I hate to say it, but things aren’t looking good for Blockbuster Express. Am I a detracting trying to rain on their parade? Nope – actually once I heard about the combination between NCR and Blockbuster I picked up a bunch of NCR stock in anticipation of some great competition to Redbox.
I wanted to put my money where my mouth is and experience it for myself. While I was picking up some steak for a stir fry dish, I decided to pick up a money. To my surprise there was a long line of people who had the same idea I had. I didn’t realize why everyone else was walking away from the machine until it was my turn.
After select the movie (Year One — Jack Black FTW) and swiping my credit card my evening activity was thwarted with a message saying “An Error Occurred.” I thought that maybe there was a problem with my credit card so I tried another one. To my dismay the message came up again. In a fit of insanity I repeated this exercise several more times when I realize this machine was actually broken.
Keep in mind this machine has only been at the store for three weeks. As a hopefully movie watching and NCR shareholder I called the 877 number to find out what was going on. The service representive was nice and informed me that all of their machines were down and that they’d get them back up and running by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I’m crazy but why would you take your machines down…all of your machines down in the middle of a Saturday evening? Which genius had that bright idea?
It was at that moment when I saw the ultimate defeat of Blockbuster Express. I’ve gone to be Redbox machines all over Georgia at multiple times and never been turned away. It may not have as many movies as Blockbuster Express but uptime is more important than selection. If a customer starts to think that whenever they want to rent a movie the machines are down, they’re going to just avoid it. Who wants to deal with that kind of rejection for $1/day?
NCR, you have no problem running self-checkouts at my Home Depot, or the ATMs at my local Bank of America. Get your act together and find a way to keep your DVD kiosks up and running. Otherwise, just throw in the towel; wave the white flag; and stop wasting people’s time while you pretend that you want to actually provide a rental alternative.
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