U Turn Vending, U Turn Vending-A colossal rip off of an overpriced,over hyped business! Idaho Falls Idaho

Where do I begin as there's so much to say about this company and there so called "Money Machine." Money machine alright, but for U Turn, not the vendors! We were even told this business is "recession proof." NOT!!!
Right from the start my wife & I were leary of the high cost of the machines, but we were reassured by our sales rep, don't worry, you'll make your investment back within 6 months to a year. Were we stupid. We fell for every line we were told, and actually believed the hype about how simple yet profitable this bulk candy vending business is.

After laying out over $17000 just for 36 machines & shipping, they then sat in a storage unit for 3 months waiting for the company locator to become available to place our machines. That's another $80 per machine to have them located. What a joke that was! This guy didn't spend any more than 3 minutes at a place to try and put a machine there. I know, I was with him on one occasion. I kept questioning the location, and he would tell me to trust him, he knew what he was doing. He sure did. He made a lot of money off of us, and left us with some absolutely terrible locations.

Within the first month we had a machine stolen, and 2 more were emptied of candy without a nickel to show for it. Within about 4 months we had to remove almost half of our machines because the owners no longer wanted them in their place of business.

The reason we paid to have them "professionally" located was because we felt we didn't know how to do that. Well, neither did the locator, who by the way was considered the best U Turn had to offer.

We paid $450 per machine. ( list price is $799) These things are no way near worth that. They are by far the most expensive bulk candy machines on the market, with virtually no re-sale value. I know, I've been trying to sell them for over half a year with only pathetic offers of $100 per machine. I recently found out that now U Turn is undercutting their own sales reps by selling them directly to customers for $399. Isn't that great for all of us who paid $450, or even $500 each? Another indication of how these people operate.

Now for the parts of the machines themselves:
The cannisters crack a lot. They are very expensive to replace. If you don't replace them, the candy inside will go stale quickly.
The coin mechanisms break or jam frequently.
The so called "freshness seal" basically starts to disintegrate within six months, which again ,makes the machine look bad.
The paint on the machines chips very easily, which of course makes the machine look terrible.
Just look at ebay to find these U Turn vending machines, specifically the Eliminators, and Terminators and you'll find how little value they have.

On the company's website is a little automatic calculator that shows how much money is to be made with each vend. What the little calculator doesn't show is how much the product to put in the machine costs. Candy, and especially peanuts, cashews, almonds, are very, very expensive. When considering the cost of getting into this business, they never really fully explain how much money it costs to buy the candy. Believe me, it's a lot more than you could imagine.

After a year and a half in this business, it would seem to me that one would have to have a very large number of machines to make any "serious" money in bulk candy vending. Any small number just isn't worth the cost of product, the cost of gas servicing the accounts, and the cost of possible breakage associated with any vending machine

If a person wanted to get into this business, I highly recommend a much less expensive machine to do it, as there are many, many such machines on the market that won't take your life savings away trying to make it in the vending business!!!

Jonathon
Helendale, California
U.S.A.