Leaving the Video Kisok Empty Handed

I've been rather disatisfied with my video rental choices for a while now. Well, maybe this stems from the fact that I barely have a choice, and that Blockbuster is the only game in town. Sure, there's always NetFlix, and the like, but my volume of DVD rentals is hardly high enough to justify a NetFlix account. Anyway, quite often they run out of popular movies at the local Blockbuster. Sometimes if there is a movie that I really want to see, and it is just released, I'll even rent it on Thursday, and deliberately keep it into the grace period, just so I can view it on the weekend.

Given the Blockbuster monopoly, I was intrigued when this video kiosk appeared in my local supermarket. A big red box near the checkout. Hmmm. These kiosks are the wave of the future, no? I've heard of just about everything but cars being sold from them. Put the credit card in, hit the touchscreen for the selection, and woila, my DVD pops out of the slot. There is even an option to have the credit card receipt sent to my email account.

The best part is the uber low price of a mere buck if the disc gets returned by 7 pm the following day. The late fee is only another dollar per day. At these rates, my DVD viewing frequency could go seriously up.

I headed over to the machine. It looked like it held about 80 of the latest videos, which is pretty good, and enough to satisfy most of us, while keeping it affordable. This week's new releases weren't in it, so maybe they only update the machine once every two weeks or so. I decided I wanted to watch the film "Annapolis." I made my selection, and swiped my credit card. So far, so good. I entered my email account so I would get a receipt. The machine then said to look at the slot, and my video would be coming out. I kept watching the screen, and watching the slot. I couldn't hear any gears turning inside, but the supermarket checkout is kind of noisy after all. I pictured Rosie the Robot (from the Jetson's) inside finding my DVD and putting it in the slot. Here was the future of video rental, right?

Well after a minute, the machine politely told me that there was a malfunction, and I wouldn't be getting my DVD. I'm not sure if there was a jam, or they ran out of "Annapolis." There was no opportunity to contact anyone for an explanation. At any rate, I headed down the street to Blockbuster and rented the second to last copy of the film (for the record it was so-so, more about boxing than the Navy...but alas, I digress) and paid there rental fee that is over four times as much. I'll give the Redbox machine another try, after I make sure my credit card wasn't charged for it! Forget the kiosk, sometimes you need a person to talk to.

--Jonas

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