On Tuesday 29 October 2013 10:03 Huge wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 2013-10-29, Tim Watts wrote:
On Tuesday 29 October 2013 09:56 Huge wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 2013-10-29, Tim Watts wrote:
On Tuesday 29 October 2013 09:27 Mike Tomlinson wrote in uk.d-i-y:

In article , polygonum
writes

The thing that got me about Coinstar was that they offer to send the
money to a charity. And still charge almost exactly the same amount.

How do you think they pay for the machines, the staff to service and
empty them, and the rent payable to the store?


The store could cover those costs (and own the machine) to increase
footfall which is an accepted marketing technique.

They *could*, but why should they?

Which bit of "increase footfall" passed you by?

Supermarkets are not stupid. If they thought they would make more money
by offering free coin counting, they would.



Or it just hasn't occurred to them yet.

These are the people who will have special offers selling below cost[1] on
the basis that once in the door, the customer is likely to do a load of
other shopping at the same time, leading to a net profit increase.

[1] I knew someone who worked for ASDA once. Apparantly, they make as much
profit investing their cash float[2] as they do in "honest profit".

[2] The float that occurs due to the customer paying on the spot, but the
suppliers being on 3 mont, 6 month or longer settlement terms.

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