Redbox and Red-Faced

About a month ago, I had an unpleasant experience with the Redbox people.

For those of you who are reading from countries far, far, away, Redbox is a video rental operation. They have vending machines located all over town and with the swipe of a credit card and an email address, you can rent a movie for a buck a night. Easy.

Well, it should have been.

One weekend, we were out running errands and decided to return Michael Jackson's "This Is It". When inserted into the slot, the machine spit it out. After a couple of attempts, the machine finally took the movie but displayed a message that the return was not processed. Pardon? We shrugged figuring the movie was inside and everything would sort itself out.

A few weeks later, Redbox nicked our bank account for $26. Crap.

I called them and had an entirely unpleasant conversation with someone who was lacking any customer service skills at all. She was of no help but did offer a rebate of $10 for my trouble, this after chastizing me for not calling immediately after noting a problem returning the movie. I thought my head might explode from frustration. How is it that it's the customer's responsibility to manage a situation with their faulty equipment? I was steaming and not remotely interested in the ten bucks she offered. I wanted my bloody money refunded. NOW.

She told me to call back in a few days after a technician had been sent to the site and that's when I gave up. Clearly, she wasn't interested in retaining a customer. I agreed to call back in a few days and hung up.

Then, I got on Twitter and sent out tweet after tweet about how shitty Redbox was.

A few day later, I called back and got a more mature woman on the phone. I gave her the whole spiel about my experience and how disappointed I was with Redbox..yadda yadda yadda. She apologized and immediately refunded my money even though the technician had not made it out to the site yet. Satisfaction. Finally.

Last week, Liv was looking for one of the Harry Potter movies that we have. She held up its empty case.

"Check the DVD player, sweetie," I said.

She pressed the eject button and out came her movie.

"It's not in there, Mama," she said.

"What movie have you got there?" I asked.

Yep.

In my baby girl's hand lay Michael Jackson's, "This Is It". Apparently, we had neglected to insert the movie into the DVD case when returning it to the Redbox, which, of course, is why the machine spit out the message that the return was not processed.

Because the bar code that the machine reads is on the DVD itself.

No faulty equipment.

User error.

So now, I have to make the call of shame to Redbox and tell them that they refunded me in error, which they must know, because I'm sure a technician has been out there by now and reported the empty DVD case.

I have to tell them that I am sorry.

And pray that my first call to customer service was not the one you hear about in the disclaimer.

The one they record for training purposes.

Fuck.