It’s Called Currency

Periodically, it’s good to review expenses that you’re paying out of habit more than necessity, things that you’ve stopped thinking of as optional. For me, one of those things was my monthly expenditures on movie rentals.

I’m a total movie buff. I love to watch movies. Funny movies, dramatic movies, action packed movies…I just like to be entertained. Like most people, I’m the proud owner of my own little library of favorites…well, maybe not so “little” but not as many as some I’ve met. I have a very eclectic collection, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to The Patriot to Dogma. My current favorite in the romantic comedy category is How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I’m also working on collecting all of Heath Ledger’s work, so yes, I have Roar – The Complete Series and A Knight’s Tale and The Four Feathers and several others. I love to surprise people with quirky movies they may never had heard of. Ones like Love Potion No. 9 starring a very young Sandra Bullock and filmed partially in my own fair city.

In order to find those quirky treasures, I also rent lots of movies. I’ve been a Blockbuster member since they opened in the mid-80’s and have recently taken advantage of their online offerings. I like the convenience of having movies queued up and mailed to me. However, I started looking at the expense recently and switched from a plan that lets you swap movies in the store to the “by mail only” one. This was so I wouldn’t spend more money simply because I had gone to the store. It’s convenient to pick up three movies while in the store to swap one, but then there’s another $10—or more—gone on those extras.

Unfortunately, my little plan didn’t work. The mail only plan is far slower in sending movies than the in store swap. I get impatient, especially in the past few weeks while I’ve been sick with an upper respiratory infection that turned into pneumonia. When breathing is an issue, you spend a LOT of time on the couch. A fresh influx of movies became a priority, but who can afford to spend nearly $5 per movie?

So I asked some friends if they’d ever used redbox. One of them said yes and explained how it works. The rentals are $1 per night (plus sales tax, of course). You can simply drive up to the big red vending box, use the touch screen to select a movie, swipe your card, enter your email address (so they can send you a receipt for your purchase), and take the movie as dispensed from the box. When I did this, I found that the receipt is sent immediately because my BlackBerry had it when I got back in my car. The disc was the same quality as anything from Blockbuster (a few fingerprints and some minor scratches) but that’s got more to do with how people don’t take care of things the way they should than with who’s renting the movie and that’s a rant for another time.

The next morning, after having enjoyed my $1 rental, I decided to take a look at the redbox website. I created an account and signed up for their mailing list (which got me an email with a code I can enter at a redbox for a free rental) and their SMS text list (which will get me a freebie code each Monday that’s good only on Monday). I looked at available movies online and rented one from the redbox that was on the way to my first stop that day. It happens to be the same box where I rented the other one, but it didn’t have to be. One of the major conveniences with redbox is that the movies don’t have to be returned to the same location where they were rented. Since one redbox is on my way to work and another is on the way home, I’m likely to frequently return discs at a different box. Especially if there’s a traffic snarl and I have to take a different road to get where I’m headed.

You have to swipe the same card at the redbox that you used to purchase online, so don’t forget the card. Also, you have until 9pm the following day to pick up movies rented online. So a movie rented online Thursday morning has to be picked up before 9pm on Friday. If you don’t pick it up, you’ll still be charged a dollar, but it will be released for someone else to rent. This keeps them from holding something indefinitely and you’ll only have lost a dollar if the night you originally planned to spend home alone turns into an unexpected night on the town instead.

Any time you decide to keep a movie past its 9pm return time, redbox will just start a tab. If it takes an extra two days to return a movie, your card will be charged the extra $2+tax when you return it. The limit on this is 25 days. At that point, they just assume you’re keeping it, charge $24+tax to your card, and it’s yours forever.

Looking for movies online is about as convenient as possible. You can search for specific movies, or browse the inventory in a particular redbox location. They’ve mostly got new releases, but there are some popular older ones still stocked as well. I found Sleepless in Seattle, So I Married an Axe Murderer and Lawrence of Arabia in the location I browsed.

After acquainting myself with the convenience and thriftiness of redbox, I will still be keeping my Blockbuster account, but they’re not likely to see me in the store too much. My Blockbuster online queue has 120 items in it that I still want to see. Most of it is older movies, some dating back to the 50’s and 60’s, and some TV series runs that I can’t get on my limited cable channels. But for the new releases that I’d been picking up whenever the thought hit me, I’ll be spending my money in the redbox. After all, why pay $5 when $1 will get the same thing?

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