If Your Bills Are Updated, That Machine Is Outdated

Across Los Angeles, Orange County and elsewhere, folks stuck with the new $5, $10 and even $20 bills at change and vending machines that can’t process them are bristling at the inconvenience.

“This is supposed to be the future,” said Carol Samaniego, whose new $20 bill was giving her trouble at an Anaheim gas station recently. “This is supposed to be convenience. . . . What’s the use of new technology if it doesn’t work?”

Her complaints are familiar to the many businesses and public agencies caught off-guard by the new $5 and $10 bills, which the federal government released May 24.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the release date in April, but the appearance of the redesigned currency still sent people scrambling to install the software that will allow machines to recognize the bill as authentic instead of counterfeit.

The problem exists anywhere from laundromats, vending machines and arcades to the change machines on toll roads.

Jim Rowton has seen only a dozen or so of the new $5 bills that are plastered with the off-centered, crater-sized cranium of Abraham Lincoln.

Rowton’s livelihood relies on ol’ or new Abe. He runs the All Amusement Fun Centers, one of them in Van Nuys, where hundreds of kids exchange their allowance money for game tokens every day. Eager not to disappoint kids or lose business, he hopes to have new software installed by next week.

That’s quicker than many government agencies. In Orange County alone, there are about 250 post office stamp machines that won’t take the new notes and probably won’t for another six weeks, said Postal Service spokesman Rich Maher.

At Sudz Coin Laundry in Anaheim, manager Gabby Garcia sees about 20 of the new $5 bills each day.

The Sudz bill changer has been sent to the local Standard Change-Makers Inc. shop for repair.

“Our Los Angeles office has been inundated,” said Barry O’Brien, vice president of Standard Change-Makers in Minneapolis, who said an estimated 100 calls per day are pouring in.

O’Brien said the company received the new bills in February from the Treasury Department to update its product line.

He noted that while manufacturers in his industry knew the federal agency’s timeline, other businesses probably did not.

This is the third time in the last four years that the Treasury has changed the paper currency to reduce counterfeiting.

Local transportation agencies are also challenged by the new money. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest public transit provider in Los Angeles, will replace its bill receptors this summer. Orange County toll roads, where new change machines were recently installed, won’t accept the new bills until the end of the month.

Even machines at the new Metro Red Line subway in North Hollywood, which is not due to open until June 24, won’t take the new bills. If funding is approved, repairs are expected in a few months.

Frank Itani, manager of a Fountain Valley Arco gas station, has been hearing customers’ complaints since the new $20 bills were released last year. Now, with the similarly odd-looking $5 and $10 bills appearing in wallets everywhere, he’s hearing about it daily.

“All this new technology today has spoiled people,” he said. “They want the machines to work.”