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Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

washboard.co

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Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#41

Post by chatmasta »

yock wrote: post #38

I don't live in a big city, but here in Dayton Ohio I've never seen a laundromat without a change machine. Further, those change machines don't skim off the top. The worst you're out is a $3 charge for an out-of-network ATM, and even that can be avoided with a minimal amount of forethought. Am I missing something that makes this make sense?

All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. Doing laundry, which is already a huge pain in the ass, was much worse for me because I also had to go to the bank and take out quarters.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#42

Post by jsmthrowaway »

chatmasta wrote: post #41
yock wrote: post #38

I don't live in a big city, but here in Dayton Ohio I've never seen a laundromat without a change machine. Further, those change machines don't skim off the top. The worst you're out is a $3 charge for an out-of-network ATM, and even that can be avoided with a minimal amount of forethought. Am I missing something that makes this make sense?

All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. Doing laundry, which is already a huge pain in the ass, was much worse for me because I also had to go to the bank and take out quarters.

> All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines.

This is a bug. File appropriately. Laundry rooms are not operated without ongoing maintenance because communal equipment breaks all the time. Operating a quarter machine is part of said maintenance companies' repertoire.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#43

Post by HCIdivision17 »

keehun wrote: post #27
HCIdivision17 wrote: post #21

There seems to be a lot of confusion about why someone would want a service like this. And that's understandable. Perhaps they have a nice bank in walking distance. Perhaps they don't work from 7am to 5pm, just in time for their bank to close. Perhaps their local stores don't sell rolls for a small charge (or feel silly going to the front desk to buy quarters - go to a bank after all!) I bet it'd be nice living in a…

But you can also go to your bank (or the next time you happen to be at a bank) and ask them for a bunch of quarters...

Not to overly nitpick, but if your job doesn't let you out before the bank closes, then you might not. Of course, if you're diligent, just remember to make a special trip on your day off. But that can come rarely enough that quarters run short.

Perhaps one of the stranger things I've come across is a bank that wouldn't sell me quarters or money orders without having an account there; it was a convenience bank in a store, so I had mistakenly assumed it would be trivial. One of the more bizarrely awkward conversations I've had with a counter rep.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#44

Post by dwd »

yock wrote: post #38

I don't live in a big city, but here in Dayton Ohio I've never seen a laundromat without a change machine. Further, those change machines don't skim off the top. The worst you're out is a $3 charge for an out-of-network ATM, and even that can be avoided with a minimal amount of forethought. Am I missing something that makes this make sense?

I'm in Australia and the order form seems like it will have no issue with me ordering quarters (it even does an Australian postcode lookup), yet US coins are not legal tender here.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#45

Post by melvinmt »

This was a real problem for us when we moved into our latest apartment with shared laundry room (that doesn't have a change machine). But after a while we figured out you can simply buy a $10 quarter roll at Trader Joe's if you ask nicely, so that's what we do since we're there every week anyways.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#46

Post by HCIdivision17 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #37

The website is indeed lacking SSL. The transaction is encrypted since it's using Stripe but if the host page lacks SSL, the browser shows no indication (nor should it since the majority of the page is unencrytped). This also struck me as an odd thing about Stripe... that they didn't have a redirect page you could use with its own SSL for businesses that wanted to use Stripe's in-browser checkout but didn't want to sp…

I think you've almost got the market. My bet's on small (or just remote) towns with only one or two banks with limited hours coinciding with where the communal laundry services only accept quarters and the blasted change machine is always out. (These are the sorts of places where a vending machine that accepts cards would be a cool novelty.) I'd actually be interested to see how many people live in that kind of rural America versus large cities.

My college suffered from this, and I had a number of late nights where I was perfectly willing to pay two dollars for a buck fifty in quarters, just because there wasn't anything open in walking distance to get quarters.

As far as I've seen, the same places with these communal laundry services also tend to have many mailboxes consolidated in one place. These'll be locked, so the package of money is fairly safe, assuming it gets through the postal service safely.

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#47

Post by chatmasta »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #42
chatmasta wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. Doing laundry, which is already a huge pain in the ass, was much worse for me because I also had to go to the bank and take out quarters.

> All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. This is a bug. File appropriately. Laundry rooms are not operated without ongoing maintenance because communal equipment breaks all the time. Operating a quarter machine is part of said maintenance companies' repertoire.

Oh trust me... it's just one of many, many bugs. The laundry room at my previous apartment was operated by a heathen of a company called Mac Gray [0]. They have some of the worst customer service I've ever encountered, and never more than half of their machines working at any given time.

[0] http://www.macgray.com/

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#48

Post by krapp »

bunkat wrote: post #13

If somebody told you to mail them $13.50 and they will mail you back $10, you would think they were crazy. But in today's world this is a valid idea for a startup?

If it makes money, it is. And it will probably make money, because so many people have been trained to accept that even minor inconveniences can and should best be solved by giving up some degree of personal autonomy or freedom to a startup because x is annoying or x is hard or because x is too analog.

What else can you say except that there's a sucker born every minute?

Re: Washboard – Ships you rolls of quarters for laundry

#49

Post by DanBC »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #42
chatmasta wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. Doing laundry, which is already a huge pain in the ass, was much worse for me because I also had to go to the bank and take out quarters.

> All the off campus apartments at my college have laundry rooms with machines that only take quarters, but no change machines. This is a bug. File appropriately. Laundry rooms are not operated without ongoing maintenance because communal equipment breaks all the time. Operating a quarter machine is part of said maintenance companies' repertoire.

Certainly someone needs to remove the quarters feom the washer dryers, so that person can also service the change machine?
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