I make money checking if forgotten vending machines are actually abandoned

[u/KazuKazu_hyperbowl]

I honestly didn't know this was a thing until a few months ago. From what I know, there are a lot of vending machines that are just sitting around in old laundromats, apartment buildings, repair shops, and other places where nobody really pays attention to them anymore.

What I do is basically check if those machines are still being maintained or not. Someone sends me a list of locations and I go there, take pictures, see if anything changed, check if the machine is still plugged in, and report back what I found.

Some people might think it sounds boring, but it is actually interesting because you find some weird stuff. One machine I checked was behind an old car wash and it looked like nobody touched it for years. There were weeds around it and the drinks inside looked really old. I honestly could not tell if it was still active or if everyone just forgot it was there.

From what I know, the owners need the information because sometimes it is hard to know if a machine is still being serviced or completely abandoned. My part is just collecting the information and sending it over.

Last weekend I checked 17 machines and made about $146. I never thought driving around looking at vending machines would make me money, but somehow it does. :PP

It is definitely one of the weirdest side hustles I have ever heard of, and now it is one of the ways I make extra cash.

[u/thupamayn]

My brother and I used to live very close to one that was just kind of there outside of an old, rundown building that was closed up. It was never out of stock and we used it all the time, don’t recall ever seeing anyone else use it though.

That’s also when I, entirely coincidentally, learned how to enter debug mode on them (absolutely not to try to set the prices lower). The buttons from top to bottom are like 1, 2, 3, 4, etc and the sequence was 4, 2, 3, 1 to enter debug. All it really did was show the amount of money that was in it and it had like $180. Hopefully not only from us lol

[u/KazuKazu_hyperbowl → u/thupamayn]

😂 that's actually wild. See, that's exactly the kind of machine I would've assumed was abandoned too.

And honestly $180 sounds pretty decent if it was sitting outside some rundown building that nobody paid attention to. Makes me wonder how many random machines are out there quietly making money while everyone assumes they're dead.

[u/thupamayn → u/KazuKazu_hyperbowl]

We assumed it was dead until we just tried it one day and it worked fine. Was really nice because neither of us drove yet and there were no stores within walking distance (probably why the owner placed it there lol). We would stay up all night playing WoW while taking short breaks to walk there and refuel, good times