Residents at Church Corner Apartments in Cambridge, Mass., can stop flipping over their couch cushions in search of quarters.
The 85-unit Equity Residential community replaced its out-of-date laundry system in November with machines that are connected to the Internet, giving residents the ability to pay for each wash or dry cycle with a debit or credit card.
The new payment and monitoring system—a commonly used micro-payment processing technology only recently developed for laundry facilities in the apartment industry—is a welcome alternative for residents who never carry change or frequently misplace or forget to replenish a pre-paid laundry card.
While residents still have the option to pay for laundry services with quarters, Property Manager Connor Lennon says many of them prefer the convenience of using their debit and credit cards at a new, wall-mounted “laundry center” machine. “It’s taken a lot of the hassle out of doing laundry,” Lennon says. “We’re always looking to keep up with the competition and with technology, and this is something residents are really excited about.”
Church Corner Apartments has yet to conduct a formal resident survey, but Lennon says he’s noticed the most positive feedback among the community’s younger residents. “Some of the older folks initially had a more difficult time understanding the credit and debit card options, but after a few attempts, they got the hang of it,” he says.
Overall, property managers at communities that have implemented this technology estimate that 60 percent of residents use the debit and credit card payment options. Student housing communities have seen as many as 90 percent of residents using a debit or credit card to pay for their laundry services.
Property managers also have embraced the card payment system, as it makes the accounting process more transparent. The debit and credit card readers at Church Corner work hand-in-hand with the laundry facility company’s patented LaundryView monitoring technology, the latest version of which now provides the owner or manager with reports that account for each coin or card transaction at every machine.
The daily reports, available through the laundry supplier’s extranet, have made laundry services much more transparent for owners. “The issue with the coin-only system was whether all the money was accurately reported and accounted for,” says Bob Tuttle, Executive Vice President of Technology and Information Systems for the Mac-Gray Corporation, the multifamily housing laundry facilities company that developed the technology. “We always make every effort to ensure that money is accurately collected and counted, but it remains a concern for some owners. Now we’ve taken that concern off the table.”
If the system detects a payment error at one of the machines, residents receive an immediate refund on their credit or debit card. Technicians also are automatically dispatched if a machine malfunctions. “The system has saved our onsite employees a lot of time,” Lennon says. “We no longer have to call a service technician when a machine breaks or mail a pre-paid laundry card to the service department after a payment dispute. It’s all automatically taken care of.”
In addition to its new payment report features, the LaundryView technology still allows residents to check the availability of washers and dryers before going to the laundry room, and to get a text message after their laundry is done.
Lennon says Equity Residential will continue to replace many of its communities’ older laundry service systems with debit and credit card readers over the course of the year. –NAA’s Lauren Boston