My First Bad Experience with RedBox
Posted on Aug 17, 2007 under Business |If you’ve been a long time reader of Fiscal Musings, you will have heard me talk about Red Box video rentals. This time I have somewhat of a negative story about them.
Every so often, we rent videos from these DVD vending machines, and we’ve always used promotional codes to get them for free. About a week ago, I noticed that my credit card had been charged for one of these rentals even though the checkout screen had displayed $0.00.
We called their customer service line to have the charge refunded and were met with defensive opposition. I explained the situation but it was immediately discounted as if I were telling a lie. I don’t know about you, but it’s not really worth lying about a single dollar. You may also argue that it’s not worth calling about a dollar charge, but it was more the principle of the thing. Plus, I wanted to find out what happened so that it wouldn’t happen again.
Eventually I got the dollar refunded (or was told that it will be), but the whole experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In my opinion, it would have made better business sense not to argue with a customer over a dollar charge, but to make sure the customer had a good experience and would continue to provide good word-of-mouth advertising. But, it is what it is.
Subscribe to Fiscal Musings | Digg This! | Stumble it!
by Redbox Codes, on August 17 2007 @ 11:14 pm
You are not alone. I get several emails each day with upset customers that are getting charged after having used promotional codes. I don’t think Redbox has a response as of yet.
by limeade, on August 18 2007 @ 1:52 am
Glad to hear I’m not the only one this has happened to and that I’m not crazy. Hopefully they’ll fix the problem soon.
by nghiupo, on August 18 2007 @ 1:12 pm
they finally have redbox in california. not that i take advantage of it, i have digital cable plus premium channels and blockbuster unlimited rentals. and i don’t take advantage of that either. i know, that is very un-fiscal-musings.
by Anonymous, on November 2 2007 @ 4:53 pm
Waaa! get over it You got the code for free yes this is a code that is in their system …but did they give it to You? doubt it! But if they do away with the codes cus people like you moan I’ll be pissed…I love getting free rentals so shut up!
by limeade, on November 3 2007 @ 3:33 am
This anonymous guy is pretty passionate about his free codes. Don’t worry though, I don’t think they’re going to take them away from you. And for me to “shut up” as it were, would conflict with the whole purpose of this blog (or blogging in general). I also don’t think they’re going to change their whole corporate strategy because of a phone call to their customer service department.
At any rate, I appreciate the well thought out contribution…