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Went to the Coinstar machine last night. Machine kept saying "My you have a lot of coins! Please wait while we catch up." I must have been standing at that machine for a good 30 minutes. All in all I think it was only about $140 in pennies. The fees are a ripoff but they offer gift cards to the grocery store for no fee for turning in so I get the cards. Figure I'm going to spend a few hundred bucks a month on groceries anyway lighten the load on the bank.

Thats nice it has a grocery store option. They are slow as heck though. I use one once and awhile, but the only gift certificate option that helps me is an amazon or lowe's card. good luck

Yep, CS is a slow machine, and dumping anything over 50 face is painful. But I do it every once in awhile just to reload my Starbucks card and do one less trip to TD bank. You're lucky they have the grocery option on your CS. If you have a TD bank near you, their counters are free with a 100 buck account, and their machine counts almost as fast as you can dump; only limit is that you will fill the bags and have to wait for someone to reload them.

If the machine is at a grocery store do they usually have a gift card option for that store?

Been thinking about checking it out but haven't been to the grocery store for a while.

Wife takes care of that stuff

So what happens when the coin star fills up and you are not finished.? Who empties it?

Double3 wrote:If the machine is at a grocery store do they usually have a gift card option for that store?

Been thinking about checking it out but haven't been to the grocery store for a while.

Wife takes care of that stuff

Not at any of the stores here.

I wish they had the grocery store option, but they don't in Atlanta. They have machines in Kroger and Food Lion, but no grocery gift card option.

In my area, Chicago, most of the Coinstars we have are in Jewel Grocery stores. I'm pretty sure all the Jewels in my area have the gift card option.

I think it's pretty handy. Even though the machine is slow there's no fee, lightens the load on the bank and I figure I'm going to spend a few hundred on groceries a month and another hundred on smokes so figure that's an easy $300 or $400 a month I can avoid bringing to the bank.

I just found out a Chase near me has a lobby machine, problem is my buddy works at the bnak and he's my pickup bank so even though I could pickup and dump there b/c of that I don't want to be a drain on the bank so figure I'll find another place to dump. Im sure a few other chase branches have lobby counters around here.

Double3 wrote:If the machine is at a grocery store do they usually have a gift card option for that store?

Been thinking about checking it out but haven't been to the grocery store for a while.

Wife takes care of that stuff

It varies from store-to-store. At the WalMart grocery store, the CoinStar only has the option for an iTunes gift card. At the Smith's grocery store, it has a bunch of options, but not for the actual store (also doesn't have one of my favorites: Amazon). At the Albertson's grocery store by my house, it just added the option for an Albertson's gift card about a month ago (been using that one on-and-off for about 2 years).

In the end, you just have to check (you don’t have to dump coins to see what gift cards are available). Whenever I spot a CoinStar close to home, I will go through the gift card options to see what it has available.

aev wrote:So what happens when the coin star fills up and you are not finished.? Who empties it?

it will say sorry & dump anything in the machine to the reject drop and ur left to scoop everything out of top bin etc. then u wait till the coinstar guy comes out again.

Wow a grocery store gc? That would be awesome!!!!!

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RichardPenny43 wrote:I dumped $160 at CS in a Jewel yesterday, it took about an hour. Some woman said i was "one of those penny hoarders she's read about" another woman said (under her breath)" CS is rip off @ 9%"

Penny hoarders? I ain't heard about no penny hoarders.

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Yeah my coinstar is pretty good in terms of gift cared options. I think we have Jewel Grocery Stores, CVS, Amazon.Com, Itunes, Gap, Toys R Us and probably 5-6 others as well.

I love Amazon but at the same time taking an amazon gift card would probably make me buy something I otherwise wouldn't so not really saving money there by doing coinstar instead of bank. Groceries however i'd be buying anyway as well as smokes so figure that's free money or a free dump basically.

I use CS on occasion. The zinc from 3 boxes is usually what I dump (5500 -5800 zincs). It does take awhile. I've done it enough to not feed the machine too fast & get the dreaded "my you have alot of coins, please wait while we catch up" message.
It seems to go a little faster that way.
I love the Lowes, Amazon and JCpenney e-cert for no fee.

I was just checking the http://www.coinstar.com website this evening to find out more about the gift card option. You can search for CS locations on their web site and see which gift cards are available at each location. I found out that Albertson's in my town includes their own gift card as on option for the machine in their grocery store. None of the other CS machines or grocery stores around were that generous. Oh, and forget about the CS machine at the local WalMart. They only have the gift card for iTunes and some online game site.

Used the coinstar for the first time today.

$53.25. Took 10-15 min.

I got an amazon gift card cause I need to buy something from there anyway. I see on the site that Kroger gift cards may be coming soon!

Double3 wrote:Used the coinstar for the first time today.

$53.25. Took 10-15 min.

I got an amazon gift card cause I need to buy something from there anyway. I see on the site that Kroger gift cards may be coming soon!

It's not bad for a dump that is 50-60 bucks or less. Try $100 and you'll be less patient, especially vs a high-speed machine that can eat $100 in 5 minutes.

But I still use CS for small dumps, especially to load my starbucks card, since they have a reload feature for that on the CS near me.

I used a coinstar tonight, at my local Acme grocery store. I brought a big thing of zincolns, and also threw in my little jar of regular change, it seemed like the little *ding* wow you have a lot of coins, please wait while we catch up thing happened about 30x. I think the whole dump took about 30mins, walked out with $147.50. I laughed when I looked up at the screen that tells you how many of each coin it has counted and it said 200some quarters and 8000some pennies. It is a downright slow machine. I did find a 5 euro cent coins, a parking token, and a chuckie cheese token though, bonus!

If you use the coinstar and load it onto greendot card do they still charge the 9.8%? cuz I have a greendot prepaid card that I kinda hate, but not as much as carting $100 in pennies around.

I wonder what would happen if you sprayed them down with WD-40.

The lowes gift option is something I use for business anyway.

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RichardPenny43 wrote:Has anyone here seen on the CS web site the guy from AL who holds the record for most pennies processed, over $13,000? I wonder if he is a RC member.

Nope, he can't be a member. No member here is stupid enough to run $13k through a Coinstar. That would take about 52 hours to run.