If you have a medium sized route and some are in public places, there might be visits from unexpected guests especially during the beginning of the summer season. I don’t know why a lot of public break in attempts are during the summer season which was observed by me doing the vending machine business.
In any case if one of your vending machines was broken into there are several factors to consider and what kind of expenditure will incur.
Normally according to my experience there will be locks that are drilled,
some drilled holes in front of your vending machine and drilled holes at the side of the vending machine. The proper steps to do is try to obtain a copy of the security video if there is at the premises and report it to the police and normally you get a case file number. For me, this is useless because the police never catch the thief and the case number just gets buried and lost and whenever you are following up the case the number given to you as always replied by voice mail which you leave lots of messages and it seems that your calls never get returned.
Actually I asked a police in person on the street and told him that my machine is broken into and he just replied that the best way is to secure it or simply just change the machine, I guess the case is too small that it just makes no sense in catching the thief which is normally a homeless person or a person who is unemployed and getting government welfare.
I didn’t assume about the status of the person, it was being told by me from the managers of various public buildings that those are the ones that likes to steal and break into anything just to get some money even thou it is under $100 dollars.
Whenever im in downtown and the east side I see a lot of them wandering around and at times using their flashlights
to see what is inside the car or van and I was shocked one time while im unloading my products to the dolly I saw a person that breaks the window of a car parked at homer st in downtown in broad daylight and took out a backpack. Vehicles that are parked on the street in downtown actually is not safe anymore since there are lots of people wandering around trying to get their hands on something to sell or profit, since im always on the street whenever I have a close encounter with them, I simply just give some chips and occasionally some pop and just tell them to watch my van and this works for me.
Because I go to those locations at least 2 to 3 times a week and it is always the same set and group of people plying on the streets.
In case if your machine gets broken into then you have to prepare things for replacement such as : locks, glass in case it gets smashed, coin mech in case it was forcibly taken out, cash box, bill acceptor stack. If this happens then at first you will get paranoid and some sleepless night before you get back into that location again and wishing that it won’t happen again. But in serious cases the machine is damaged and pried by a steel bar then you have t come up with a high security snack machine
Whenever my machine gets broken into you have to have some contingency capital resources to cover the repairs
and in some cases to have your flimsy snack machine switch to a newer models with cover hasps and puck locks, it not only those that you have to spend but also the $100 moving fee to have your machine taken out and another $100 to have another machine getting in. And you will set up another time to set up the machine in setting up the prices and populate it with products
But if the location is not performing well and if you don’t get monetary reward or get a decent profit on frequent visits then you are better off to just remove the machine on that location to avoid problems, annoying calls and headaches which will result into better sleep for you and less worrying.
Most of the locations according to my experience that are broken into are very high performing and high volume traffic which would justify you into spending repairs and adding extra security measures, even to a point in swapping out the vandalized machine into a decent snack machine with protective security locks and hasps.
The locations which my machines are broken into is a learning experience for me,
it that was good thing for me that it happened so that I can gain more experience on dealing this kind of situations and you would know which security hasps and locks to put if you have a new public location.
Conclusion, the factors that get affected when your machine is broken into are the following:
- coin mechanism replacement
- bill validator replacement
- lock replacement
- adding PUCK LOCK security hasps
- glass replacement
- moving out expenses
- moving in expenses
- trade in value of vandalized machine in the worst case scenario
- time factor in repairs and setting up
My recommendation is when you have a new public location, it would be wise to install the PUCK LOCK system in advance to avoid these problems, the PUCK LOCK system would cost around $150 to $180 including labor.
