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Here’s one for Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do“.

I go to Redbox once a week or so to rent movies for a dollar and I love it. The price is so cheap, I wouldn’t really even notice I paid it, which is why half the time I wind up keeping them for 3 or 4 days longer than I meant to. Redbox knows that it’s human nature to avoid going out of one’s way to return the movie on time if all it’s going to cost is another dollar for one more day. They make money off me, and I don’t feel cheated at all. It’s a win-win.

Last night as I returned my DVD to my local Redbox at Harris Teeter in Cameron Village, a thought occured to me. Why doesn’t Redbox take a cue from Google, Amazon, and NetFlix?

My biggest problem with Redbox is that there are pages and pages of movies I’ve never heard of before. When I get done renting the new releases I wanted to see, I have no choice but to wait a few weeks for the next set of releases. I’ve tried to rent a few of the movies I’d never heard of before, but there was no real way for me to know ahead of time that they were crap. The only time I’ve felt cheated by Redbox was that dollar I spent on ‘Surfer Dude’.

So here’s a suggestion Redbox: when I turn in my movie, how about displaying 5 stars on the touchscreen display and asking me to rate the movie? I wouldn’t mind giving you the information free and just think of how you can use it to grow your sales!

If Redbox had everyone who turned in a movie review it, they can do a lot of things. They can put star ratings below each movie to help guide people to some great movies that they’ve never heard of  before. They can help me avoid renting a movie like Surfer Dude and get it out of their rotation as quickly as possible once they see that people hate it. They can even take my reviews, compare them to people with similar opinions and help point me to some recommendations!

If Redbox offered me a little guidance each time I came to rent another movie, I can GUARANTEE I’d wind up renting more often each month. They already track our email addresses, why not put that information into play!