Redbox DVD Location Closings Will Affect Customers in Washington and Oregon
It is the end of an era; time to say farewell to Redbox DVDs.
They were like a cute mini-version of Blockbuster to me: the last remnants of bringing movies back or else pay a late fee fine!
I never use Redbox anymore since I started paying through the nose for what feels like an endless supply of streaming services. I feel nickel and dimed to death; I might as well get cable again, geez!
But one thing I could always count on was that cute little red kiosk with the latest movie releases on demand. As of today, Redbox DVD company is headed for bankruptcy, according to a report from ABC News and Engadget.com.
Redbox is owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (yes, the same people who brought us those Chicken Soup for the Soul self-help books in the late 90s and early 2000s).
I remember the first time I started getting movies on Redbox. It was cool because I could whip out my DVD player after I brushed all the dust off the top of it. My 13-year-old daughter likes to stop and see which movies they have on the poster board just in case she gets a wild hair and wants me to rent a movie for her.
"I've already seen that," she usually says when I ask her if she wants me to rent one of the Redbox movies.
Even if you didn't get your movies on DVD copies, you could use the Redbox app. I know this because I installed it on my Roku TV a couple of years back.
WHY DID REDBOX SHUT DOWN?
The company that owns Redbox is in nearly one billion dollars in debt.
Redbox has 711 cities in the Pacific Northwest that will be impacted by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Chicken Soup of the Soul Entertainment.
This will no doubt devastate hundreds of thousands of customers (dare I say millions) all over the country. According to the Redbox website, there are 133 cities in Washington state that have Redbox locations, 477 towns in California, and 101 cities in Oregon.
Judging by the amount of people who patiently wait in Redbox line on the sidewalk at my local Walgreens, the loss of this convenient service is going to be felt hard.
I was shocked to see that the remaining employees at Redbox reportedly have not received paychecks for the last 4 weeks and when they were let go, they didn't even get a severance package. That's a sad way to go.
