RedBox Down!
On the suggestion of my sister, and because I could get a free rental,
I gave RedBox a try yesterday. The
website is not bad, there is a box close by that I would pass regularly, so worth a try
for at least the free shot. Got the movie, watched the movie, and today was going to
return the movie while out and about.
Alas, the poor RedBox had fallen on hard times since I had
been by yesterday. Seems someone had taken offense to something it had done and smashed
its screen. Perhaps it did not have the movie they wanted. Or maybe they couldn’t quite
get the ‘barcode must be to the rear’ trick just right (given that they were of the type
to smash a big red machine, you know). Anyway, I could not return the movie. The
merchant at that location knew of the demise of the box, but was having nothing to do
with the returns himself other than point out where he thought the next closest RedBox might be. No blame there, that’s just
the way the RedBox deal works even if it is a nuisance to me. My worst case is I am out
a couple of dollars while I wait for them to replace the box at this location. The best
case, as today, is that I drop off the disk at a different box along the way to doing
other things. I went off to do other things and the return at the other location went
smoothly.
The email notice that I had returned the disk beat me
home, which I find very cool in a geeky sort of way: every RedBox is on the internet. Which also means
that there should be someway for RedBox Central to KNOW that my local RedBox had
suffered a vicious attack, or any other kind of system failure, and know it before a
customer told the local merchant. Which might well be the case, I don’t know. Certainly
if I had built a system that was networked to do inventory and billing, I would also use
its alerts for faults, failures, and security breaches. I will be checking on this box
to see how long it takes them to replace or repair it.
Given the
number of the RedBoxes in my area, the online inventory and reservation system, the
not-too-bad rental and return process, and the one-buck-a-day rate, I can easily see
RedBox being on the list of movie rental
services we use in the future.
Imported from an old blog. Some links might be dead. Let me know if you find dead links.