Complicating simplicity

For ages, I've had a bottle of low-value coins accumulating in the corner of my living room. Since banks tend to be in inconvient spots such as city centers, the coins would build up and never get used.

Which is why I was happy to see a "Coinstar" machine turn up at my local supermarket. You chuck in a load of coins (like that big bottle full of pennies you've been collecting) and it will give you a voucher which can be exchanged for cash of more convient form. (After taking it's 7.5% fee.)

The 7.5% fee worked out at £3 (ish). That's cheaper than the car park fees I would have had to pay if I went to a city center bank.

So, I turned up on a Saturday, and someone was already trying to use it. She had the tray full of coins and was attempting to follow the on-screen instructions but the tray wouldn't open.

I looked at the screen, and it said that this was a demonstration, just a nice animation showing what happens. "She's got into this demo mode by mistake.", I thought to myself.

Being the ever helpful bunny, I stepped in to help out. I pointed out that she was in a demonstration mode and I suggested that she press the "back up" button and start again. After backing up a couple of times, the screen showed a message, "Have you use a Coinstar before?"

Truthfully, she pressed "No", and it was back into demo mode, and the tray still didn't work.

Having now concluded that I couldn't work out what was going wrong either, she went off to get one of the "Happy to help" people that Asda have deployed. Unfortunately, he didn't know the machine either, finding himself in the demo mode.

"Look, pressing 'No' to that question put you into the demo mode where the tray doesn't work. Press 'Yes' and it should work."
"But I've not used it before."

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, two Happy-to-helpers, along with a brief journey where "Give to charity" was selected by accident, the machine finally started doing the job. Shove all the coins in, press a button and pick up the printed voucher and rejected coins. One of the happy-to-helpers who had worked it out remained behind to operate this difficult machine.

When you actually come to use the machine without the demo, the computer screen shows the same animations as the demo. I have to ask, what was the point of the demo mode?

Remove the demo, and I the only scope I can see for mistakes is going down the give-to-charity route. From there, the only thing you can do is select which charity you want by typing in a four digit code listed, or press the "Back up" button.

As an epilogue, I took my second bottle of coins to a different branch which also had a Coinstar machine. It had an "Out of order" sign, yet it looked in working order. Screen was on, try was moving. I have to wonder if the happy-to-helper there got stuck in demo mode and decided it was broken.