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Post by fishstyxx on Jul 16, 2017 14:54:28 GMT
For those of you with the Snap vending machine:
Do you set up prospects for trials and save their credit card info in order to easily refund them the deposit on the access card? If so then they'll be able to make purchases at your Snap vending machine. It's still unclear as to whether those prospects will be billed on the first of the month if they don't sign up or if they're still in a prospect status on the first of the month.
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Post by determined1 on Jul 17, 2017 16:42:50 GMT
Many on this site have warned that you want to limit any sort of technology which snap has anything to do with. They are extremely incompetent. There have been posts from owners who have had their Fitness On Demand systems down for 3 months with a "who cares" response from snap. It's one thing when their incompetence causes an inconvenience. It's another when it impacts you financially. This is why they should not be doing anything with billing. Your vending machine ties into revenue and billing. I've heard of owners with the snap vending system going for months on end without collecting anything on vending because of a glitch on snap's side. Members being terminated with outstanding bills because the system doesn't charge their outstanding balance. Snap rarely thinks things through or tests them. It all adds up to incompetence and not having any idea what they're doing in these areas. It would be like me suddenly deciding that we were going to service transmissions. Looks easy enough, heck I can do that. If snap ever had to deal directly with the public they wouldn't last a day.
On the machine side: I've also been to clubs and seen these snap vending machines have all sorts of mechanical problems (e.g. ice building up on the bottom, products not coming out, etc) This comes from snap buying low end products and charging high end prices.
My advice? Sell that snap vending machine and buy one with a credit card reader. You'll get a far better vending machine and you'll have one more area that you don't have to interact with snap's sh(IT) group.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Jul 18, 2017 17:16:34 GMT
A big reason I never bought into a snap machine is the product billing takes place at end of month so basically you are issuing credit all month long only to have the cc bounce at the end of the month? Like chasing another delinquency? That's crap. Combined with the price tag $4,000 or whatever it was how long would it take me to recoup that $4k. Then repairs setting you back along the way. I still have an open door cash system. Archaic as it may be, I profit more per item. I would love to have a machine in my gym, but I'm not confident I would sell enough product from it to justify the purchase.
Note: The only snap machine I seen was years ago and it had an out of order sign on it.
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Post by fishstyxx on Jul 19, 2017 18:19:40 GMT
Not to be defensive, but we started back in 2008. At that time one of the things which was attractive about Snap was the use of technology in order to improve the member experience. The Vending machine was just coming out and it sounded like a great way to make it easier for members to buy what they want without carrying cash around. Personally I never carried cash around and thought the idea would make it easier for members to make purchases and thereby increase revenues. I also had a pet peeve about clubs I used to belong to charging a lot for drinks and bars from the vending machine. We made it a point to keep the prices reasonable. What we've found is that we make about 2.5% of our total revenue per month in vending (gross, not net).
The down side is that the machine does have technical problems. The vending machine company is very nice, but has never been able to resolve the problems. In testing it all works fine. In operation it fails intermittently. Also, the software is poorly written. It isn't incorporated in a startup script and has to be run after each system reboot. Additionally only the account which runs the application can see what's been vended. These should be easy changes. I've called and emailed the company, vendovation, about making the changes, but they have no interest. Same response in making an OSX version. If it were some variant of Unix I could make the changes easily.
If we had known back in 2008 that Snap would plan on trying to develop their own software we would have never bought into their franchise. I've seen many companies try to get into areas in which they have no business and fail miserably. Writing software is one of those areas. One of the problems is that companies hire unqualified or under-qualified people to develop the system and those people really shouldn't be touching anything other than their home computers. You leave software development in the hands of companies that do nothing but software development. There's a reason good developers make $300K to $400K a year, they know what they're doing and their knowledge is spread across a wide array of companies implementing their software. Snap isn't the only fitness company that doesn't understand this. I've seen all sorts of fitness companies try to develop software which, frankly, isn't past what would be considered an alpha stage when they decide to roll it out.
What we've decided to do on the current issue is to notify all of our front desk staff not to click on the "save credit card info" checkbox when accepting a credit card for an access card deposit. We originally checked it because we thought it would make it easier to refund someone's deposit, thus improving their experience (even though they're not signing up). However, even though you click on that "save" feature there's no way to get back to that credit card data to refund them their deposit. Based on that info the checkbox should be grayed out or simply not displayed when they're a prospect. In doing so it would build the smarts into the software, and it's a pretty simply change. (If you have an inkling of knowledge of what you're doing)
Still not sure if the charges get billed if the prospect never signs up.
Other notes: We did have to replace the condenser ($800) 2 months after the warranty expired. An issue with the vending machine design is that it has a filter inside, which remarkably stays very clean. However, what we found was that the filter stays clean because on the underside of the vending machine, all the waaaaay in the back is an opening that pulls in air. It has a mesh covering on it. The air is pulled in that opening and then filtered by the internal filter. Well, that mesh opening gets covered in dust until it clogs the opening entirely. Hence the dirt never makes it to the internal filter. That external opening should have an easy to reach, replaceable filter. Instead you have to lay on your back and reached all the way in the back of the machine to clean that mesh opening. One thing we see over and over again in the club is dust. Clean it on Monday it's back on Wednesday. Someone should have looked at the design of the machine and rejected it because it's a nad design for a gym environment. Also, I think it was $8K, but I also remember paying more for things I wish I never bought. Maybe it's my way of keeping myself from making the same mistake again.
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