4 replies to this topic

[Michaeljp86]

Ive been away from home for 3 months in coast guard training. I called my dad last night and hes been keeping a eye on my pop machine. Its at a apartment building and a guy who lives there said one night some guy walked by his door. He went to check it out and this guy had a big pry bar and was looking at the back of the machine. He asked him what he was doing and he said he forgot his money and he walked off.

The guy with the crowbar is the crackhead son of a woman who lives there. Hes been in trouble with the police a billion times.

Is there some kind of camera I could put in these machines? Id hate to get my machines messed up. I doubt they could get into one but Im sure theyed mess one up trying to get in.

[H4UV]

I've had similar theft problems before, and have come fairly close to installing security cameras in obscure places to monitor the trouble. Thankfully, the problems have always been resolved in those cases, so I didn't have to take such measures. I don't know what kind of camera you could put on the machine, but you could stick a regular security camera in a corner on the ceiling or something. The camera would be the least inexpensive part. There are some cables you will need, and you will probably need a DVR recorder to plug the camera into.

[Michaeljp86]

Seems like a motion camera would work good, if you got a alot of pictures of some guy around your machine with tools then you got him. Seems like a dvr may record over it if you didnt find out right away.

[RJT]

Here is your problem. First a camera only takes pictures or captures video of someone breaking into the machine. If he is "known" in the area then you might can have the police arrest him. If not you got pics of someone the police have to identify before they can even arrest them. How much effort do you think the police are going to make trying to identify some guy that broke into a drink machine? They are not putting the “Coke Bandit” on the 6:00 news....

Then if you do get an arrest you are going to be tied up in court back and fourth for months. Then lets say they find him guilty. Then what? It is VERY hard to get your restitution from them. Then even if you do you still have a tore up machine. In the end it is not worth catching them it is much more productive to prevent it. I know because I have sat in court a few times and dealt with this.

I suggest a couple options.

You can get a custom metal cage for the machine. You can look on the internet for audible alarms like on a car. Or they have motion alarms that call a phone when they go off. For a stand alone drink machine I suggest the cage. You can also put decals on the machine that say it has an alarm when it really doesn’t. You can also mount a fake camera near by that can be seen once they see the decal and start looking around.

If it were me I would do a cage, decals and a fake camera. However, I would only do this if the amount of revenue justified it. I don’t do low volume high risk accounts to avoid this potential problem.

Thank you for your service and good luck with your vending.

[Michaeljp86]

RJT, I know what you mean about going to court. Im not near any big city so the police normally know all the trouble makers so a picture would work. But like you said you probably would never see any money. I know a guy who had a duplex that we wired up. Someone went in and stole all the wire for scrap. The cops got the guy and he went to jail for 30 days and he owes the home owner $10,000. He doesn't have the money so the courthouse is going to take the money out of his paycheck. But since he has no job and probably never will because hes a thief the home owner will probably never get his money.