Redbox Test One: Success!

A month ago, I told you we canceled Blockbuster in favor of trying out Redbox. We didn’t rent anything right away because, well, we were tired of movies. But about 2 weeks ago, we decided to rent a movie. Here’s how it went:

We walked up to the machine, used the touch-screen to pick “Rent a Movie”. We scrolled through all the movies and decided on Accepted (I wanted something dumb). We kept scrolling and also saw Blood Diamond and chose that too. I didn’t readily see the “Cart” link, so I continued, thinking I could remove movies from my list on the next screen. Nope, I had to swipe my card. No big prob, but it meant we had to watch both movies or risk spending a whole extra dollar for another night 🙂

Before paying though, I had to enter my email address to receive a receipt. The machine does not have a printer (from what I could see). When we got home, I had an email waiting for me with the confirmation.

You can see from the picture that my lovely model Stacie is holding the DVD case with a movie. They’re not full-size cases; more like the size of a CD jewel case, but all plastic. Both the movie and the case have an advanced bar code for when you return it.

We didn’t have any problem watching the movies. Nick went with me to return Accepted that first night (we all enjoyed it, including grandma). We drove across the street, walked in the store, and clicked on “Return a Movie”. The screen instructed us how to insert the movie (see photo), and we complied. The machine told us within 5 seconds that it was accepted (haha, no pun intended, sort of) and we left! And of course, I had a return confirmation email waiting for me when we got back.

We waited until the next night to watch Blood Diamond, which was also very excellent (after getting used to DiCaprio’s accent). The return sequence was the same. The think with Redbox, though, is they wait until all movies that you have are returned, and then they bill you the full amount. This is so you don’t have a bunch of $1.05 (5% tax in MD) charges on your account for every single movie. However, they do put a $1 hold on your card until you return the movies. Since we had one movie for an extra night, our total charge was $3.15.

It’s been almost 2 weeks since renting those movies, and a full month since canceling Blockbuster. We were paying about $20 per month for Blockbuster, so we technically saved about $17 this month by only renting when we felt like it. And we don’t have that guilt of “having to get our money’s worth” that we did with our Blockbuster subscription.

Now I want to be clear here. I’m not putting down Blockbuster, but it wasn’t for us anymore. The new fall show lineup is on, I’m in school and work, we both have websites, Stacie was working a ton of extra (unpaid) hours every night, so we just didn’t have the time to watch movies. If you or your family watch a lot of movies, then check out Blockbuster or Netflix. It’s a great entertainment package. For the rest of you, ditch the high-priced rental stores and try Redbox if you can!