<p>I read online that you can use triton cash to pay for a lot of places on campus (panda express, etc) but it looks like there is only a few places you can use your dinning dollars I don't really understand, someone explain please!</p>
<p>Dining dollars are used at the UCSD dining halls. Each college has their own dining hall - Revelle-Plaza and POTS (or whatever it was renamed), Muir-Summit, Marshall-OVT, Warren-CV and Earl’s Place, ERC-Cafe Ventanas, Sixth-Foodworx. You cannot use dining dollars anywhere but these places. Everyone who lives on campus is required to purchase a dining plan.</p>
<p>Triton cash is accepted at many on and off campus locations. Anyone can have Triton cash, whether they live on campus or not. You can use Triton cash at the dining halls too but that is stupid if you have dining dollars to spend. Does that make a little more sense?</p>
<p>Also a thing to note is that dining dollars expire at the end of Spring Quarter every year, and just as a note, dining dollars are probably nowhere near true dollar amounts. $5.75 for a sandwich is kinda ridiculous.</p>
<p>Triton cash actually works out to true dollar amounts, and you can get a refund on it whenever you think you’ve deposited too much. It’s pretty useful to have especially when doing your laundry on campus if you don’t want to carry around and excessive amount of quarters. Otherwise, it’s basically just a campus (and surrounding food locations) debit card that gives you a 10% discount at dining halls. But as ucsandiego said, you shouldn’t be using Triton cash at any dining hall unless you’re totally out of dining dollars and you’re craving something that isn’t fast food related.</p>
<p>I did the math in my head and the 10% discount basically means that if you ever run out of dining dollars, don’t invest in more dining dollars. Invest in Triton cash. If this doesn’t make sense to you now, it probably will when you are possibly running out of dining dollars.</p>
<p>Cheers!
Moose</p>
<p>At the tour we took we were told the leftover money could be used at costco, my folks got excited about that. Does anyone know if that is the case and if it’s the dining dollars or triton cash or both?</p>
<p>they’re lying.</p>
<p>[Housing</a>, Dining, and Hospitality - Triton Cash Vendor Locations](<a href=“http://hdh.ucsd.edu/tritoncash/locations.asp]Housing”>http://hdh.ucsd.edu/tritoncash/locations.asp)</p>
<p>dandie, if what you said was true, it’d probably be the best news ever to me! I’m in the same boat with astrina though. Sounds totally like a lie.</p>
<p>Well technically dining dollars can be used at costco if you buy stuff from Earl’s Online - (OLE). I know you can purchase things in bulk from Costco and you pick them up at Earl’s place on a designated day of the week. </p>
<p>[UC</a> San Diego OLE Home Page](<a href=“http://ole.ucsd.edu/]UC”>http://ole.ucsd.edu/)</p>
<p>My D had the lowest plan and never used all of her dining dollars which was aggravating (that they forced us to buy them - not that she didn’t use them). She just doesn’t eat that much and is a veg. besides.</p>
<p>She would generally spend any excess dining dollars at Earl’s place where you can buy some non food items. She bought a toaster oven, blender, socks, etc. there to use up any leftover dollars. The downside is that Earl’s place pretty much gets the stuff from Costco, jacks up the price by double or so, then sells to the student - sort of a ripoff.</p>
<p>The “student representatives” partially in charge of the dining plan are idiots. It’s disgusting what they’ve done. I don’t want to rant, so I’ll leave it at that.</p>
<p>There’s absolutely nothing fair about the dining plan at ucsd. They force you to pay between $2,000 and $3,000 (depending on if you live in an apartment or dorm). Basically they’re locking you into paying their high prices (and yes, a lot of their food is overpriced) instead of giving you the option to use your money off campus where you can get better deals. They’re completely ripping the students off. And if you don’t use up all of the money by the end of the year, you lose it. What a joke.</p>
<p>So since it is required, would you suggest the apartment dining plan, I’m going to be living in the transfer apartments. That doesn’t seem like much money considering the high prices of meals, what do you guys think?</p>
<p>make sure you use whatever you have left at earls online or swipe your upper classmen friends, they will be grateful =P</p>
<p>While dining halls are definitely overpriced, a lot of word of mouth from people I trust tells me that dining plans are not paid for dollar for dollar at all. I would be totally furious if it were, but the fact that triton cash provides a 10% discount at dining halls to offset the inflated prices seems like evidence to me that dining dollars aren’t dollar for dollar.</p>
<p>And kings, it depends on how much you’re gonna cook. The standard apartment meal plan is only 2100 meal points because they think that you’ll cook like at least a fifth of your meals. Dorms generally do not have the luxury of kitchens (something I’m looking forward to next year!). If you don’t ever want to cook at all, then you might want to consider a bigger meal plan.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that the dining plans are paid dollar for dollar in the cost of housing. Dining dollars are not triton cash.</p>
<p>Right. Dining dollars are not triton cash, but I keep hearing it a lot that it’s not dollar for dollar for dining dollars.</p>
<p>when you buy more dining dollars (and people who eat almost exclusively at dining halls will most likely run out), they give you a discount (buy $100 worth of dining dollars, get 110 meal points… or something like that). But the original $2,100 (or $2,800, or whatever you start with) is dollar for dollar.</p>
<p>My friends and I ran out of Dining Dollars at the beginning of Spring Quarter (Early April). My roommate has over $2100 left, because she goes home every Thursday (I don’t know what she’s going to do with those 2000 dining dollars). Everything in our dining halls are extremely overpriced (Naked Juices = $3.50) and so you can see how fast your account can be depleted. I bought a few pasta bowls at POTS that were $6.99/each, and I found them at Ralph’s for $2.50. >:| </p>
<p>UCSD, along with other colleges charge you the $2000-$3000 per person when you’re living on campus because, while it’s overpriced, it guarantees the dining halls a minima of cash flow to take care of wages/food/etc. If they didn’t charge each of us (that live on campus) this set amount, the majority of us wouldn’t eat there, and the dining halls wouldn’t have enough money to remain open.</p>
<p>Wow, over 2100? She should spend a lot of that at Earl’s Place… you can place orders online for a lot of items at once.</p>
<p>ucsd handles dining halls a lot differently than other universities. By foregoing the typical “pay per meal, and then eat as much as you want” type of system that most colleges use, I think it ends up costing the students a lot more money in the long run (although you could make the argument that our food is better quality). </p>
<p>I was at Summit recently and got a sandwich and a Naked juice… and it cost like $9.50. If you add it up, people in the apartments (who get $2,100 a year) can only spend about $9.00 a day at the dining halls (about $63 a week). So, I spent a day’s worth of money on a single meal… i think that’s kind of ridiculous.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be so bad if I had the option to spend that $9.50 off campus, where I could get a lot more food for the same price. But I can’t; by charging me $2,100 at the beginning of the school year, I’m forced to pay at least $2,100 on their overpriced food. No choice. I bet I could actually survive off of $2,100 per year if I spent it wisely at costco or Ralphs, etc. But by having to supplement the $2,100 in dining dollars with cash when I run out at the end of the year, it kind of feels like I’m getting ripped off.</p>
<p>I know you say it may be “a lot different”, but if you compare it to UCSB/UCLA’s style of all-you-can-eat, its all relative, and is equivalent to our pay-per-item. You can’t just take food out of UCLA’s dining halls, unless you request a to-go box. You pay a fixed amount, ranging from ~$5-$10 depending on what time of the day it is. If you’re not ridiculously hungry, then you’re probably not going to eat very much, yet you still pay $7. A lot of my friends at other UC/universities that have buffet-style dining halls would rather have it our way, even if it does seem overpriced. </p>
<p>The grass is always greener on the other side, yeah?</p>
<p>If they didn’t charge each student who lived on campus a fixed amount of money, the dining halls wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves & wouldn’t exist.</p>