Customer Discounts and Freebees

[Adamski]

To All,

How about some feedback on your customer discounts and freebees. What are you doing right now? What have you done in the past that you liked?

Larry /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[Howard]

My philosophy is that we should not discount per se as our business is very different than that of a normal merchant. People will not stock up or buy more if we discount our service. Its not like they save up dirty clothing, or will come wash clothing twice because we are running a sale.

That said the only "discount" I offer to self-service customers is our frequent washer program. For every 15 washes done on the SAME card (yes we are card operated) they earn a free double wash. I do this to motivate them to use only one card per customer and prevent them from throwing away a card when it has a zero balance. It works well and it creates customer loyalty.

I believe this approach makes much more sense than what some do where they offer a 10% or 20% cash bonus when customers deposit $20 or more. In my mind all that does is effectively discounts all your prices by 10% or 20% and builds no loyalty.

I do offer periodic wash and fold promotions via my website. That business is more a discretionary spend and "sales" sometimes bring in incremental business.

[vernonmaytag]

We have a frequent washer and WDF punch card. 12 loads and next is free. Both are very popular.

We also have 20% discount on Comfortor and WDF cards that we occasionally hand out at our discretion.

[petefritz]

I do not discount anything. I have one mat that has a store down the street is offering 1 cent dry. He has satilite TV and a nicer store. Mine does not even have A/C, kind of dumpy but new machines. I am phase 2 of the remodel, so will be bright and nice in a few months, with a/c and new store front, though no wi fi or statilite TV.. My store always has more cars then his. So that means he is discounting his profits away to existing customers. Not to smart.

[DaveLevenson]

We offer free Wi-Fi access to the Internet. A small number of our customers regularly bring their lap-top computers and make use of this service while waiting for their laundry. Several of these have said they started coming to our store when a friend or co-worker told them we offered it.

Because I already use the Internet connection for remote video surveillance, and for the credit-card terminal, the incremental on-going cost of offering Wi-Fi is zero. The one-time cost to install it was about $20 (the difference between the prices of a router with and without the built-in Wi-Fi feature).

(I also keep a PC in the back room for my own use...often use it to read this board!)

[SuperWashnDry]

How do you keep the customer from hole punching their own card? Do you have specialty punches, or do you have speciatly rubber stamps, like company name or logo? Thanks

[aromaz]

From experience I can say you must use unique punch's. I once caught a customer sitting in her car punching her own card. There are literally thousands of hole designs available. You can buy them cheap on eBay. Search "Conductor punch"

[MGS]

We have been in business for 2.5 years and have yet to offer any kind of discount or freebie. We offer more large capacity machines than the competitors, new machines which always work, a bright clean store, and friendly attendants. This has been enough so far, as business has nearly doubled since we bought the store.