I have been using redbox for a while now. When I fly on planes, sometimes I have work to do. Sometimes I catch up on some reading or even sleeping, especially if it's an early flight and I've been up since 4 or 5 in the morning. But many times I watch movies. I have always liked movies. I don't remember the first movie I ever saw, but I love a good story and I have come to enjoy all genres of film over the years. I hear that cool people call them films at least.
What I'm about to share might incriminate me. I'm not sure, but so far my conscious has not led me to believe that what I do is wrong, though it may be illegal? I'm sure the laws have changed a lot in the past couple of years, but I digress.
I own an iPad and happen to believe that it's more convenient while traveling to watch content like movies on it as opposed to my laptop. Smaller, lighter and just cool, right? So I hop onto redbox's convenient website that allows me to pick a particular location, my favorite is the 7-eleven just up the street, and can reserve up to 5 movies. Now redbox is pretty good. They have new releases and once in a while they bring back an oldie, like Home Alone or something like that. Buyer beware, sometimes they have some of those straight to dvd movies and I've been tricked a time or two, but no more.
So last week on Thursday I did the above. Picked out my movies. Took the short trip to 7-eleven, swiped my card and got 5 new movies. Melissa and Charlotte were with me and Charlotte has always like playing with the cases that the redbox movies come in. She figured out how to open the cases a while back, so I try not to let her play with them anymore, but if she sees one she grunts until you give one to her. So I handed her one, she played with it on the short drive home and we pulled into the driveway. I collected the 4 other dvd's and snatched the fifth from Charlotte. She got upset, so when she wasn't looking I just put all five of them on the top of my car. Remember that. We'll come back to that.
After running a few errands that afternoon we decided to go out for dinner because the two meals we had left took well over an hour to prepare and all three of us were showing hunger signs. We hopped in the car and sped off towards a pizza place. After the first stop sign we heard something sound like it fell off the roof of our car. Now, since our recent move we now have lots of oak trees around our house and so consequently, a lot of acorns that gravity is constantly pulling toward the ground. They hit our porch, our heads, our deck and our cars that sit in the driveway, so without thinking, we hear the noise as we sped off and I say oh, its just some acorns. You see where this is going don't you?
We eat dinner, head home and after we put Charlotte down for the night I begin my process of putting dvd's on my iPad for my upcoming trip. It's takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes per dvd, so I wanted to get started so I could be sure to return the dvd's the next day. Redbox only charges $1.20 per dvd per day. So it's pretty cheap. They make their money on people who forget to return them by 9pm or lose them, etc. And up to this day I felt like I was sticking it to the redbox man, by being prompt and responsible and returning my dvd'd the next day before 9pm.
So I go to find the dvd's so I can start and they can't be found. I check inside the car, I check every room in our little house and then like a lightbulb over the cartoon character's head I remembered, "I think I put the dvd's on top of the car and I don't think that the noise that we heard was a couple of acorns." I inform Melissa of my hypothesis and she tells me to go look outside on the street. The noise we hard wasn't long after we pulled down our street so maybe they would still be there. I rush out and look, but nothing. Melissa finally convinces me to let her go outside with a flashlight and look herself. No dvd's anywhere. The "oh no" feeling settles in my stomach because I'm pretty certain I know how this plays out. So I go to the faq's section of the redbox website and my worst nightmares are confirmed. After so many days of the dvd's not being returned there is a flat fee that will be charged to my credit card kind of like when you lose the ticket that you get in a parking garage and they just charge you the full amount because you can't prove when you arrived.
$25.....each.....noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
I majored in bible, not math, but my brain quickly calculated a $125 charge. It was my fault. I put them on top of the car. I brushed the sound off as a couple of acorns and now I'd have to pay the piper. My only hope was that a nice person in our neighborhood saw them, picked them up and decided to be a good samaritan.
After accepting my $125 fate, I sat and waited. Redbox sends an email as soon as you return a dvd, so I kept checking my email every five minutes. At 8:11pm that evening I checked my email and wouldn't you know, I had an email from redbox. At 7:53pm, someone returned one of the dvd's to a redbox location at a local grocery store we shop at. My first feeling was excitement, but then my second was to drive over to the grocery store and demand to see the video footage for the camera with the redbox machine in sight so I could track down and catch the person who returned it. After I realized that my idea was ridiculous I went to bed knowing that my debt to redbox had been decreased by $25. Now I just had to wait to see if the other 4 dvd's were returned.
I checked my email with excitement the next morning hoping that maybe another dvd had been returned, but nothing. I continued to check my email frequently all morning hoping for the best. I put Charlotte down for a nap around 12:30 and worked on a few things for work. I checked my email around 2pm and to my surprise I found that three more dvd's had been returned to a different location at 1:42pm. Wow! Now the maximum that I owe redbox is only $25. One of my theories from very early on in my experience has come true as I write this. One of the five dvd's I rented was a small little known film called The Avengers. I hear it did OK in the theaters, but nothing exceptional. Unless you live under a rock, you know that my last two sentences were a sarcastic's dream. The fifth dvd has yet to be returned and I'm betting good money...at least $25...that it will never see the inside of a redbox machine again..
My best guess is that my good samaritan watched the other 4 movies and returned them, but to compensate themselves for their good deeds kept just one token in the form of The Avengers dvd.
I can't be mad. Anyone could have picked those dvd's up and I'm just thankful that it has only become a $25 lesson and not a $125 lesson.
Redbox-1
Good Samaritan-1
Me-0
You can't win them all...
-jay