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Iowa No Snooze News ? Law and Disorder - The Redbox Robbers

By Steve Lombardi

Des Moines, Iowa – Redbox, the DVD kiosk company is attracting a lot of attention on Wall Street. Apparently that's not all who are paying attention to the company's product line. Two robbers attacked a man refilling the kiosk. The man, Alex E. Currie was just doing his job of refilling the kiosk when he was attacked by two men who punched him so hard he was temporarily knocked unconscious. He came too and as the one robber who was rummaging through his car notice he was awake came back but this time Mr. Currie got in his own licks by driving his knee into the guy's face; which caused the guy in the getaway car to intervene to rescue his accomplice yelling at the victim as they left. This Redbox is located in a parking lot anchored by HyVee on 4605 Fleur Drive. The landlord may want to consider installing video surveillance cameras or moving the kiosk closer to or inside of the building. Many if not all HyVee's in central Iowa are open 24 hours. Criminal activity will not help attract or keep customers. The property at 4605 Fleur Drive is according to the Polk County Assessor's website owned RACCOON VALLEY INVST CO and occupied by a HyVee grocery store with contact through HY-VEE INC, REAL ESTATE, 5820 WESTOWN PKWY, WEST DES MOINES, IA 50266-8223. The building is over 91,000 square feet in size and valued at $5,820,000.

This photograph from the Assessor's site doesn't show the kiosk.

In Iowa there are Redbox kiosks in HyVee, McDonalds, Dahl's, Walmart, Kum & Go, Walgreens, Cub Foods stores. Some are inside and others outside. If you go to the Redbox website you can search in central Iowa for which require you to be outside and exposed to the criminal element that seems to breed during bad economic periods. Each location indicates whether it's inside or outside.

Jobs working for Redbox is shown thru the Coinstar website. I've never seen this site and notice they show the type of jobs available at each site. Those jobs include coin counting and coin donation. Coinstar sells and markets coin counting, prepaid products that turn coin into cash using self-service kiosks. Here is how they describe who they are. The annual report cover shows areas of business to include coin, dvd rental, e-payment, entertainment and money transfers. They handle coin-type operated vending machines like those used with DVD rentals, the horse ride outside some department stores along with money exchange products.

Our vision for Coinstar is to be the world's leading supplier of valuable services that make life easier for consumers. Coinstar was founded on a truly innovative idea of turning consumer change into cash, conveniently, at a self-service kiosk. Over time, the company has not only significantly expanded its footprint and product lines, but we've leveraged our expertise to bring incremental value to consumers and retail customers at the front of the store. Just as we did in the early days, we will continue to innovate, focusing on consumer needs – and we will look both inside and outside the company to add even greater value to our 4th Wall_® offering.

The Coinstar stock is traded on the NASDAQ with the symbol CSTR. The current stock price is $31.19 per share. The company has a total revenue stream of over $1.1B US with a net income of over $53 million. Here is the corporate profile. The quick ratio indicates they have cash on hand to make the outside kiosks safer. Investors obviously have faith in this company with it trading at a PE ratio of 37.12.

Coinstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSTR) is a leading provider of automated retail solutions offering convenient services that make life easier for consumers and drive incremental traffic and revenue for its retailers. The company's core automated retail businesses are self-service coin counting and self-service DVD rental. Other Coinstar services include e-payment and money transfer services. The company's services can be found at more than 95,000 points of presence including supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchants, financial institutions, convenience stores, restaurants, and money transfer agents.

Checking Coinstar's annual report for 2008 with a search of the terms crime, criminal or assault did not produce any meaningful hits. There was no specific mention of 'criminal activity' against employees or independent contractors. The company doesn't appear to see this issue as too great a risk to it's business model.

This company operates in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico and the United States.

Its days like this that the working stiffs of the world have just had it with this rat race; where they can lay low on the beach and just relax. I think in this case Alex earned a time out in the sun with one of those umbrella drinks. He's Kenny who can take you there, at least mentally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYs6SHWt--k

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on March 18, 2010 (boomark / email).