Vending Machine Business Scam Making a Comeback

November 16, 2007 By

If you open up your local newspaper chances, open up to the classifieds and take a look in the employment section, you’ll see advertisements for business opportunities telling you that you can earn hundreds of dollars per day. These advertisements are always very vague and offer little details about what the actual business opportunity is. If you were to answer such a solicitation, chances are you would be pitched one of my questionable business opportunities. About a decade ago many of these hucksters were pitching part-time vending machine businesses with high-upfront cost and little opportunity for success and now that scam is making a comeback.

The way this particular business scam works is that the person pitching the scam will tell you that they have found a number of large companies that need vending machines installed and serviced on a weekly basis. They’ll tell you that if you buy the machines, the company will place them for you and you’ll make anywhere from $500 to $1000 every day! Most of the machines are never placed in businesses and the numbers they tell you are much higher than you’ll actually receive.

Consumer advocate Clark Howard recently discussed this very issue on his radio show and told the story of an individual who bought 60 of these vending machines from a company. He ended up paying $15,000 for these machines and now they’re sitting in his garage. When he was running the business he made less than $100 per week.

It might be a bit of a stretch to call this a scam, since there are many companies that fill vending machines and do make a legitimate profit from it, but if you think that you’re going to make hundreds of dollars a week by doing very little work filling vending machines, you’re sadly mistaken. The numbers they provide you are wholly unrealistic. You’re likely paying a very marked up price for the vending machines you are purchasing as well, so at best it’s a rip-off.

If you would like to start a real vending machine business, you can purchase them one at a time from a vendor such as Cost Co wholesale and see how each machine does. You can purchase the candy wholesale from Cost Co or another wholesaler. You can move and relocate each machine to an optimal position and as you make money you can use your revenue to purchase additional machines. Start off small with a few machines and go from there if you’re successful. Don’t make a huge investment in vending machines right away, there’s no way you’ll find good locations for all of them off the bat.

There are legitimate opportunities in the vending machine business, but if some company pitches you an opportunity to buy machines that they’ll place for you and turn into a cash cow, just say no.

If you are looking to start a business of any kind find out if there is a business credit card to suit your needs. Credit cards can be extremely useful for businesses but like with personal credit cards one must be responsible or interest fees will accrue and become costly.

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