Fruit Machine Chat

Hi,
After years of reading and enjoying the various comments on here,I've finally decided to post something.It could well be the most mundane first post ever but here goes: Since,in my experience,machines are much less likely to accept 5p and 10p coins than reject them,is it sensible to have cash prizes in games such as Family Guy,Pointless and The Chase (all quite good games in my opinion as it happens).Is this not something else that's going to irritate the casual punter when he can't top up 40p or whatever to have another game?
Oh,and while I'm going,the fact that any fraction of a pound won goes into the credits is annoying too,like the other day when I'd been playing for a bit and at one point had £1.25 worth of credits despite only putting 50p in in the first place.
Ok,there you go,I'll try and be more interesting next time.

Ok,perhaps I should have read through that before posting it.Please insert the words 'where that's possible' after 'cash prizes'.I'll get the hang of this soon.

waited a couple of wks for this!

No,I'm ploughing on regardless on the theme of difficulty of getting coins in the machines.I was in a pub the other night and while I was there,four different groups of people attempted to put some money in without success.Perhaps it might be worth fixing the coin mechanisms so that doesn't happen? Given that's happening from time to time in pubs all over the country,that's a fair amount of money being missed out on.

I have long thought that the coin acceptance mechanisms on quiz machines are the single most unreliable type of mechanical/electronic device I encounter anywhere in my life. There is nowhere else that I would tolerate anything like the same failure rate, and you do have to wonder what proportion of potential revenue is lost through their poor quality, both at a micro level (individual coins not being accepted) up to the macro level (people just giving up trying to get them to work at all). I would estimate that Paragons, which are now pretty much the only cabinet left worth playing, fail to accept coins in something like 5-10% of cases. The issue is usually fixed by switching them off and on again but that of course relies on the plug socket being accessible.

However, here are three quick tips:

- Paragons will sometimes still accept a note even when the coin slot is refusing to function (so it's worth always keeping a note or two handy)

- there is a particular problem with the most recent designs of low denomination silver coins (5p and 10p) - these are virtually always rejected, but the older designs of the same coins are usually OK so again it's worthwhile deliberately putting those aside for use in playing machines

- on an off-topic note, as a newbie you may not have realised that you can edit your own posts on here, so if you realise there is something you want to add, change or remove from a post, you can do that rather than posting a correction

I hope this helps!

The newer 5p and 10p coins are an ache to the balls in terms of using them in machines. The mech has to be trained to accept them alongside the older variants. I recently found a Bar-x that was taking the new 10p and counting it as 50p. Old 10ps were still counted at just 10p. A lot of AWP kit still rejects new 10ps, so given the neglect in SWP land you really do need a bag of older 10ps for those youtube.com/watch?v=Z6OeQtnultc pesky part credits.

Thank you JG and Nil - you make the point I was trying to make somewhat better than I managed.Thinking about it,the machine operators presumably know about the problems with coin acceptance and the associated loss of revenue.I hope the reason that they don't seem to be doing anything about isn't because they've decided not to spend any more money on the maintenance of quiz machines,as they're going to be phased out.

Many years ago, there was a prototype Mars coin mech that was geared up to accept 1p and 2p as well as silver. Then again machines were 10p/20p a play.

Does seem odd that quiz machines use a lower quality mechanism than fruits.

muddle wrote:I hope the reason that they don't seem to be doing anything about isn't because they've decided not to spend any more money on the maintenance of quiz machines,as they're going to be phased out.

Sadly that is to a large degree the correct answer. They don't take enough in many locations to make the operators feel regular maintenance, or even just the quick fixing of known problems, worthwhile, with the obvious result that the badly maintained machines do not take as much money as they might do, and in the end the more you deter people from playing, the more that will be the case. It's not exactly rocket science, is it?

A similar point applies to collecting winnings of more than a few quid, albeit that doesn't directly affect Joe Public most of the time - the level of reliability of payouts is just appalling. Again, the machine operators do not consider it worth their while to do anything about it, and at least one major operating company (Sceptre) has in fact had a DELIBERATE policy of restricting the money available to pay out in winnings, irrespective of the amount a particular machine may have taken.

The last point is still valid Im afraid , good to bring it up the shysters.
But having said that the other operators do tend to be scrupulous and must keep to the manufacturers guidelines as the non payouts of these companies is dwarfed by the aforementioned. Been having trouble with the old silent countdowns with gamesnets recently but Im sure that is not caused by nefarious policies just shite software.

One thing I've noticed over the last few months is quite a few Paragons don't accept £1 coins! This is obviously disastrous for them. I've usually gone out of my way to get there so I'm willing to try 50ps (which is usually the answer) but Joe Public's just gonna think it's knackered.

the new 10p coins are made of steel so are slightly thicker than the older ones (they are also attracted by a magnetic force). so this is probably why the acceptors refuse them. as for rejecting £1 coins, that is a spectacular own-goal.