My wife and I have been enjoying the DVD rental machines that they have at McDonalds. $1/DVD/Night – Good deal. It gets better, when you give them your email address, they send an email about once a month (plus one per rental – your receipt) that often has codes you can use for free rentals. On top of that, you can use a coupon code once PER CREDIT CARD. I have several in my wallet, and tend to be able to rent more free movies than I have time to watch.
Today we went in to get a few movies and a kid working there asked if I had the code for a free movie “APE”. I was there to rent with “KONG”. I realized there were more codes available than I had been aware of. A quick google search turned up “inside redbox”, a site dedicated to sharing codes for free rentals. Given the number of codes reported to have been active TODAY, and the number of CCs in my wallet, I think I could rent every title in the machine
Redbox DVD rental machines are in McDonald’s joints in: Baltimore, Washington D.C., Denver, Houston, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, the Twin Cities, Las Vegas, and Hartford.
I’m convinced that they aren’t there to make money from rentals, but rather act as a lure to get people into the joint to buy a big mac. They get you to go in to rent the movie, and again the next day to return it – pretty good exposure if you ask me.
I’m also going to run a little experiment to see if they give out people’s email addresses. Not that I care, that’s what spam accounts are for.