I had some stuff I wanted to get done in Lincoln, and though Lloyd wanted to wait until Sunday, I made him shower at 2 o’clock and go with me. Good thing I did, too, since I needed his Stern Face dealing with the CoinStar fiasco.
CoinStar machines have a great deal going on now – if you exchange $40 in change for a gift certificate (to Lowe’s, iTunes, Amazon, or some others) there is no processing fee and you get an additional $10 on your gift certificate! Free money – that’s a no-brainer.
I went to the CoinStar website to find a machine in Lincoln that processes gift certificates. (Some locations only give vouchers.) There was one at a grocery store across from the tree hugger store, so there we went. We selected an Amazon gift certificate, since it can be used for many things.
Then: dump, dump, dump, count, count, count.
We could hear a modem inside the machine and laughed at its ancient sound. We weren’t laughing when this happened, though.
No warning, no ‘do over’ button – just BAM! They kept my money after charging 8.9%!! Holy Mechanical Robbery, Batman! I came here for $125 dollars, not $95!! We went to customer service, where the Young Manager Girl told us, “Yeah, that one doesn’t give out gift certificates.”
Enter Stern Lloyd, who was remarkably calm, yet scary: “That’s not what the screen on the machine says.”
YMG, “Well, that’s all we can do. You can call CoinStar customer service.”
SL, in his deadly calm voice, “Would you call them for me?” (I think his eyes might have turned all-black then.)
YMG pales and goes to the phone.
Meanwhile I am dying and listening to my LOUD heart trying to pummel its way out of my chest. (I hate conflict.)
Long, 40-minute story short, they called CoinStar and got it fixed. The store gave us our $95, and we’ll have $19 on credit at Amazon. I thanked the girl for her help, and she seemed to fear and hate Lloyd a little less.
Couple of pointers: 1. If you are going to cash in change at a machine that works, you’ll only get the extra $10 for any amount over $40 you put in. If you have $80, run it through in two batches so each batch will get the bonus. 2. Don’t go to SunMart on South Street in Lincoln.