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Comment by bunkat | Hacker News Reader

If somebody told you to mail them $13.50 and they will mail you back $10, you would think they were crazy. But in today's world this is a valid idea for a startup?

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I love that the justification is that places won't make change. Three foolproof steps to successfully obtaining change from a convenience store (clerks hate him!): (a) make a purchase, (b) pay with a $20, (c) ask for a roll back instead of the $10 and the clerk will drop one out of the safe for you.

When 30 seconds of your time exceeds $7 in value, implying you make $7 million per year, buy a washer.

EDIT: Before you start relying on this shit, heed the founder's subtle hint that he's not going to operate this business for very long: https://twitter.com/calebrown/status/479814086537281536

Personally, my going rate is about a quarter per roll, up to a dollar depending on which clothes are now my limiting factor and how badly I need them. (Two dimes buys a roll at my local grocer, which seems like a tolerable fee for their inconvenience.)

Now, if you want to be galled by the price, perhaps comparing it to the US Mint would help? I reckon the parent service is charging just about a third to half of what the mint charges for collector's grade coins [1] (depending on shipping). I think that's a fairly unflattering comparison. Even though I have some anxiety about asking a store clerk for something out of the ordinary, an extra roll of quarters for every four rolls is probably worth it.

[1]http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category...

EDIT: Ambiguous pronoun.

If it makes money, it is. And it will probably make money, because so many people have been trained to accept that even minor inconveniences can and should best be solved by giving up some degree of personal autonomy or freedom to a startup because x is annoying or x is hard or because x is too analog.

What else can you say except that there's a sucker born every minute?

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