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February 23, 2006
Another laundry entry
One of the laundromats I use has a proprietary "cash card" system. You make a $5 "deposit," which gets you a card. Then you add money to the card. Then you put the card into washing machines or dryers and the washing machines and dryers deduct the appropriate amount of money from your card, until you need to put more money on your card. You can return the card to recoup your $5 "deposit" on it.
Here's the fix: all the washing machines charge ridiculously uneven sums like $1.89 or some shit, while the dryers go in 25-cent increments.
Result? You will never use exactly all the money on your card. This is not just unfortunate happenstance -- this is a concerted tactic on the part of the laundromat to bilk you out of your $5 for eternity along with whatever handful of change you're forced to leave on the card at any given time.
Why do they even offer to take back the card and return your $5? Why don't they just say, you bought the card, it's yours now? Here's why: they want to saddle you with the eternal torment of knowing that you will never be able to get that card down to $0 and thus never be able to return it with a clear conscience. That's my theory, anyway.
So of course my number one mission in life for the past year and a half has been to get every last penny off that card. Occasionally I got it down to seven cents; I think once I even got it down to two cents. But nope, if I couldn't get all the money off, I'd put another few bucks on the card and do another few loads of laundry.
Well, last weekend, the constellations aligned or the groundhog saw its shadow or something, because I got EVERY LAST PENNY OFF THE CARD. Sure, my clothes could have used a few more minutes in the dryer, but that would have required putting at least one more dollar on the card, and I didn't need a whole extra dollar's worth of drying time (which, by the way, is 26 minutes -- 6.5 minutes per quarter -- these are the fucking stingiest dryers on the planet).
Card with $0.00 in hand, I marched to the counter -- undoubtedly the most triumphant-looking thing that has ever gone down in that place.
And here's the proof that the whole crazy-prices thing is totally intended to be evil: the lady looked at the balance and chirped, incredulously, "How you get all the money off this card?"
Then she gave me my $5.
(Oh, by the way, Project Shirt or whatever I was calling it is aborted. I couldn't be bothered to consistently not run that one shirt through the dryer. Nobody seems to have died yet.)
Posted by tony at February 23, 2006 11:33 PM
Comments
Those laundromats are full of ne'er-do-wells and highwaymen.
Posted by: Shaun at March 2, 2006 09:40 PM
Wow, that was quite a feat! My regular laundromat also has its own cards, but with much better terms: $2 a card and all machines are in increments of a quarter (washing machines starting at $1.25), so draining the card is not that hard. (And with the dryers you get 10 minutes per quarter.)
It does seem like your place put some real thought into how to screw their customers with these cards.
But what can you do?
Posted by: Squeeky at March 13, 2006 03:20 PM
