Best thing to do with huge bottle of 1 and 2p coins? 10 November 2022 at 4:23PM in Savings & investments 65 replies 9.8K views

Eco_Miser

Bacman said:

Two thoughts - one is to take a handful of coins every time you go to a supermarket and use their self-service checkouts to dump your coins into to pay for items; second thought is to donate it to a charity for "guess how much is inside" for winner to get percentage of the contents.

Which passes the problem to the charity - only they have to count manually to determine the winner.

I support the bit at a time self-service tills method.

trevjl

I am really struggling with this "machines in supermarkets charge a hefty %" thing.
They charge for providing a service, same as anyone else. The machines will cost thousands, they have staff to go round and empty them and then they have to "bank them" as well, which is the bit you don't want to do. if you don't want to pay their charge, then bag them and bank them.
Last time I used one it came to £660, Ok so they got £60 of it, but it saved me spending hours counting it, driving into the city centre branch as local one now closed, parking, petrol, time, £60 is a bargain

eskbanker

trevjl said:

I am really struggling with this "machines in supermarkets charge a hefty %" thing.
They charge for providing a service, same as anyone else. The machines will cost thousands, they have staff to go round and empty them and then they have to "bank them" as well, which is the bit you don't want to do. if you don't want to pay their charge, then bag them and bank them.
Last time I used one it came to £660, Ok so they got £60 of it, but it saved me spending hours counting it, driving into the city centre branch as local one now closed, parking, petrol, time, £60 is a bargain

I don't think anyone is suggesting that they're not entitled to charge, but, with this being a money-saving site, it's human nature to consider alternative options that don't involved deductions - whether or not the inconvenience of free options is worth it will obviously vary according to individual circumstances.

TheBanker

Bacman said:

Two thoughts - one is to take a handful of coins every time you go to a supermarket and use their self-service checkouts to dump your coins into to pay for items; .

This is what I do - I don't take a lot, maybe 30p at a time. But I have a large jar of coins and my bank doesn't have a machine any more, so it's the easiest way to get rid of them. I don't use cash as much these days, but when I do I always take a few small coins with me so I can try to give the right money, to avoid collecting even more small coins! 

I also gave some to my little niece to use in her toy shop. I only gave her 10p but it made her day!

madlyn

I find it quite therapeutic counting coins, but maybe I'm just weird.
I would just spend some time counting into bags of £1 then take it to the bank, but be careful as my bank the nationwide only accept 5 bags at a time, so check what yours accept first.

Bacman

trevjl said:

I am really struggling with this "machines in supermarkets charge a hefty %" thing.
They charge for providing a service, same as anyone else. The machines will cost thousands, they have staff to go round and empty them and then they have to "bank them" as well, which is the bit you don't want to do. if you don't want to pay their charge, then bag them and bank them.
Last time I used one it came to £660, Ok so they got £60 of it, but it saved me spending hours counting it, driving into the city centre branch as local one now closed, parking, petrol, time, £60 is a bargain

If you pile in a handful of coins into a self-service checkout till at a supermarket, it counts them for you and you stop emptying your pocket when you've paid for the items you have! No need to count anything!

That way you don't pay 8-10% commission to a machine that is designed to sound like a gambling machine paying out, to encourage those types of users pumping more money into it to hear "the sound".

Seriously, happy to spend £60 which is a week's food bill, on a machine that goes "bang,bang,bang" while it takes a fee of your hard earned cash??

As the old saying goes, "let me have your details, I have a timeshare I can sell you"  lol

trevjl

Bacman said:

trevjl said:

I am really struggling with this "machines in supermarkets charge a hefty %" thing.
They charge for providing a service, same as anyone else. The machines will cost thousands, they have staff to go round and empty them and then they have to "bank them" as well, which is the bit you don't want to do. if you don't want to pay their charge, then bag them and bank them.
Last time I used one it came to £660, Ok so they got £60 of it, but it saved me spending hours counting it, driving into the city centre branch as local one now closed, parking, petrol, time, £60 is a bargain

If you pile in a handful of coins into a self-service checkout till at a supermarket, it counts them for you and you stop emptying your pocket when you've paid for the items you have! No need to count anything!

That way you don't pay 8-10% commission to a machine that is designed to sound like a gambling machine paying out, to encourage those types of users pumping more money into it to hear "the sound".

Seriously, happy to spend £60 which is a week's food bill, on a machine that goes "bang,bang,bang" while it takes a fee of your hard earned cash??

As the old saying goes, "let me have your details, I have a timeshare I can sell you"  lol

Thanks for your valuable input. You know nothing about me so it's rather a silly comment. 

As I said before, why shouldn't they take a fee, do you think they get the machines for nothing ?? I am not "spending" £60 on a machine, I am paying for a service which I would use, I guess about once every 5 years, especially these days with not much cash being used.
if you don't want to use it then don't but I have far more valuable things to do than sit there and count coins into a bag.

RobM99

Why accumulate £60 in coins in the first place? Bizarre.

Bacman

trevjl said: You know nothing about me so it's rather a silly comment.

I know one thing, as you've said it; you'd give a machine a 10% commission to count your coins and pay it £60 for the "service" rather than use a self-service machine at a supermarket that counts your coins to pay for items but charges 0% commission for the same service. That isn't a silly comment, it's a fact derived from your post.

t0rt0ise

Bacman said:

trevjl said: You know nothing about me so it's rather a silly comment.

I know one thing, as you've said it; you'd give a machine a 10% commission to count your coins and pay it £60 for the "service" rather than use a self-service machine at a supermarket that counts your coins to pay for items but charges 0% commission for the same service. That isn't a silly comment, it's a fact derived from your post.

None of the supermarkets round here have self service with coin machines any more. They are all card only.

I once gave a jar of coins to a woman who came to the door collecting for charity. She was really pleased with it and came back to tell me how much was in it.