[masraum]

Originally Posted by legion

The apartment I had in college had a coin-operated washer and dryer on each floor.

The apartment company failed to empty coins from the machines the entire school year. By late winter, the quarters had started to build up inside the machine to the point that you really had to work the coin tray that slid back and forth to displace some quarters to be able to get a wash or dry. I called the apartment company multiple times (as did a few other people in the building) asking them to empty coins out of the machines but nothing ever happened.

Then one day in the early spring, I put my quarters in and no amount of jiggling the coin tray or hitting the machine would let the coin tray slide all the way in to activate the wash. I desperately needed clean clothes for work the next day and the machine had eaten $1.50 that I didn't really have the funds to replace. So I decided I would try to pull the coin tray back out to get my money so that I could go to a (more expensive) laundromat. So I pulled on the tray. I pulled hard. I pulled harder. Eventually I had both hands on the lip of the coin tray and my feet against the machine and pulled with all my might. Something metal snapped in the machine.

It turns out what had broke was the lock on the door to the coin holding area, which I cleaned out to allowed the coin tray to slide back and forth again. There must have been $100 in quarters in there. Also inside the door I could see the switch that the coin tray would hit when laden with quarters. I got free washes for the rest of the semester and I told everyone in the building about it. A couple of weeks later the drier had finally gotten so jammed full of coins that it would no longer work either. I repeated that procedure on the drier.

We had crap machines in the dorms. .75 per "ticket" which was a small plastic ticket that had circuits printed on it. The drier with a normal size load (not some moron's "how much stuff can I get in here" load) would often take 4-5 tickets to get things like underwear and socks or shirts dry, and jeans or towels, forget it, never dry. I felt like I was getting gouged. I eventually figured out how to open the door on the side of the washer and discovered that it would melt the tickets on one corner so they'd be too fat to go back through. But I also discovered that you could shave that corner and stick them in with the other end first since they were symmetric. I helped out some other folks on my floor. One guy ended up reporting me to the RA. I was on probation for the rest of the semester and had to pay $150. I'm certain that I saved far more than that over the course of the period before I was turned in.