Bankruptcy Took Down the Redbox Machine. If Only Someone Could Take Them Away.
Bankruptcy Took Down the Redbox Machine. If Only Someone Could Take Them Away.
They’re not just taking up store space. Retailers say the machines interfere with remodeling plans and expose them to potential safety hazards and liabilities. Some kiosks are hardwired into stores’ electrical systems. Outdoor machines are bolted into the concrete foundations and contain a coolant that is supposed to be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner
Capitalism never cleans up it's own messes
We call those externalities, the taxpayers will handle them if we ignore them long enough that they become a crisis
This should have been settled in bankruptcy court as part of business wind down before anyone got a penny of assets divided proceeds. When it's not then another legal battle is required to get the company to do what it should have. Such a waste of time and needless burden for society. Unfortunately, regulatory capture and representative funding capture is almost total so no laws will be passed to change it.
The Redbox Crisis
Someone went to business school
Cleaning thongs up doesnt make any money. :(
Maybe if you focus on strip-clubs and other target-rich environments.
Why would they? That doesn't sound profitable. /s
Not many people know this, but the RedBoxes are free. You can just take them.
I have 291 RedBoxes in my yard.
I have 291 RedBoxes in my yard.
Can I take those? ;)
its_free_real_estate.jpg
I kinda want one of these. I could load it up with my collection. It'd be awesome. I can imagine my SO's blood boiling already at the sight of "more useless junk"!
And what do you need an electrician for? Turn off power, open a panel, and disconnect the wires. Snip snip. Frankly, I'm surprised a dedicated switch/breaker for a 3rd party kiosk isn't mandatory.
If only I had the space ...
And what do you need an electrician for?
lol, OSHA compliance. WalMart can't have Cletus from receiving just opening 110 boxes.
They only care about
shifting blameI mean managing liability
Our wives must know each other. Me recently: it's not useless junk! It's a CD tower NAS with 10 base t token ring capability! The guy who ran a bbs in my local calling area had one that served up Warez in 1997! I was a very early adopter of mp3. I used the original program released by the fraunhoeffer Institute to rip my friend's metallica bootlegs and upload them for extra leech credits. It would take half a day to encode 128kbps mp3 files on my non-mmx cyrix 6x86, and I could only store 1 CD worth of mp3s at a time on my 800mb hard drive. Besides, I got a really good deal on it!
You telling me these boxes are basically free for the taking?
Theyve been hanging around almost long enough for dvd nostalgia to set in.
Maybe fill up a barn and sit on them for a few more years
Contain coolant? Were these machines internally air conditioned???
They likely were for outdoor units. An outdoor box in a hot climate exposed to the sun could easily reach 160f internally, and that's hot enough to start softening and potentially warping the DVD plastics or causing problems with the LCD control screen.
I'm guessing it's for the outdoor units so the discs don't get damaged. They wouldn't need any AC indoors.
More or less, yes. So they have refrigerant and not coolant.
There are appliance disposal companies who will recover any refrigerant and haul away any piece of large equipment for scrap. It would probably cost about $500 to get rid of a redbox.
If it’s bolted to the concrete or wired directly maybe another $500.
Cost of doing business in my opinion.
The one outside my local right-aid was hit by a car about 2 years ago. It's still sitting there all mangled and sad looking.
Coool. I wanna see
On one hand, all they might have to do is tell people "if you want one, come and get it" and that problem would be sort of solved. But then for every one that gets turned into something useful, probably 20 of them will be left in a barn or something, not really solving the problem..
I saw one sitting out behind a retail store among other trash, so they haven't even bothered properly disposing of them.
The store doesn't want to pay for disposal because it's not their crap. And redbox isn't going to pay for it because they're bankrupt.
What hardware could they contain? Probably if you showed up and offered to take em away the stores wouldn't even mind.
They don't belong to the stores. They have to get court approval to remove them.
The ones in New York should get turned into Red Vox machines