Did you ever think to look at how the company is doing financially? You know, in the stock market? All those dollars that they throw around there on Wall Street might be a little intimidating for some people, but an easy way to think about it is each one of those dollars represents one person standing in line to rent a movie, just like you did.

Redbox is making something available to the consumer for a fee. They have no responsibility to tell us about it, or to make the DVD holder pretty, or even to invade our privacy to tell us what new thing they have done as a company (or as a “green” company, or as a good neighbor or as anything else). They are not in business to be a “Blockbuster Killer”, I don’t think. I think they are in business to make a profit, and also to provide something that the public wants, without paying for all the extra junk that marketing people think we need.

After all, existing customers already know all that stuff. You are talking about Redbox attracting new customers, which they have proven that they are pretty good at doing without your “suggestions”.

I’m using a new service, Quickflix, which is the Australian equivalent of Netflicks. So cheap and easy. I get 3 DVDs a week.

I gave up cinema-going a few years ago. I’m too lazy to go to local video store and I never know what to get. Online, it’s easy to search and create a queue of 100+ titles I’m eager to watch, and the selection is much larger.

It’ll be interesting to see if DVD vending machines hit Australia next year. I can’t imagine myself using one, though.

The separate return slot is mandatory if they want any more growth, because the wait is swiftly offsetting the convenience.

In every case where I am forced to stand in line to return some flicks, at least one person stands there awesomely confused about the UI. Invariably someone always puts their credit card pin number in the field that asks for your zip code and many stumble with the idea of entering an email address or finding the @ symbol. The worst, and yet the most common, is how many people complete the entire transaction for each movie they rent. They a pick a movie, pay for the movie, and then start all over multiple times until they have their weekends entertainment, not knowing they can rent 3 movies in one transaction. All the while the technically inclined, and therefore characteristically impatient, are tapping their feet while we ask ourselves if one more dollar is worth all this agony. This may or may not be due to the technically challenged, but either way its usability.

Ultimately, it seems like it was a really great idea that wasn’t planned out for it’s widespread acceptance…”oh shit….it worked….now what?” I hope they get over the punch drunk shock of initial success and work on scaling it out for more intuitive and efficient usability.