Some Simple Tips For: Salting Coin Boxes
From Coin Laundry News, June, 2009
Now and again this particular laundry owner had a sense that everything wasn’t quite right, but there was never anything he could put his finger on. He’d owned his coin operated laundry for years, and he felt he had never been careless about maintaining the security of his keys.
On a day off from his regular day time job, he stopped in at the laundry to see how things were going. A customer he knew complimented him on the nice young man he had collecting the coins. In fact, the young man had just left. Since the only employee he had was a lady, he now knew for certain that he was being robbed.
Immediately he purchased and installed new coin vault locks and found the income of his laundry raised an average of $300 per week. How long had this been going on? Maybe it could have been for years.
Stay suspicious that something could be wrong, because maybe it is!
Because the number of key codes available is limited, there is always a small chance that someone could have a duplicate key to your coin boxes. We go along, fat dumb and happy thinking nothing is wrong, because we don’t see anything to worry about.
Enterprising crooks can surprise even the experts.
Proactive steps operators can take to insure there are no silent partners include salting the coin boxes with identifiable coins. If those coins aren’t there when you collect, then there could be a problem.
Using a yellow felt pen, mark rolls of coins on the serrated edges. Coins usually fall in flat, and the edges are not noticeable. Place a specific number in certain coin boxes. Keep coins collected from those boxes completely apart from the rest of your collection. It does take a little extra time, but the peace of mind you get knowing you are not being robbed by a silent partner is well worth the time it takes.
Go through those boxes to recover all of the marked coins. If those coins are always there, then it’s likely that a silent partner is not working your laundry. You need not do this every week, but certainly you want to do it on periodic basis. However, if they are not in the box, then you know that something is going on.
Some operators count coins in each of the boxes. The total should be exactly divisible by number of coins needed to start a load. Working quickly, thieves will grab a handful, which could leave a box uneven when divided by the vend price. A smart crook may think of that too, so it’s no real security guarantee if your boxes do come out even, but it’s an almost sure sign if they are off on a regular basis.
Vary the days of the week and times of day when you collect. What a silent partner counts on is not being noticed, so they only take a part of the laundry’s income. They may hit on Tuesday, knowing that you usually collect on Friday. That will allow time for a sufficient number of coins to be deposited in the boxes to disguise what they’ve done. By varying times you collect the vaults, you put them at risk of being noticed.
If you don’t sleep well at night because you have worries that you may have some silent partners, take steps. The two methods described above are easy, inexpensive and they really do work.
Other operators have installed security cameras, and check the tapes to see suspicious activities. Some do collections daily so there isn’t much to steal. Others count coins or salt coin boxes in other ways. Although expensive, some even buy a few extra boxes and alternate them to keep thieves confused.
Date:-05/28/2011
By:-Admin
