To start I created a MyCoinstar account with a dedicated email account. Took a while to get the confirmation email (about 10 minutes), and when it finally arrived it was in the spam folder. Mind you this is a brand new, dedicated email address. Coinstar email must be flagged as spam a lot by other Gmail users if it landed there on a fresh account.
The web interface is actually quite attractive, though there are a lot less no-fee gift cards available than I thought. The machine locator lists the available gift cards, and the transaction history will help me keep track of the machines I have visited. For my evaluation I will only cash in zincs that are the byproduct of my penny hand-sorting.
While the gift cards are "no fee" there is technically a fee that I will suffer. My credit card gives me 1% back on all purchase with 3% cash back at grocery stores. If I get a grocery store gift card, I am missing the opportunity to save 3%. If I get an Amazon gift card I miss 1% savings and purchase protection (though Amazon has always been wonderful about lost/wrong packages). I may just take a dollar or two to the machines in my area every once in a while, hoping the reject tray will make up for the lost cash back.
The other opportunity for Coinstar to make up for the lost cash back is through their "Special Offers." Nothing there yet for me, but perhaps something will populate when I become a regular user.
Time to begin! Let's see how this goes:
========== UPDATE 1 ==========
Went to use the Coinstar and realized that a gift card for the grocery store was not an option. Oh well, I'll get an Amazon card instead. There is a $5 minimum for an Amazon card, and I only brought 100 pennies to test. Grrr.On the plus side, I found a 2008 Canadian dime in the reject tray. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. Guess I'll save it with any other Canadians I find and eventually exchange them somewhere.
Next time I'll bring $6 in counted pennies to test the machine.
========== UPDATE 2 ==========
Brought six dollars to the Coinstar this time and all went relatively well. The common theme, however, was delay.
Once again there was not an option for grocery store gift card, so I went with Amazon. Fed the 600 pennies in the machine and it took considerably longer than a TD Bank machine. The Coinstar counted 599 of 600 coins, as one nasty green penny was rejected. Very happy to see an accurate count.
After all the coins were counted it took about three minutes for the Amazon gift code to print out; seemed so much longer as I stood lonely in the grocery store. The code redeemed with no problem.
About 30 minutes later I checked MyCoinstar and did not see any recorded activity. Checked again before bed a couple of hours later, still nothing. It wasn't until the next morning (about eight hours after counting) that the activity showed up. So anywhere between two and eight hours before any transaction data:
The most disappointing aspect was the limited information in Transaction History. The location is only listed as the generic name of the store; no indication for which of the several ShopRites in my area was responsible for the transaction:
One thing that I did notice is that this Coinstar machine and the one I visited previously (but did not use) only offered printout receipt gift codes, no physical gift cards. Perhaps if I can find a location that gives out physical gift cards I will find that grocery store gift cards are available from Coinstar.
