tompaulco's Journal: Mixed feelings on Redbox

Redbox is an interesting new idea in video rentals where you pay $1 plus tax each night. After 25 nights (and 25 dollars), you can keep the movie. You can rent the video from any kiosk that has it and return it to any kiosk you want. They don't have a store, so costs are low, but they have limited space, so selections are basically new releases only. The thing I like is that you can view selections online and determine what is available at different kiosks. This comes in handy for those of us who would rather sit in air conditioned comfort and browse movies from multiple locations rather than stand out in the heat and browse that particular kiosks selections. In fact, it is really pretty stupid if you are looking for a particular movie to take your chances that it is actually at the kiosk you happen to go to. However, lots of people are pretty stupid, particularly the ones that rent at the McDonald's locations.
One big drawback of the Redbox system is that each Kiosk only has one monitor and so even if you have efficiently made your selection online, or even if you simply want to return a movie, you could end up sitting in line behind someone desperately seeking a movie that is not in the machine through the somewhat slow movie selection screens. This seems to happen without fail at the McDonald's locations and has never happened to me in a supermarket location.
For this reason, I highly recommend that anyone looking to rent from Redbox choose their selections online, and then, even if they have to go out of the way, choose to pick them up from a location in a supermarket rather than one at a McDonalds. I also recommend to drop your movies off at any location other than a McDonald's, so you similarly don't have to stand in line.
A particularly bad example of this happened yesterday. I arranged my rental online as usual. Because there were no other locations that had the movie I wanted to see, I had to pick up at a McDonald's location. When I arrived, there was on lady at the machine already as I pulled in the lot. There were no spots near the redbox except for a handicapped spot, so I had to park about 30 feet away. While, in the process of pulling in to the spot and walking back to the machine, a lady parked in the handicapped spot (she did not have a sticker) and got in line behind the lady who was already there. After about five minutes the first lady was done, and the second lady started her transaction. She rented 6 movies. She looked at me coyly and said "movie night". I found myself unable to share her smile. Partly because it was 95 degrees and she had cut in front of me by parking in an illegal manner, and was delaying my 20 second transaction with her 15 minutes of browsing which any intelligent person would have done online.
All in all, though, Redbox has stopped me from using Blockbuster, where a one night rental is still $6. Maybe they will try the kiosk idea too. They actually have enough locations where they could just make an automated station and probably cut down on full time personnel.
Redbox's system is not flawless, however. Once I returned two movies, and they charged me a full $25 for each of the two movies that I had returned. I called their customer support and they were unable to find the tracking numbers for the movie and would not issue a refund. I found this very frustrating. After all, I may have even been interested in buying the particular movies, but probably wouldn't have paid $25 for them, maybe $15, definitely $10. But I had paid $25 and they said I owned them, but I didn't have them. Major suckitude. Luckily that is the only time that has happened so far, and I have mostly been able to enjoy first run movies for an average price of probably about $2.50 each, and the average falls each time I get to watch one for $1 and they don't try to charge me full price.