Comments on: The Coinstar Scam

By: George Williams

George Williams — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:22:00 +0000

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.

By: Justni

Justni — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:36:00 +0000

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.

By: Justni

Justni — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:32:00 +0000

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.

By: Tommi Davis

Tommi Davis — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:53:00 +0000

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!

By: Michaelcc18

Michaelcc18 — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:37:00 +0000

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..

By: Coinscam

Coinscam — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:03:00 +0000

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.

By: greg

greg — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:36:31 +0000

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).

By: greg

greg — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:36:00 +0000

By: rgisraelsen

rgisraelsen — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:32:32 +0000

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.

By: rgisraelsen

rgisraelsen — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:22:03 +0000

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.