Capitalism never cleans up it's own messes
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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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.
Cletus from receiving
You don't need Cletus from receiving to do it. You just need to uh, suggest, to a certain portion of their clientele that a Redbox MIGHT have copper in it and boy it'd be a shame if it were to vanish, and I'm sure nature will take care of the rest.
That's how you get a Redbox smashed into a million pieces all over your parking lot.
Platinum
Weeeelllllll.... Yeah I guess you have a good point. If something did happen, finger pointing starts.
Gestures at wires
But it's right there! I need a 1-day OSHA permit just to yank crap out!
"Hey, is that ELVIS behind you?!"
*snipsnip*
They only care about ~~shifting blame~~ I 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.
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
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.
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..
Being left in the barn means someone will buy a really cool old kiosk in 30-60 years.
A really cool kiosk full of dead rats that drank the coolant
Dinner AND a movie? Sign me up.
They died in the most environmentally friendly way possible
Those are the best ones, ya get a kiosk and pest control!
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.
Stores need to start collecting a disposal deposit for these kiosks. Whatever it costs to dispose of the store should collect twice that and place in escrow and if the kiosk owner fails to remove it the store can get the money and dispose of it. I say twice the amount because depending on how long they stay there costs could go up and the trouble for making the store do it should get a bonus. If the kiosk owner removes it themselves then they get the deposit back.
Did the stores not profit off of the machines being there for all of these years?
I can't imagine redbox wasn't paying these stores some kind of rent or commission, otherwise why would the store let them just post up their business on their property?
Profit doesn't incur ownership or liability for property that's not theirs.
No, but any smart business would retain some of the revenue they got from the red box for scenarios where they may have to deal with shit they didn't expect.
In other words, the revenue they gained from having a red box on their property for 10 years probably more than covers the insurance claim they can file to get it taken care of.
Their profit from the device was all worked out ahead of time in the contract, and no business is going to freely lessen their return out of a contract. What the person you responded to was suggesting is making the removal of the equipment a non-issue instead of just assuming a business will throw away money.
I assume business would insure against scenarios like this, whether that's through securing cash as they suggested or if that isn't an option (which seems to be the reality of the situation) through things like, escrow accounts, insurance, and cash on hand.
You say the businesses wouldn't just 'throw away money' yet here we are, the businesses, by not 'throwing away money' are stuck with these machines to deal with.
I understand that the person was saying that the business should have collected a deposit, but they didn't, so my question is, why are these businesses caught out by this? Why didn't they prepare for the risk they assumed by subletting their property, if they didn't collect a deposit, they should have sequestered some cash to handle this scenario.
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.
Lmfao no one suing from a bankrupt company
someone bought those machines in liquidation, whether they want them or not, or even know if they're theirs
It's a risk to remove the machine and do something with it if whoever that is eventually says "give those the fuck back to me I wanna sell em to nerds who'll use em for their collections" or whatever
There's a certain point where they become abandoned property, and you can just do with them whatever you want. My guess is that it's some point after the existing contract runs out, plus 30/90/365 days or whatever. Possibly requiring a court order, public notice, or something else. This will depend entirely on your jurisdiction's laws on abandoned property.
Companies doing the bankruptcy that redbox is going through are required to liquidate their assets. The machines have been or will be sold. And you can be sure there's an inventory.