I suppose that the following is nothing new to a lot of people, in fact, considering my current profession, it shouldn't be anything new to me either. However, that doesn't make it any less impressive.
Tonight I decided to rent a movie. Normally I just wait for the Netflix, but I just sent one back yesterday and haven't received the new one yet. I have used Redbox once before, but I had to enter a Walmart (just typing the word makes me squeemish) to get that movie, and even though I returned it to Festival Foods, I wasn't sold on Redbox yet. Since I hate going to Walmart, and because I heard that you could reserve Redbox movies online, I went to the Redbox website to check out the reservation process.
I found a few movies that I liked, tried to ask my napping wife what she preferred, and searched for the titles at my nearest Redbox--hoping for the Festival Foods (so I could pick up some ice cream too). I found the movie I wanted at a nearby McDonalds and clicked reserve. It asked for my credit card number, and since I'm using a Mac, I felt comfortable entering it online. No less than two seconds after I clicked the reserve button, my BlackBerry started vibrating. I assumed it was my friend Tito texting me, but it was my confirmation/receipt email from Redbox. It got to my BlackBerry before it even got to my computer.
I drove to the McDonalds to pick up my movie, wondering how it would know which movie was mine. When I got to the machine I tapped the screen where it said "Pickup reserved movie" and tried to scrape the inevitable stickiness of the McDonalds floor off of my flipflop. It asked me to swip my credit card, which I did, and within thirty seconds, my DVD was in my hand. Before I could hurdle the Hi-C spill in the doorway and exit the McDonalds, my BlackBerry buzzed again with another confirmation of my $1.07 charge to my credit card.
Amazing.
Ideally, I'd like if our nation's advances in technology meant that we'd have government supplied internet access, we'd all be driving electric cars and we'd be dependant on wind and solar energy rather than coal and oil. But for the time being, I'll settle for the easiest movie rental imaginable.
(...and I did end up getting the ice cream from Festival too).
1 comment:
Love it! Not too long ago I paid $.83 / minute to call Jon and had to use the school's only computer to receive a print out from his emails (which were posted on the school's bulletin board by the teacher's lounge).
Post a Comment