The ice dispenser on our Coke machine has busted a couple of times recently. The ice machine was fine, it was a motor inside the coke machine that was busted and not dispensing ice. Last Tuesday it broke again and the Coke maintenance guys couldn’t commit to a repair date any sooner than ‘sometime next week’. Since it had been broken multiple times we asked if they’d replace the whole machine. That also seemed to be impossible.
After several back and forths without any resolution, I asked the local Subway office to help out. They were able to quickly get a commitment to change out the Coke machine on Monday.
Meanwhile we had also asked them about them upgrading our bottled drinks refrigerator to the one specified in our new contract (previously we used a fridge from Bessie Byer but we are transitioning towards selling more Coke branded products). We were supposed to get it in July, then August, and then it seemed to be kind of forgotten. We reminded them of this and they finally delivered it on Friday. However, after it had been powered on for several hours it still hadn’t gotten cold (the light worked fine though).
The real fun started on Monday afternoon when the Coke technicians showed up with a new Coke machine. They brought in a height-adjustable cart which they were going to move the Coke and ice machine (on top of the Coke machine) onto, then lower it to take off the ice machine. Unfortunately while moving them onto the cart the top of the cart collapsed and both the ice machine and Coke machine went flying to the floor with parts and ice flying every which way. Fortunately nobody was hurt (it was afternoon so only two customers in the shop), but both machines were pretty much totalled.
Now the Coke machine belongs to Coke and they had a new one right there to replace it, so that’s no big deal for me. The ice machine is mine though, and it cost somewhere around US$3000, so it’s not a trivial loss. The Coke guys promised that they’d take care of getting it replaced. However, this still leaves me with no ice, going on almost a week now. And even though I didn’t have ice last week the soda was still cold because the water for the fountain drinks is cooled by the ice tank. Now we don’t even have that, so only warm soda from the machine now.
The guys also were unable to find the problem with the bottled drinks fridge so we had to put back in the Bessie Byer fridge. At least we have cold bottled drinks.