Your trip to the work vending machine for a mid-afternoon sugar hit has just become more challenging.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Australia's brand new $5 note, carrying "world first" anti-counterfeiting features and a design to help the vison-impaired, is being spat out by snack and drink machines as well as gambling terminals.
The Reserve Bank has printed 170 million of the notes and released them into circulation on September 1 to much fanfare.
However, they have caused nothing but headaches for people such as Bruce Davey.
His company, Your Choice Vending, owns about 550 vending machines around Sydney and has so far upgraded about half to accept the new notes.
Mr Davey said that upgrading all of his machines would cost about $30,000.
The problem was with the money readers retrofitted to his machines, he said.
Some companies that make the note readers released simple software updates that took a few minutes to install, Mr Davey said.
But he said updating other readers was far more labour intensive, and one manufacturer had not yet released a fix, forcing him to buy new readers for about 40 of his machines.
"It's 18 grand just to buy those 40, plus labour and software and other expenses," he said.
"We knew that the new note was coming, so I would have thought that most of the companies would have been a bit more ready."
Betting company TAB is also having trouble with the notes and has put signs on its punting machines advising gamblers to swap the notes for vouchers.
TAB is updating its machines and plans to have them all accepting the notes by the end of the year, a spokesman said.
Despite some teething issues, most vending machines in Australia were accepting the new notes as planned, Australian Vending Association president Phillip Barry said.
However, he said another issue had arisen: notes were crumpling in some machines because of the transparent strip that runs vertically though them.
"I personally believe it's a design flaw; that clear section should have been across the top," Mr Barry said.
"We did bring that up with the Reserve Bank but they decided to do it anyway."
Mr Barry said his association had also asked the Reserve Bank to release multiple new notes at once so machines owners would not have to bear the expense of updating their machines multiple times.
Woolworths' self-service machines rejected the notes for about a week before the company updated its software to accept them.
