On July 21st approx. 1:00 am, I reserved two movies via RedBox web site. While attempting to reserve these movies their computer took a brainfart! My debit card was charged for six movies instead of two! Approx. 8:00 am I called RedBox via the listed phone line, was on hold for over 20 min. when I finally was allowed to talk to a live person, I was told first that I must have run my card thru the card reader six times and I had actually rented six movies! At this time I explained to the person that I had done nothing of the sort, that the only movies that I had swipped the card for were the two that I had actually rented! After another twenty minutes and several hold periods they told me that they had experienced a "hardware" problem. Ok, no problem, that was realistic, just give me my money back and it would be solved, was told they could not give me my money back for 7-10 days! At this point I asked to speak to a manager, was told none were avaliable! I had the person pull up my records and look at the transactions for the 7th of July, when the same thing had happened only that time it was for four additional charges! They refunded that money, but then charged me an additional $1.09 which after several calls they agreed to refund! After this latest problem, I pulled up all my receipts (I keep all of them) and my debit card statements for the last six months and to my dismay I discovered that there were 34 instances of over charges that red box had been paid on! No more red box for me!! I would suggest that everyone start auditing their charges from redbox!
Over charged by RedBox
(14 posts) (8 voices)-
Posted 7 months ago #
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Update: This morning I filed suit against RedBox in small claims court. It is not the amount of money, it is the thought that they would treat their customers like this. I have about the same message that I wrote posted on a few other sites and have had other people send me e-mails saying that the same thing has happened to them with these people! One dollar movies are a good deal if they only cost you a dollar! This whole problem would have never come about if they had not gotten gready, causing me to actually audit what they had charged me over a period of time! I still wonder how many of you folks have been overcharged and for how long?
Posted 7 months ago # -
This is drama-queen stuff, unless and until they refuse to refund a reasonable effort to detail phantom charges.
To win your case you will probably need to submit an itemized listing of phantom charges, along with a listing of valid charges for comparison. But if you have made such a list and submitted it to Redbox, I would be very surprised if they didn't simply refund them after a few phone calls. Such a list will build a pattern which should help them figure out the problem.
While it's a bit of a pain, checking Redbox emails and and all charges monthly is the real answer to catching this sort of thing and nipping it in the bud. The fact that this went on for six months will reflect badly on your credibility.
Posted 7 months ago # -
Mark, Thanks for your input, but the lawyer that I had review the charges and advise me how to proceed thinks that I have a pretty good case. I would suspect that you might work for redbox and you reflect their opinion toward their customers. You might also note the many of the requirements that you talk of do not apply to a small claims court case here. But again thank you for your comments, but I do think your drama queen comment was slightly childish! Have a wonderful day!!
Posted 7 months ago # -
As your case may being going to court. Good luck. Small Claims court is a joke in my book. I got ripped off of $1500.00 by a guy pretending to be a carpenter to remodel my kitchen. Worked at a cabinet shop the whole nine yards. I won my case. Problem was the guy was broke and the son of a law enforcement officer and I never saw a dime.
The Courts just say you are entitled to the money. Its another matter to get your hands on it. You spend more than you get (Time and resourses) Better to do like I do. BUY a Walmart card and put your monthly allowance on it. Make sure you enter an email in the system. If a rental is made, an email is the verification of rental and return. If you don't want to do that, then there you are. Right where you are complaining about.My motto : Never trust an inanimate object to handle a movie rental transaction.
Posted 7 months ago # -
So walmart cards work in these machines ????
Posted 7 months ago # -
I've been overcharged also but only when reserving online. In each case I immediately put the duplicate movies back in the machine and then emailed support. Everytime I did this I got a refund within a few hours and a promo code emailed to me for a free rental. I'm confused about how you didn't realize the previous over charges since the error would result in the machine giving you duplicate movies.
Posted 7 months ago # -
this is why im worried about reserving on line.. double charging..
Posted 7 months ago # -
>>I'm confused about how you didn't realize the previous over charges since the error would result in the machine giving you duplicate movies.<<
No duplicate movies! Only charges! If there had been duplicate movies I would have caught the problem much sooner! Perhaps if I had not been so trusting of them, I would have been aware of the problem much sooner, however I wasn't and have now learned my lesson! I did receive a letter from them requesting documentation of the charges which I have have furnished twice before, but will send them again!
Posted 7 months ago # -
Just received bank debit statement that Redbox charged me $25.44; Redbox charge dated 8/4/09. Called Redbox and was on hold around 20 minutes. Redbox rep. stated I didn't return a dvd I rented on JUNE 4th! I asserted I did return that dvd, but now, TWO MONTHS LATER, had already deleted the rent/return info. from emails. Explained I delete rental confirmations 5-6weeks after returning if I see my charge/debit account is okay BECAUSE Redbox is to charge your account 25-30days after/if rentals are not returned. She then came back on and said then they'd charge me only a $10 fee BECAUSE they were having problems with their billing in June and my June 4th rental wasn't recorded/billed with Redbox until the end of June! I argued more that I wasn't paying $10 because I owed nothing! She then came back on and said as a 1x courtesy they were removing the $25.44 charge. She said the charge would be removed in 5-6 days, and I received a Redbox email from her that the charge was being removed. FRUSTRATING!!!
Posted 6 months ago # -
why do people DELETE their emails... if you got yahoo. just make a new folder and call it REDBOX... move all of the emails you get from redbox into that folder and they will not be in your mail email ..... NEVER EVER DELETE YOUR EMAILS .. i had blockbuster 4 years back... well i started getting disc that would not play so i reported issues.... One day i go into log into the account and said ACCOUNT NOT FOUND..so i called them up and asked what was going on .. they said i used REPORT ISSUE TOO MUCH AND blacklisted my account and cancelled it.... SO i called up the BBB and they contacted blockbuster about it.. BLockuster told them I KEPT 15 DVDS in the past 6 months (even though i had the email every DVD WAS RETURNED In the last year)
long story short KEEP THOSE EMAILS...
funny thing is about 6 months back i got an email saying PLEASE COME BACK.. i wrote them back and told them were they can stick their emails and told them if they ever send me another email i sue them for harassment .... never heard from them again...
Posted 6 months ago # -
When I called Redbox once to verify they registered my returned DVD (even though they didn't email me) the CS person asked if I wanted them to send a confirming email. I said "no" figuring that as long as it was in their system I was Ok. I see I was naive.
Emails are a continuing problem with Redbox, the lack of and/or delay in emails is indicative of a weak IT (information technology) infrastructure. Surprising considering their head guy came from Netflix. This will hurt them down the road if not corrected.
gmail has a filter feature that allows all Redbox emails to automatically be copied to a folder. So when I see them and delete them from my inbox I can always still go back later if I need to. I do the same with Netflix except that Netflix generates so many emails that I have the filter move them to a folder and not even leave anything in my inbox.
Posted 6 months ago # -
I can see why overcharging/double-charging is the problem with online reservations. What is going on is like this:
1. When you reserve it, you are being charged
2. When you go to pick up, you are being charged again. Why? Because that particular redbox machine has not received from their central headquarters system that the DVD is being reserved. So it charges you again, thinking that you are grab-n-go customer.The truth is it is QUITE complicated to fool-proof this operation. This is very similar to how your bank ATM works. Imagine at the second you are reserving, there is also a person renting the same movie at that redbox. Who should win? You or the person at the redbox? This involves locking mechanisms. Now another related issue is after whoever won the DVD, the system or the redbox should roll-back the changes. Overall, it is complicated stuffs.
On top of that, let me guess that those redboxes are running what we commonly called Winblows, ahoo...ahoo, I mean Windows. I leave you to the Google to find out about that OS. What I am leaving out intentionally so far are connectivity issues between central and individual redboxes. You got the picture?
Yes, I am a computer science graduate.
Posted 4 months ago # -
JustAGuy51,
Your comment does not really make sense. There is no possible way the Redbox kiosk will charge you again when you pick up a movie if the system didn't know your DVD was reserved. When you hit "Online Rental Pickup" (can't remember exact wording) and swipe your card, if the system didn't know about your rental, it would tell you so.
Now, if you rent online, and then goto the kiosk and hit "Rent a DVD" and rent it again, then yes, obviously you will be charged again because you started a new transaction. You didn't complete the one your started online.
Yes, there could be a way for the system to check if the title you are renting and the credit card you are using matches an online reservation, but for whatever reason they chose not to do it that way. Plus, if you used a different credit card when you arrived at the kiosk, all bets are off.
So, it is not at all an overly complicated system or difficult to do. More than likely any problems are the result of user error, which could possibly be reduced by a better UI and/or more error checking.
And yes, I am a CS graduate, too.
Posted 4 months ago #
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