Redbox Plotting 20 Percent Price Hike To Start Monday [Increased Operating Expenses Are Leading Redbox To Consider 20 Percent Price Boost, But Not Across The Board]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Friday, 28. October 2011 under: Audio,Visual

We haven’t heard much out of Redbox lately, probably because Redbox has been quietly plugging away, racking up big sales and not making a fuss over it like Netflix has been doing with its constant policy changes. But now, there’s word that Redbox is looking to make a policy change of its own, though not near so pronounced of one as Netflix was. Redbox is talking price hike…but not on everything.

Basically, Redbox is considering a 20 percent price hike. And that by itself might be sufficient to make more than a few people freak out, until you consider two things. One, the price hike is looking to hit on the regular DVDs only, not the Blu-ray or the games. And two, Redbox’s prices for DVD rentals were a dollar per day, bringing the price up to a relatively yawn-inducing total of $1.20 per day, compared to $1.50 a day for Blu-ray and $2 a day for games.

Not exactly a wallet-breaker, that, but when viewed in the light of Netflix’s recent staggering price increases for DVD and streaming rentals, it seems especially tame. Though admittedly, even with the price hikes, if you use a lot of Netflix movies you’ll quickly get a better deal with Netflix’s one-price DVD rentals than you ever would with Redbox. Thus, the impact on your wallet will vary depending on how many movies you watch in a month.

The reason behind the price hike? Reasonable and fairly simple: the Durbin Amendment recently passed in Congress, boosting debit card interchange fees slightly, and as that’s largely how Redbox operates, the prices needed to go up to absorb the loss.

I don’t look for this one to do near as much damage to Redbox as Netflix’s price hike did. One, it’s a comparatively small hike. Two, it’s for a perfectly valid and well-explained reason. Three, it’s done in advance–the price hike kicks in on Monday, so you’ve got the weekend to go renting at the normal rate.

But what about you guys? Any Redbox customers going to abandon Redbox over that price jump? Or does it make sufficient sense–and is of a sufficiently small size–that you can just let it go without incident? Either way, we want to hear from you, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!