
The Cost of Laundry - craigkerstiens
http://maxbeatty.com.s126963.gridserver.com/?p=1270
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matdwyer
I could see an app in this space working. I used to work in a laundry place
when I was a kid, and the quarters thing was certainly annoying (and some
machines didn't work all the times, etc). The owners don't particularly like
filling/depositing them, etc.

Big problems are a) Adoption (selling the system to SO many independent shops.
If you can get in with big REIT companies then that's easy, but 90% of those
have smart cards anyway b) Outside of the the super high rent areas (New York,
San Fran, etc) most people that use laundry mats are lower income, who may not
have smart phones and/or credit cards.

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hammock
Probably the biggest issue off the top of my head is that if you pay a monthly
fee for laundry service, and the machines break, the tenants are losing money
every second that ticks by and the machines are broken. Another way of looking
at is is that the landlord all of a sudden has a lot more pressure to deal
with when one of his machines break.

Contrast that to the per-use fee structure, in which case you don't lose any
money when you go down to the laundry room and see the machines are broken -
you haven't put your money in the machine yet.

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kanadik
My tenants would run whole loads for a single pair of socks if there was no
per-load cost. The charge is a barrier to waste. I hate counting quarters,
though... I'd welcome a better payment system.

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dalke
An alternate system is to pre-book the time. There are a number of ways to
work out the mechanics, but the simplest is a piece of paper with time slots
for the month. You write your name in the time slot, and can wash during that
time. (Better is if the dryer reservation is one hour delayed from the washer
reservation.)

It can be that someone frequently over-reserves wash periods. Here's a picture
of a more complicated solution involving physical locks
[http://askersundsflickan.blogg.se/images/2011/dsc05064_13323...](http://askersundsflickan.blogg.se/images/2011/dsc05064_133236936.jpg)
. You can only reserve a time with a lock, and you only have one lock.

I have a friend who moved to Switzerland. He says that in his building your
laundry times are pre-booked for the entire year. Don't miss your wash day!

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kanadik
Actually yeah I did see this done in Sweden as well but didn't think of it
before. I think it creates a sense of 'shared limited resource' which IMO is
more widely understood in Europe than NA.

An app for managing access to community/shared resources? Meeting rooms, ice
rinks, laundry, coop cars, ??

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dfreidin
I'm surprised this isn't more common, but at my apartment complex the machines
are all payed by card. They give you a special card for the machines, and you
can put money on it whenever you want. It was like this at college too, but
with your student ID card. The machines at college also had slots for
quarters, but I only ever used that when I forgot to put more money on my
card.

