For the longest time, I'd use a 1 Euro coin to buy a soda from the soda machine for 80 centimes and wait for my 20 centimes worth of change. Not once did I ever get my change. It was a minor annoyance - I assumed the machine was broken. After a while, as Paris came to annoy me in other ways, I looked for an explanation so I asked a French person. "You have to use your key." Huh-what? Well, there is a little hole in the machine, as shown below.
Here's how it works - it's pure un-genius. You pay 4 Euros to buy this little yellow plastic "key." You can then put the key in the slot and pay for your sodas for exactly 80 centimes.
But wait, here's the catch - first you have to put money on your key. How do you do that? You insert the key into the candy machine (not the soda machine) and put coins in to load money onto the key. So, you're now down 4 Euros and have used coins to load money onto the key. THEN you can go use the key to buy a soda.... This sign says essentially "you can load up your key here or you can pay for your stuff with "exact change." Fascinatingly inefficient and wasteful. Anyone got any idea why you would put such a system in place?
3 comments:
To get more money out of ignorant Americans would be my guess.
Mach - ummm, no, this is a machine inside a French company...
And you are an American, who was losing his money inside this French company are you not? Being that I'm sure this isn't the only machine of it's nature, I'm sure many other Americans across France are doing the same thing every day. At least, I would really hope to think you aren't the only one...
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