Talk about black and white, night and day, easy and hard, great service and poor service, evangelize and despise.
All opposites – This is my opinion of RedBox and Blockbuster.
You may have read about my frustrations with Blockbuster last week. While Blockbuster continues to do everything possible to lie mislead their customers, RedBox is a breath of fresh air.
Jamie and I (again) wanted to watch a movie that isn’t available on Netflix via streaming, or NetFlix DVD. I’m not sure how or why, but RedBox and Blockbuster get movies before Netflix. So we decided to try RedBox. I setup a RedBox account online, registered a Visa card, and within two or three minutes, I had a movie reserved at a convenience store around the corner.
1 Touch service. literally, 1 TOUCH. Here is how RedBox worked for me. I walk up, the screen has 3 choices. Rent, Return, and Pickup Reserved. I touch Pickup Reserved, and the screen says, slide your credit card. So I did, and in about 15 seconds, out popped Social Network – the move we had reserved.
Perfect. Fast, Simple, and met all my expectations. After we watched the movie, I put it back in my car, so I could return it sometime today (we watched the movie last night). This morning while running to the store for groceries, I saw a RedBox – and dropped it off. You can return a RedBox movie rental to any RedBox, it doesn’t have to be the one you originally received the movie from.
That’s another thing I always hated about Blockbuster stores, you had to return the movie rental to the exact store you rented it from. Just another way Blockbuster sticks it to their customers. in the end I think Blockbuster was in the Late Fee business from the beginning. Doing everything possible to inconvenience their customers.
While RedBox and Netflix are 100% the opposite.
Anyway – thank you RedBox for giving me the “I want a movie right now” solution – and helping me never, ever, ever, under any circumstance give money to Blockbuster.
