Almost everyone has been ripped off by a vending machine at one time or another. You want the beverage or snack that the machine offers, put your money in, push the correct button(s), and nothing happens or you get some sort of error message on the display of the machine. While it is never pleasant when this happens and it cannot be avoided all the time, one simple action can help keep you from getting ripped off.

The best thing to do to make sure you do not get any unpleasant surprises after you put your money in the machine is to make your selection before you put the money in.

Most beverage machines have a little light by the selection that is supposed to come on when a certain flavor is sold out, but these lights do not always work. If you press the button for the beverage you want before you put your money in and that selection is sold out, the display will usually advise you of such. This can be beneficial to you because once you put your money in the machine, even though they have a button that is supposed to give you your money back, they usually will not refund your money and you will have to keep trying other selections and hope that at least one of them has something left to vend.

This problem is not as obvious for snack machines. With snack machines, you can generally physically see the product that you are about to purchase and if there is none there, you wouldn’t even consider selecting that option. However, I have come across more than one snack machine that had a product I wanted but yet when I pressed the button to select that snack, I was greeted with a message to make another selection.

If you make your selection before you put your money in and the item you wanted is not available or is likely to not work as expected, you can walk away or try a different option to decrease your chances of getting ripped off. You will still have to make the selection after you put the money in and there is still the chance you will get ripped off, but there is less chance of getting ripped off and it’s really not that much extra effort to make the selection twice (once before paying and once after) for the benefit that is received.

Another hidden benefit to this is that sometimes prices may be mislabeled (especially in snack machines) but the electronics that control the display will show you what the price will be for sure so that you don’t put in your last sixty-five cents to try and get an item that is seventy-five but mislabeled.

As a final thought, if you make a purchase from a snack machine and it does not fall all the way to the bottom for you to get it out of the machine and you have the need to shake the machine, push don’t pull. For your own safety, when you start rocking and shaking the machine, push it away from you and towards the wall. If you try to shake the machine by pulling it towards you there is the chance that you could pull it too far and it would end up landing on you and that would probably not feel good. If you push it backwards too far it will either be stopped by the wall that it is up against or it will simply fall over backwards if there is no wall, but at least you will not be hurt.