Dec

09

The Coinstar Scam

December 9, 2009

Last Saturday I had my first experience using the Coinstar coin counting machine. You know, the ones that sit in the grocery store behind the checkout aisles. So this month, Coinstar was having a promotion during which not only could you get your coins counted for free (if you redeem them as a gift card), but they would give you an additional $10 gift card as well. Since this basically entailed doing nothing except a trip to the grocery store, I figured it would be worth my time.

Coinstar machine and me

I went first to the in-store bank, where I exchanged some bills for coins, then went over to the coin counting machine. I had never used a Coinstar machine before (I typically take my coins to the bank, where I know the machine counts correctly, but more importantly counts for free), so I wanted to start off slow to ensure that it counted correctly. The first thing I noticed was how high the coin counting fee is – normally (when you’re not changing coins for a gift card) Coinstar charges 8 9/10 cents on the dollar for counting! That seems ridiculous to me. However, I was doing the free counting, so it was no big deal.

I started with a few loose coins I had grabbed out of my car, and before I had even put in $2, it had missed a quarter and a few pennies! I thought that was strange. I continued to feed coins in, eventually going through all the rolls I had gotten at the bank. By the time I was done, I had put in over $42, yet the Coinstar machine only showed me having put in barely over $40. Obviously I understand that sometimes it will not be able to identify a coin correctly, but in those cases it should return the bad coin to me (like it does at the bank), not simply take it from me. This, however, is Coinstar’s policy, and you have to agree to it in order to use their machine.

Coinstar Terms

In the end I figured out I was shorted around $2.15. It wasn’t as big of a deal to me, since I knew I would be getting the extra $10 gift card, but it still really bothered me, since not only are the people who use the machine paying an exorbitant fee to do so, but they are also not even getting credited for all the coins that they put in! This seems like a huge ripoff to me.  I still got about $8 free at Amazon by taking about 15 extra minutes at the grocery store, but I also found out that the Coinstar machines really are a ripoff.

Deals, Life

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  • Matt

    Do you get a physical gift card or do you enter your email address or something?

  • Matt

    Do you get a physical gift card or do you enter your email address or something?

  • rgisraelsen

    I chose an Amazon.com card, so it just prints out a redemption code on the receipt. Then I just go enter that into my Amazon account (like any other Amazon gc) and it saves the balance until the next time I buy something. I’m not sure how it would work with one of the other stores (there are like 10 different ones you can choose from), but I imagine it’d be something similar.

    For the bonus $10, you just fill out and mail in a form that printed on the bottom part of the receipt, then they send you a gift card.

  • rgisraelsen

    Well, it’s officially been 8 weeks today. Still nothing has showed up in the mail. I called Coinstar, and he told me that I needed to wait until Feb 8, as that was 8 weeks. When I pointed out that 8 weeks since Dec 8 is actually today, he said that its actually 8 weeks from when it arrives in Arizona. Since I mailed it from Utah, that shouldn’t be too long. So I asked what would happen if I wait another week and still don’t hear back – he said then I could call back and “we’ll take a look around a bit more.” That was it. So we’ll see if I need to call them back again…

  • rgisraelsen

    I called back to Coinstar again today. As soon as I started to say what I was calling about, Carol said, “Oh yes, the promotion?” (which implies to me that they have been inundated with calls about this). She said that she was told that they processed the last of the rebates last week, and so are telling people that they should receive their rebates by the end of February. So, we’ll see if it comes by then. :)

  • rgisraelsen

    UPDATE! The Amazon Gift Card arrived on Thursday, after I called them.
    So it turns out that they were going to send it all along. (Both times I called they never asked for my name or anything to “look up” the rebate, so I know they didn’t just send it bc I called.)
    Although I still believe that they took way too long to do so, and they didn’t count my coins correctly.

  • greg

    I always use Coinstar… but am not happy with them any more. When the rebate ran, I took all my coins in & got them exchanged. I ended up with about $104. The machine hit an error after $100 & required a grocery service clerk to come by. They put some keys in, pushed a button, & out spat a receipt for less than the amount. Instead of giving me the Amazon card that I originally wanted, they gave me a ticket for cash minus the roughly 10%. I was not happy… & the clerk apologized & said that I had to take it up with Coinstar. Well, I thought, “there’s goes the $10 rebate I came in for.” But it’s okay…

    Anyway, I submitted a rebate from CA, my sister did from CO & my parents did one from HI — all for over $40 each. It’s now August & none of us have received it. Man talk about adding insult to injury… I lost my 10%, postage, & I looked like an @$$ because I told all my relatives that they should give Coinstar a chance (take advantage of the rebate offer). I’ll pout for a little while longer, but I’m sure I’ll go back when I need something from Amazon (also assuming I’m taking in less than $100 at a time).

  • greg

    I always use Coinstar… but am not happy with them any more. When the rebate ran, I took all my coins in & got them exchanged. I ended up with about $104. The machine hit an error after $100 & required a grocery service clerk to come by. They put some keys in, pushed a button, & out spat a receipt for less than the amount. Instead of giving me the Amazon card that I originally wanted, they gave me a ticket for cash minus the roughly 10%. I was not happy… & the clerk apologized & said that I had to take it up with Coinstar. Well, I thought, “there’s goes the $10 rebate I came in for.” But it’s okay…

    Anyway, I submitted a rebate from CA, my sister did from CO & my parents did one from HI — all for over $40 each. It’s now August & none of us have received it. Man talk about adding insult to injury… I lost my 10%, postage, & I looked like an @$$ because I told all my relatives that they should give Coinstar a chance (take advantage of the rebate offer). I’ll pout for a little while longer, but I’m sure I’ll go back when I need something from Amazon (also assuming I’m taking in less than $100 at a time).

  • Coinscam

    Same thing happened to me, I selected the gift card option and only after it counted all my coins did it tell me that the option was unavailable and that I must take cash less 9.8%. I called and told them I would have rolled my own coins if not for the free coin counting that comes with the gift card and they mailed me a check for the fee ammount. I still don’t get my $10 amazon credit though. In the future I will not be using Coinstar’s machines.

  • Michaelcc18

    Coinstar is a ripoff… I had a voucher for 50 dollars and they said they cannot give me the cash because the voucher is too old.. 1 month .. never use coinstar .. they will steal your money..

  • http://twitter.com/tommidavis Tommi Davis

    I had the same issue yesterday. I had $16.00 worth of change and decided to take it to the Coinstar machine at my local grocery store. I know for a FACT it was $16 as I had counted it myself that day yet the Coinstar machine told me it was only $13.57 – ripping me off for $2.43 PLUS their 9.8 percent fee. NEVER AGAIN! Frauds and hucksters – that’s how I clasify COINSTAR!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A7GD5IJ6JMOK44MZ6SILD4NWC4 Justni

    Hi Michaelcc18, why would you wait a month or even a day to cash in your voucher? FYI its the stores choice wether they want to cash out the voucher at a later date, not Coinstar.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_A7GD5IJ6JMOK44MZ6SILD4NWC4 Justni

    Hey Tommi, Coinstar must be 99.99% efficent by law. There could be many reason why your $2.43 did not count.

    1. The machine may have been in need of a cleaning. Did you know that Coinstar kiosks are the most dirty vending machines made….
    2. If you put any bent or non-stright coins they will fail to count.

  • George Williams

    Hey Justni you sound like your a Coinstar employee searching online for complaints to try to counteract all the negative “press”.  Good luck to you on that in order to keep you employed in this economy, but I hope you end up getting better morals somehow.  

    Anyhow, I will no longer use a Coinstar machine because I have had AT LEAST 2 DIFFERENT incidents of “MISCOUNTING” at 2 DIFFERENT Coinstar machines at 2 separate locations.  Both times the 2 different machines took around 20% (NOT THE STATED 9.8%) that they say they will.  So I guess ALL of your Coinstar machines may need to be “cleaned” often.  By the way a coin that would not be “straight” would be returned.

    So Coinstar you should try to figure out how to rectify this situation or get more and more bad press and no more business from people like me (and even less business once I have fun telling my local major media outlets that have INVESTIGATION TEAMS to look into this immoral and unethical business practice).  If your interested in why I’ll be doing this, well because almost nothing bothers me more than a major corporation being like that (and this is without mentioning that Coinstar has lawsuits filed against them for securities fraud, so this shows me that this most likely just isn’t a “CLEANING” problem.

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