I spent an hour or so yesterday (not including my drive-time back and forth) giving back to the Wal-Mart community—you know, the one that is so hell-bent on destroying everyone else’s in America—by supporting the Redbox there, stuck on the return screen, despite their service line’s efforts to reset it remotely. As cheap as their rentals are, and as “simple” as they’re making them out to be, let’s not fall victim to the inevitable weakness in their business model, i.e., failing hardware, and call (866)733-2693, option 1 to check the transaction histories on locations before reserving to them. But the one recourse that’s sure to follow any innovation in vending machine use is our inclination, perhaps since evolved into the human genome, to commit violence upon them, as I myself considered, had I not turned over my account info on the phone.
Update [24 hours later]: They must’ve gotten someone to come in and do what I wanted to, and yanked the power cord. Occurred to me that the mom & pop’s like the place across from my new 親戚’s with $1.50 specials on Tuesdays might trade in sabotage how-to information, but the downtime’s hard to beat. So I suppose with the freebie codes they’re generous about handing out to callers I came out on top. Picked up スキヤキ・ウエスタン ジャンゴ, of all movies. One more thing, online reservations come with sales tax, whereas walk-ups strangely don’t.
Update [24 more hours later]: What I suspected proves true, that the “9pm tomorrow” you have until to pick up an online reservation counts as your first night. So much for simple—in reverse order, then: rent and return; reserve; call to confirm machine working; check to see if desired title there; check to see if location allows reservation; and now, check to see if schedule permits pickup by, say, eight the next day at the latest, with some slack for DVD Shrink.
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