I ordered my Box Office Express from AED in March, after visiting South Florida and seeing a machine in a Whole Foods grocery store, and visiting the AED office in Hollywood and speaking briefly with Cesar Menendez.
The agreement with AED when you purchase a machine says that they will provide secretarial service to help with getting a location for your machine. Talk about pathetic support. My first contact at their "locations" department, Desiree, suggested 2 locations she was very excited about in the Denver area. I checked them both out. The first was a small strip mall with a bulldozer BEGINNING destruction of the site that she recommended. The second site was a very small mall, with a lot of vacant stores.
My four year old even commented, "Daddy, there's nobody in here." After two months of locations searching, I felt pressure to accept a location with only 145 apartments, since they could find no other locations in the entire Denver area. I grudgingly accepted it. Fortunately, the site did not meet the requirements for installing a phone line for the modem, so I asked for continued help to find another location, all the while waiting for word of delivery...
I also called 4 references provided, and got the impression from these references that they were grossing between $4000-$8000 per month, in apartment buildings and near a college campus.
My machine was delayed, and delayed, finally getting delivered in very late July, after AED provided a letter from V&L Tools in Waukasha, Wisconsin, the manufacturer of the American version of the Box Office Express.
I was told my machine was waiting in a warehouse in Denver for me, in July, when in fact it was in Chicago (suppodedly). The technician who installed my machine spent 8 days working on the installation, when he wasn't busy intalling another machine at Buckley ANG Base in Aurora Colorado.By the way, the owner of that machine, whom I've spoken with, is just as upset as I am, and also posted on Usa Consumer Complaints.com.
After 8 days of installation and troubleshooting, the technician from Universal Tech Support left, thinking the machine was finally working. The next day it jammed again. The robotic arm inside was not able to reliably slide DVDs into or out of the pockets where they are stored in the machine. I called Universal Tech Support for help, since my machine was dysfunctional.By the way, they don't answer the phones on weekends. I called every day for 8 days after the technician left, spending hours on the phone, or on hold, trying to get some support. On the 8th day, I tried to call Jim MacArthur, but was told he doesn't take these kind of calls. (Not the answer he gave in response to someone else who complained here).
I asked to talk to a supervisor at AED, Ed Farlow, who was not available, so I left a message. He did not call the next day, so I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint. I have yet to hear a response on my BBB complaint, despite BBB's assertion that I should hear from AED regarding my complaint within 30 days. That 30 days expired September 12.
Universal Tech Support, which is owned by the same holding company as AED, PRM Investment Corp, I believe, has not bothered to train its technicians in accordance with the agreement with V&L Tools, the manufacturer of the American machine. I spoke with Randy Shaeffer (or is it Schaeffer? Sorry Randy) today in regards to AED. He is VERY upset with their lack of compliance with their agreement. V&L Tools doesn't have enough technicians to run around the country fixing the machines, and that is why Universal Tech is supposed to be training their technicians at the factory in Wisconsin. Apparently that will START happening tomorrow, finally.
Now to the main event. My machine, since late July, has never operated at a functional level for more than 4-5 days in a row. First I had the robotic arm jamming issue. Dan Shaeffer, from V&L, finally came out after my 8 days of screaming at Universal Tech. He tightened a set screw on a Y-axis motor of the robotic arm and recalibrated the pocket software settings.
Since then, which was August 14-16, the machine generally fails either daily or every other day. Three different software versions have been installed on the machine, with the newer versions functioning worse than the previous.
On some versions of the software, if the robotic arm jams, the touchscreen will freeze on the screen that says, "Retriving (name of movie)... Rendering the machine useless until I drive to the location to jank the movie out of the arm, reboot the machine.
On the version I had for two weeks, until this past Friday, the machine will read the barcode on the DVD when the movie is returned, but then, instead of putting the movie in its proper location in the pocket, it spits the movie out the front of the machine, while the touchscreen says, "Unable to read barcode, please try again." This despite the fact that it read the barcode correctly.By the way, when I talk to Universal Tech about these kinds of issues, they are clueless, as they have not been trained well enough to solve these kinds of problems.
Friday, V&L downloaded an older version of the software, to overcome these barcode issues, and now the machine is more functionally diabled. When a customer tries to rent a movie, it retrieves the movie and delivers it out the front, but the touchscreen freezes again, saying, "Retrieving (name of movie)". It doesn't get to the next screen, which would say, "Please wait for your receipt." The only solution is to drive to the machine and reboot it.
There is a capability to remotely dial into the machine using a dial-up modem, and Virtual Network Communication software. A reboot can be done from home with this software, but only if the screen is not frozen. That is somewhat of a Catch-22. I don't need to reboot if its not frozen. If its frozen, I need to reboot, but I can't.
I visited my machine 5 times in the last 4 days to reboot from frozen software.
On September 11, I thought the machine might finally be ready to work, since the set screw was tightened, and new software had been installed. I distributed doorknob flyers to all 450 apartments in the buildings, apologizing for all the problems the tenants had been having. I ran a special on movies as a gesture of goodwill to the tenants.
Twelve hours after I dropped off the last flyer I got my first call that the machine was frozen up.
In addition to freezing and jamming, there are additional problems with subscription rentals (think Netflix). Sometimes it won't accept a return from a subscription renter, alleging that the customer already has 3 movies rented, and needs to return those movies.
Additionally, the thermal printer doesn't work very well. It prints out nonsense in the middle of every receipt, which no one at U Tech or V&L can explain. The blade that cuts the receipt is inside the machine, and there is no guidance as to how to tear off the receipt. If the customer pulls up on the receipt to tear it off, then there is a good chance the future receipts will not print out the front, but will print into the body of the machine. I have a picture in front of me of 10 feet of receipts spilled into the machine.
By the way, as I typed that last paragraph, I was interrupted by a tenant, complaining that the machine was stuck on "Please wait for your receipt" as he was trying to return a movie. He couldn't get back to the main screen to attempt a return. He said he had tried to return the movie twice before in the last 2 days, but the screen was frozen, and now he's concerned about the late fees. I told him I would slip $4 under his door.
I have a friend from work who ordered a machine from AED, and is now in the process of attempting to get his money back after they failed to deliver within 60 days. He has an attorney and has sent multiple registered letters to all parties involved, included the registered agent of AED. No response yet from AED.
I have kept in close contact with another owner like myself in the New York area. He reports the exact same frustrations as I do here. The location for his machine is on a cllege campus. The store owner, after a month or so, got so frsutrated he asked at one point to get the machine out of the store, as it was always broken.
This morning I visited my machine, as I do almost daily. I videotaped it as it froze up 3 successive times as I tried to rent a movie. This is not how a vending machine is supposed to work.
For those of you who are math majors, work this math. The receipt that prints out for a rental is about 6 inches in length. You also get a 3 inch receipt when you return a movie. The thermal paper in the receipt printer is either 80 feet in length or 128 feet. So if one rental uses most of a foot of paper to rent and return, then it would only take less than 200 rentals to use up a spool. I've never heard, and I've asked, about running out of paper being a problem. So either owners are re-stocking the paper every few days, or there aren't many rentals. The receipt printer math does not lie.
A technician from V&L asked me how my machine was doing as he reset the loose set screw. I said it was bringing in about 5 rentals a day. His reply shocked me. He said, "Oh, so its doing well!!!" I asked him how other machines were doing. He said he knew of one in Green Bay that was bringing in about $2000 a month, and that was the best one he knew of. He said if you could do $1500 a month, that was good. Hmmmm...
You be the judge...
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