Stealing Vending Machine
Right. Again I lost a coin to a machine. And it wasn't even a gambling one. It was one of those regular coffee vending machines you find in office buildings all over the world. One of those machines that give not very good coffee in exchange for some coins. We have several in our building, where roughly 600 people work. The machines are exploited by an unknown company. At least, unknown to the users. There is no contact information for the owner of the machines. At least not visible. Normally, I use one of those chip-keys. You plug it in, throw some cash in the machine, and it adds to your balance. Then you can use the balance to buy the coffee. Nice technology, but... it doesn't always work as expected. About 4 times in an 19 month period, it failed to add a coin to the balance. And I did not get the coin back. In total I probably lost the not schocking amount of 3 Euro. Small enough not to be bothered. Until you start doing the math, with some assumptions of course.
So, say I've lost about 2,50 EUR in a year's time. And assume that I am not alone, but that this happens to roughly 50 percent of potential machine users (600 in the building, meaning 300 that have a similar experience). For our building, that means 300 x 2,50 = 750 Euro per year. Then assume this nameless company has roughly 100 similar clients, not unimaginable in the Paris/Ile-de-France area. That means 100 x 750 = 75.000 Euro per year of pure extra income.
Or am I just being paranoid?
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