I’ve been researching money-counting machines for the past week or so and it’s very frustrating how hard it is to find real-world reviews of these things. In fact, it’s often hard enough to find prices. I guess shopping for non-consumer goods online is not quite as easy as it is for your consumer goods.

Anyway, I had narrowed it down to a choice of two friction counters, picked mainly because the site that featured them was reasonably well designed and modern with good images, good descriptions and _prices_. As we count mostly used notes, the machine has to be robust and a must-have feature is that it will pick out a rogue tenner in a batch of 20s.

Choice one is the PCP BC130+. If you can find a review of this unit anywhere online, you’re a better web user than I! The other choice is the equally-priced CTCoin Dolphin 200. Again, reviews anyone?

The first model does all sorts of fancy counterfeit detection AND has 2D size detection, so it will pick out rogue tenners in the 20s. But the geezer I spoke to on the phone said that the Dolphin has more of a track record and should be more robust at dealing with used notes. I then spoke to someone else at the company and _he_ said that the PCP one is the better machine and that if it weren’t robust, they wouldn’t sell it.

The long and short of it is that I decided to try a weight-based machine first and see if that would do the job. I found a Volumatic Omal CountEasy on eBay for a reasonable price and bought it. It arrived today and I gave it a quick run through. The machine is next to useless for counting notes. The new Bank of Scotland 10s and 20s (the ones that look like euros) throw it completely. Yes, I can calibrate it. I even got in to the advanced settings, recalibrated it with a 500g weight, calibrated it with packs of notes and still it would not calculate a single pack of either tenners or 20s.

Add to that the fact that Lorraine has just lost her job and so we can’t afford a 300 quid friction counter and you’ll see why I’m not a Happy Bear today.

The Omal does count bags of coin accurately so at least it will be usable for that if the eBay seller won’t take it back, but 130 quid to count a few coins is a bit much. It was for the notes that I need it and, for that, it’s hopeless.

So, if anyone out there is looking for a review of the VOLUMATIC OMAL COUNTEASY, let the Google spiders come forth and do their spidering of this post, so that potential buyers can do the right thing and steer clear of this useless machine.