This post will be the good. Before any of you start writing saying this is an advertisement for DVDNow please reconsider. The very next post will be only the bad, and there is some bad you should know about.

For those of you that don’t know, DVDNow is a Canadian company that manuafactures DVD Kiosks and sells them to the public. Most of their customers are in the United States of America. They sell their kiosks for 15,000 ~ 19,500 USD. Their Kiosk has a very attractive look to it, holds 112 DVDs, and has side panels that are expandable to hold DVD artwork or revenue generating advertising.

The best part of DVDNow has to be the support staff. While I have not been 100% pleased with each and every call, and while a certain support member has irritated me beyond belief a time or two, they do help us owners when we are in need. Nine out of ten times I am taken care of before I disconnect from our call. They typically are very courteous and helpful.

Setup is a snap. The day my first kiosk was delivered, it took me three times longer to remove the box and shrink-wrap than to set it up. A local computer/technical guy was sent by DVDNow to assist with the setup. Seriously, once the machine is unboxed, you simply move it to the final location, plug in the cat 5, plug in the power, and load up the movies. Some users have experienced an issue with ports on the stores firewall however from what I understand most of these issues are resolved quickly.

Being able to rent movies in their original jewel case is definately a plus. I can sell up to 70% of my movies straight from the kiosk because the customer gets the original DVD case. There is a downside to this and I will discuss it tomorrow in the Bad.

The guts of the kiosk are fairly simple and straight forward. I have had to replace a few parts on my kiosk. While inside I took the liberty of snooping around a little. Most everything in the kiosk is easy to reach and clearly labeled or marked.

The reason I went with DVDNow was its very attractive look and simplistic design. As you can see from the items listed about I have had a few good surprises along the way. Stay tuned for the next installment when we will be discussing the bad.

The last batch of RFID tags I received looked like pretty normal. As I was sticking the RFID tags on the DVDs I did not notice anything out of the ordinary. My first clue that something was wrong happened as I was sticking the first DVD in my machine for the week. The DVD was spit back out at me with an RFID security tag error. After three or four tries to get the machine to accept my DVD I gave up and tried the second movie. I was surprised to get the same error. Of the six movies I was going to put in the machine only two went in without a problem. I replaced the tags on the other four movies and after going through several third, fourth, and fifth tries I finally got all six movies in the kiosk.

The next day went no better. I was called at 7:30 in the morning with a customer wanting one of the movies. The movie would not come out of the machine. The store employee told me the kiosk was returning a security tag error. I had no choice but to give the customer a coupon code so she could watch another movie for free but she would have to wait a day before I could get her the movie she wanted.

I also had a customer return a movie after a full night’s rental that the kiosk refused as invalid or missing security tag. Oh my, another new release movie that I could not rent for a day or two.

DVDNow was very quick to send me a new batch of RFID tags. This batch seems to be working flawlessly, however the lost rentals and frustrated customers and employees have already occurred.

Thanks for your understanding and patience. I have not been blogging long enough to have a the number of posts queed for such an extended rainy season. I hope to return to somewhat of a normal schedule next week.

With the volatile market of recent weeks if you are making money consistently you are doing good. BullTrade posted on its website that it completed the month of March with a 9.5% loss. They are posting gains of 11 & 15 percent for April and May. In June BullTrade posted a 6 % gain and so far in July they have done a little better than 20%.

However, to be fair to everyone I have to point out that BullTrade is sitting on 9 stocks that are performing miserably. Currently, they have a total of 9 stocks in their portfolio and all 9 have lost money. As of today they are down an average of 12% in their holdings.

It seems like when I started the DVD rental business I dealt with issues a lot more than I do now. I am not sure if people are more acclimated to the process now or if there is another reason for the decline. What ever the reason I like it. The less complaints that I get the better for business.

Here is a list of complaints that I have dealt with since November 2007.

1. Approval non-charges on the bank cards. If you accept debit cards in you kiosk (and you had better) then get read for this one. When you preauthorize a customers debit or bank card the bank will lock or freeze the amount you authorize. Unfortunately when you charge off the sale to the customers card and the charged amount differs from the authorization amount, the locked money is not the money the bank takes. It creates a new transaction crediting their account and leaves the locked money frozen. The frozen money may stay locked up for ten to thirty days depending on the bank. I have had several calls about this. Unfortunately, when the customer calls the bank the bank teller usually tells the customer that I have taken the money from their account. Apparently it looks that way to the teller and it takes some serious explaining to the customer to make them believe I am not trying to rip them off.
2. Movie would not play: This is what I have been most surprised by since starting into the DVD Rental Kiosk business. I am amazed at how people treat my DVDs. Some of the DVDs look like they have been scrubbed with sand paper and used as a Frisbee on a gravel parking lot. It goes without saying that in this instance you have to remove the DVD from the machine. I am thankful that most of the time it is something other than a permanent scratch and I can take a cotton cloth and gently rub the smudges off.
3. Movie will not go back in the kiosk: Typically it is an RFID tag issue when this happens. Generally speaking customer has usually damaged it somehow. The machine has a feature that allows the customer to bypass security and return the DVD with a damaged RFID tag. The DVD is locked and I have to personally inspect it before the customer is billed and the DVD released for rental. Obviously I would want to look and make sure the DVD was returned in the jewel case, not only to know what amount to charge the returning customer but to make sure no one else rents an empty DVD case. My DVD Kiosk also requires an ‘insert this way’ tag on the DVD Jewel case. If that tag has been removed by someones child or pet then the movie will not go back in the machine. There is no way around this one so I have left several stickers at the store locations and taught the employees how to adhere the stickers.
4. Sticker came off in my DVD player: I have had this complaint only once. I was told by a customer that the RFID tag came off inside their DVD player. While I was not 100% sure about the customers ’story’ I was very quick to offer the customer a free movie rental for their trouble.

Customer satisfaction is my goal 100% of the time. Each time a customer calls with a complaint or an issue I am quick to offer them a 100% refund or a couple of movie rentals for free. I have noticed that the customers are very loyal to the machine after using the free rental coupon codes I give them. I like purchasing a product where I know it is guaranteed and I will give my customers no less.

What complaints are you guys/gals getting and how do you handle them?

Here are the numbers this week:

As you can plainly see all numbers are down again. This is not really a surprise as I have not pushed any real content out this week.

• Friday: Receive and prepare new release DVDs. This includes placing RFID tags and ‘Insert this way’ stickers on the DVD.
• Sunday: Load movies in one kiosk. Clean and maintain kiosk. You will not believe the greasy hand prints that are all over the machine each week. I bring a pack of Windex wipes with me.
• Monday: Finalize any ads to be run this week and load movies into second DVD Kiosk. Clean and maintain kiosk.
• Tuesday: Look ahead 6-8 weeks and order any new movies from the distributor.
• Wednesday: Load trailers into DVD kiosk for the next release date. I use the back-end kiosk management software to do this.
• Thursday: Accounting and bill paying and ordering of supplies. Supplies would include any stickers and tags needed along with anything else used in my home office.

There you have it, what happens behind the scenes to make sure the DVD Rental Kiosk stays full of new release movies.

The numbers are looking better though. The fact that we just had a holiday weekend with a little rain in the area did not hurt matters however the rentals were already up. In fact, the day after I ran my first advertisement rentals and income went up.

Income has gone up $15 a day with initial rentals up almost 5 movies a night. While on face value this does not sound like a whole lot but when you multiply $15 times 365 days it is just shy of $5,500 bucks. Now that is what I am talking about.

Let’s not get too excited yet. Remember, I am paying around $130 a week to run the larger ad. At only $15 a day I am still loosing about $15 a week. The large ad ran for the last time this week with the smaller $60 ad starting next week. The plan is for the initial rentals to keep climbing from the effects of this campaign.

Well, that is all for now but I will keep you informed.

My blog is certainly headed in the wrong direction, statistics wise. I haven’t been cultivating traffic the way I had been over the past few weeks. Mostly relying on traffic driven to my site from Google and yahoo. As you can see from the stats below everything is down except the number of pages each person looks at.

I am not concerned about the revenue being down. Until I start counting traffic by the hour instead of by the day I don’t expect this site to be profitable. I am starting to be a little concerned because the traffic count is not growing. I have several people looking and reading but so far not many people putting this site on technorati, del.icio.us, digg, or stumbleupon. Until Google picks the site up consistently on several search phrases it looks like I will have to rely on the other sources.

Have a wonderful 4th of July holiday.

Each and every time I go to the kiosk I am asked by customers, “What is coming out this week?” This is a question I like because it shows interest in my inventory and possible conversions to rentals. It humors me though because the first thing I do when putting in new movies is to place a sign on my machine alerting customers what the new releases of the week are.

Why don’t you have movie “fill in the blank” in your machine? Most of the time I have never even heard of the movie in question but the times that I have the movie may have grossed a million or two at the box office. I politely tell them I have never heard of the movie or it just did not do well enough at the theaters for me to purchase.

One of my favorites is, “Hey, why don’t you put this kiosk over here at this location?” Meaning they have a better place in mind for my kiosk. I have been asked this many times including while standing next to one of the managers with whom I have an agreement to keep this kiosk in their store. I just let the person know that I am quite happy with my location and if they are interested in a kiosk of their own I will get them the number to a distributor. I do remember the locations however, just in case I one day purchase another machine.

One of the hardest questions to answer is, “Why did you charge my bankcard twice?” I get this question about twice a month. You see, when you use a credit card to rent a movie, my kiosk checks to see if you have $ 2.14 available on your credit card. It actually reserves that amount until the transaction is closed with the movie returned and the full price of the rental charged. However, on a check/debit card it works differently. When the customer first rents the movie a hold is placed on $ 2.14. That hold is reserved for as long as the bank wants to hold it. Some banks are 10 days while others are up to 30. Even if the movie is returned and the balance is paid in full the $ 2,14 reservation remains attached to their account until the bank decides to remove it. When the customer calls the bank to verify what I have told them the unknowing teller at the bank tells them that I actually have taken the money from their account. After assuring them many times on the phone I ask the customer to please wait a few days and it will clear up on its own. They usually do wait and it always clears up.

My favorite question is, “Why do you not take cash?” I know, you think I am making this up. I really am not. I have been asked this in the past week. When asked, why I don’t take cash, I typically start out with a big grin. Trying my best not to let the customer hear an audible laughing sound. Once I am composed I very politely explain that the credit card is the only mechanism I have of identifying the customer. After a little more explanation about how someone might possible take a few of my movies out of the machine for $2.14 and never return them, I see the light turn on in their heads. Oh, the say. You mean someone might steal your movies.

I would love to hear your most frequently asked customer questions.