Use a Cell Phone to Cut Expenses

Laundry owners speaking with the News bring up some interesting points illustrating how the industry changes, and how our society has changed.

Take the pay phones in laundries as an example. During past years, virtually every laundry business had a pay phone. Its how mom called dad to pick up her and the kids because she finished doing the wash. Laundry operators got a little steady income from those pay phones.

Each of the laundry operators that we’ve asked lately has told us that their commission coming from pay phones in their laundry has dropped off in recent years. Some have said pay phone income has fallen by from forty to fifty percent. A few have said it’s even worse than that.

Some laundry locations failed to meet the phone company’s minimums, and were asked to pay “rent” for the phone, or the phone would be pulled out. It was the latter choice that seems to have been made by many laundries.

Not that pay phones have ever been that big of a money maker, but as you know, in the coin and card-operated laundry business, every penny of income counts. With changes in percentages paid and kept by the phone companies, it just hasn’t been worth it lately.

What happened? Well, everyone we talk to about it says it is the influx of cell phones.

It seems that almost everybody, even kids, have a cellular phone. We no longer need to rely on pay phones to communicate when we are not at home. With the advance pay cellular plans, even the homeless can carry a cell phone and can stay connected to the world.

Walk into any busy laundry and you’ll find two or three customers yakking away, not with each other, but on cellular phones. It’s off putting to be in a laundry and have the only other person there talking, apparently to them. Then you see they are on the phone through one of these new ear pieces.

One owner of 3 laundries cancelled his pay phones and even those in the back room of each location. He says that has saved his business over $150 a month. His routine phone calls are made from home, and he carries a cell phone for whatever calls he needs to make from the laundry sites.

Because he does his own repairs, he finds that it’s easier to talk with a repair technician on his cell phone right from the machine he’s working on. It also gives him a sense of security to have that phone with him as he does collections and banking.

It might be just a small economy for a laundry owner to make, but if you have a cell phone, why do you need a phone in your back room? The ability to advertise in yellow pages is the only answer we can think of.

 

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