A few months ago, when Netflix raised their prices again, I started looking at different options. I decided to move to Redbox as my source for renting Blu-ray movies. Redbox has been great so far. I have never had any problems renting a movie that I wanted to see. The price is right ($1.50/night), and the numerous locations of Redbox’s in my neighborhood makes it very easy.
The one thing that I hated about Redbox was waiting in line for people to figure out what movie they wanted to rent. When I started talking to others about my frustration, they looked at me like I was crazy. After further discussion, I found they weren’t aware that you can actually reserve movies online.
Personally, I haven’t reserved any movies via Redbox’s website, however, I do have the Redbox app on my iPhone and use it all the time. The app is very simple. When you bring it up, it gives you a list of movies by release date, and you can filter them depending on what you are looking to rent.
Once you find a movie you want to rent, you select the movie and Find This Movie. It uses GPS on your phone to find your current location and then tells you which Redbox, near your location, has this movie you want to rent in stock. All you need to do is choose the location, enter your credit card information, and you will receive a confirmation email.
Then you can go to the Redbox where you reserved the movie, choose Redbox.com Redemption, swipe your credit card, and it gives you the movie in less than a minute. It is so fast, I have actually used the app sitting in the parking lot in front of a Redbox instead of sitting in front of the machine.
So, if you use Redbox like myself, you can help avoid unnecessary lines by simply browsing and reserving the movies from home or on your phone.
