordered or followed up on anything with them. Actually thought it was a pretty good novel idea. Seems like they had an office here in Phoenix and somewhere in California. Have tried to do a search here in the forum as one of our members did make a post on this but can't remember who or how long ago. nam

Mr. H, The plan is to never have a machine run out of money but yes it happens. The amount of money in the machine depends on whats needed at the location. One of the nice features of an ATM is since they are connected to a phone line it is possible to keep really good track online everything that is happening with your machine. You can check online to see each machine and how many transaction have been run, how much cash is left and what day it is projected to run out of cash based on the average transaction amount. Those projects are very good but it can still be way off sometimes. You can have several customers withdrawn much larger amounts than your average and you can just end up for what ever reason running a lot more transactions than normal. Anyway, the money can be put right back in your account in one or two business days depending on the processor - it isn't always the next day. Holidays and weekends can really make it difficult as you need to load your machines for these periods and sometimes the money may not have come back into your bank account yet. If you have more machines than money you have to really try to run the least amount of money you can in your machines and fill them more often. This allows you to have more machines out on the street but means you have to run your route more often to keep putting the money back in the machines as fast as it hits your account. If you have a small convience store running 150 transactions a month at an average of $60 per transaction your going to need to keep probably $10,000 in that one machine to service it only once a month. If your paying a company to load the cash $70 to $100 per location to load cash in your machines you don't want them coming twice a week or even once a week. If you are loading the cash yourself you can keep a lot less cash in the machine by loading twice a week yourself. Eats up a lot of your time but means your not paying to have a vault company load the cash and you can keep much less in the machine. If its running 40 transactions a week at an average of $60 you can put like $3,000 in and service it once a week or put in like $1,500 and fill it twice a week. Most smaller location ATM machines being service by an independent person will probably have $1,000 to $5,000 in them depending on how long since they were last filled. You can do the math though by simply increasing the numbers for a location doing 400 to 600 transactions a month. The scary part comes in when you are running 25 to 40 machines in a day and trying to carry enough cash to fill that many machines. The ideal thing is to not carry all that cash and let an armored car with guards do that but you can't afford to pay them. The banks and larger ATM companies have enough money to fill the machines with enough cash for a month at a time. Most of the independent people running ATM's can't do that. Way to much cash to fill all their machines with enough cash to make it a once a month thing. It's really hard to keep them filled for a week. lol Another thing is the risk of having that much cash in the machines if someone decides to steal your machine. Better to have 2 grand stolen than 20 grand. Oh, insurance would be the simple answer but it's too expensive too! The other answers are to let the locations fill their own machines but many won't do it and the only way you can get the deal is to fill the macine yourself. If the location does fill their own machine then they are going to get the lions share of the money. You can lease them the machine and have them put in their own money and you just make a little off the processing and whatever you make off the lease. Leasing can be very profitable if you can sleep at night. This is really just doing sales on commission and not really in the ATM business but more in the story telling business. Sorta like selling Vendstars and telling the potential buyer how much money they can make off their machines. Mostly BS and leaving a lot of business owners stuck with a lease they end up wanting out of and not making any money and in many cases losing money each month. But the ATM salesman probably made big bucks leasing that ATM machine to them. Sorry for the long post and hopefully if you're not interested in ATM's you quit reading long ago. lol nam

deee_z, Great but don't give up hope. They can change and come after you any time. All it takes in the wrong person or group to complain about them being gambling devices and force the authorities into doing something. Hope you luck holds up. nam

Whistle, I have no experience with cigarette machines. The ATM business has it's good and bad points like everything else. Except with the ATM's if you're loading your own cash that point might be the point of a gun. I was never robbed but was always careful and very much afraid of it happening. You can have the location load their own money for a much larger share of the fee but often they don't want to do it themselves either. You can also have a professional vault company load the machines but that's just too expensive unless you have really high volume locations. So often those high volume locations already have a bank ATM if they are doing 600 or more transactions a month. This leaves the smaller locations for the independent person to go after. Most of those will already have a machine too. The contracts are typically 5 years so even when you find a potential account it may not legally be able to switch without being sued. The ATM business has a lot of people just like we have in the vending business. Looking to take advantage of unknowing people by inflating the number of transactions to expect and talking them into leasing machines based on numbers that just don't usually happen. Then the owner of the business is stuck with an ATM for the next 5 years and instead of making money it may end up costing him money. The insurance for the location will go up quite a bit once the insurance company finds out there is a cash dispensing ATM in their business. Some may not be able to get insurance - period. If you own the ATM you can tell him you are responsible for the loss of the machine and money inside but he is more concerned with the loss of the front of his store when someone drives through it with a truck to get the ATM. The best way to do the business is buy your own machines and fill them with your own cash. This is were you can make the majority of the money and often only pay the location as little as 25 cents per transaction. The majority of the smaller accounts will do in my experience 100 to 200 transactions a month with a few that might hit 4 or 5 hundred but they are far and few between. Those locations are almost always already setup and to get them you'll have to pay a lot more than 25 cents. Everyone wants those accounts and the locations will be offered as high as a full dollar off that transaction fee. Competitive just like all other vending, especially on large accounts. Buying used ATM machines can also be a big problem if you aren't familar with the machines. Some are not Triple DES compliant and may cost more to have them upgraded than it's worth. Some older machines may have kits that you can do yourself and cost less than $400 but other machines require major changes and can cost more than the machine is worth used. You also need to be very careful on getting setup with a processor to run your transactions though. Often they will also want to lock you into a long term contract that you can't get out of either even if their service is lousy. There is no fee to process a transaction on a cash dispensing ATM. A credit card transaction requires a lot of different fees depending on what type of card and transaction you are running. An ATM transaction is just the reverse. It's called reverse interchange - they pay you for running the transaction. So if your trans fee is say $2.00 you should receive from your processor money on the back end so you're really being paid $2.25 or $2.30 even though your locations and customers all think you are only working with the base $2 fee. Not true! I'm not sure how much the processor is being paid for running the transactions. I've heard between 35 and 50 cents per transaction but they need to make money as well they're not going to pay you all that. Most in my experience want to start you out at 25 to 30 cents and think you're volume has to get pretty high to ever get about that. Installing an ATM is nothing like installing one of our normal vending machines. You'll need phone lines and power - wireless is available but gonna be more issues! The machines them selves need to be anchored into the floor of the location so you have to talk the owners into allowing you to drill into their tile floor or whatever is there. You'll need a high quality hammer drill and lots of special drill bits as the tile and concrete will eat up your bits like candy. Then you need to become a sign man as you'll need to buy electric ATM signs and hang them in the front windown if you want much business. Then you need to post signs outside as the more signs the more business. I'm not trying to say there isn't any money in the ATM business or paint a dark cloud over it either. It just often isn't what you think it will be. The business is full of liars and crooked sales people that take advantage of the locations not knowing the business just like business opps in vending. The owners will really appreciate having an honest person to deal with but again often they can't get out of their contracts for 5 yrs. I'm personally very happy to be out of the business and feel my chances of being shot have greatly decreased! lol So far I don't feel anyone is out there waiting for me to empty my quarters from a machine or steal my gumballs. nam

Kelly, I roll my quarters and pay the location with the rolls. They don't want $100 worth of loose quarters that they'd have to roll or do something with. Most of them like getting cash on the spot and next to never complain about getting the quarters nicely rolled. Sometimes they will even buy more from me if they need quarters and I get green folding money which isn't as much weight when it's time to go to the bank. Plus I just like doing it myself and knowing exactly where I stand on the count before I go to the bank. nam

lurtsman, I don't have anything in mine but gumballs either. I would agree with what Kelly said as far as using super balls if you can't use gumballs. I've never done jaw breakers in the Shootin Hoops but have Wowies with them. Sales drop about 30% with jaw breakers instead of gumballs in a Wowie if that helps. nam

Blue, I always found the best ATM locations were bad areas. The average withdrawn was much much lower and these people often use the machine 2-3 times in a day. Instead of taking out $60 at once and paying only one fee they come back and get $20 three times and pay three seperate fees. Crack heads are great customers as well as customers for the prostitutes - they seem to prefer cash as well. Look for an area with crack heads and working women and you'll do well. lol I usually found the more expensive neighborhoods to not do as well. These people will pull $100 or more from your machine and are smarter than using it over and over to keep paying the fees. They also are more likely to use their own bank ATM where they don't pay any fee. It takes alot more money to keep a machine in an affluent area supplied with cash. So they take more of your cash and you get less transaction fees from your money. Give me the bad areas any day - just a lot more dangerous to fill with cash. nam

antonio, The preformed quarter rolls will make using the tube or the Klopp easier to use. Again, it's all about speed. You can order them in big boxes from www.banksupply.com or at least I think that's the web site. They have the nice heavy canvas bags like the bank uses too. If you just want to count and shoot the quarters into a bag and roll them later this is really fast! Just don't set the machine on 40 quarters so it will keep shooting them into the bag until you run out of quarters. I agree that the bigger machine is a pain for small locations that you can't really justify taking in the big machine. I carry alot of the preformed rolls with me and then when I go into the locations I take a smaller bag with ballpark what should be enough for that location. nam

I do my own locating and have similar problems as you've just experienced. Especially if I don't bring the machine in immediately! I try as often as possible to sell the owners on what I have in my van so I can bring it in immediately but sometimes they want something different or I don't have what they want with me at the time. Even after talking to owners myself they can change their minds before I can get back with the equipment the next day. I think it's just part of the business we have to deal with and doesn't matter if we make the deal ourself or a locator does it for us. A certain amount of the time they will change their mind. I think it happens less often when I locate myself but nothing will ever be 100% except taking it in on the spot. Even then sometimes a partner or a wife will say they don't like it and take it out. lol nam