RBX2NITE

At 6:58pm this evening I got an email from the folks at Redbox. The message said that Redbox was aware that some of its customers may have had difficulty returning movies over the New Year's holiday (having found the Redbox machines full and not accepting returns).... this is a problem I have encountered before, where basically Redbox has decided you *will* be spending another $1 because if you want to return that bloated-over-wrought costume drama that you just suffered through you'll have to check out some lame Adam Sandler movie in order to make room in the box for your return.

Okay, I thought, Great! I'll take a free movie. The code is RBX2NITE. Great! I go to Redbox.com and browse and decide they don't have anything great but I'll rent Public Enemies since the Husband didn't get to see it in the theater. I go to reserve it and what-ho, there's no place for me to put in the offer code.

So I go back to the email and look at the asterisk.

Turns out the code isn't good online. Okay, I can get over that, I figure I'll go visit a local box tomorrow.

Try again.

The code is only valid until 11:59pm Central Time on January 7, 2010. When they say "Redbox Tonight" they mean TONIGHT.

I'm sorry but this is really pretty lame. I mean I didn't even open this email until after 10pm. At this point all of the local Redbox locations are closed (with the exception of the one at the Princeton library and that's only available because it's located outside. Did I mention it is like 19 degrees outside?

So, I guess I'm not going to get that "free" rental after all!