When you work the return station in Retro Rewind, there’s a chance for a few different events happening regarding the tapes. Usually, you simply find a tape that needs to be rewound, has been returned late, or has been reserved and needs to be put on the proper shelf.
Unfortunately, there’s also a chance that you’ll find a broken tape in the returns. The odds of this happening are lower compared to other options, but it still happens more than you might expect.
Removing Broken Tapes
There’s nothing you can do with a broken tape other than throwing it away in the trash bin that’s located under the slushie machine. A fee of $20 will be automatically applied to the account of the customer who returned the broken tape, which will be charged the next time they’re rung up at the cash register.
Some customers will be upset with the fee when they’re asked to pay it, and you can waive it. However, the $20 fee is enough to help you replace the tape in most cases. The worst that can happen is the customer will refuse to pay and storm out, but that doesn’t happen often in my experience.
Even if you have an employee working the register for you, you can be called over to speak with the customer if they’re particularly upset about the fee, and that’s when the risk of them refusing to pay and storming out is higher.
Replacing Broken Tapes
When a tape is broken, getting a replacement can be tough, especially because Retro Rewind doesn’t include instructions for this when teaching you the mechanics. If the tape is a new movie, then you can just go to the computer in your office and buy another copy in the “New” tab as long as it hasn’t been 7 days in-game yet, which is when movies are removed from the category.
If the tape is older, then your only option is to buy it from the “Black Market” tab using the SKU. The SKU of your tapes can be found if you choose the inspect option, which is the F key by default, while holding the tape. The SKU can be highlighted and copied, so you don’t need to memorize it.
Then, go to the computer in your office and type the SKU into the Black Market. The prices vary wildly, but that means you can get a good deal on a replacement. However, it also means that a replacement for your broken tape can be unreasonably expensive.
When to Replace a Broken Tape
The demand of the movie, the availability, and price of the movie on the black market are the factors to consider when to replace, or trash a broken tape in Retro Rewind. It will also help if the broken fees were paid by the customer for that tape. However, unless you can memorize which customer rents every tape, you’ll have a hard time knowing this for each of the broken tapes, especially if you have an employee working the register instead of yourself.
If it’s a new movie, then it’s easier to replace, but you should have multiple copies of new movies already. So, I’d only replace the new movies when they’re broken if more than one has been broken and my inventory of them is getting low.
If it’s an older movie, then you want to decide based on if it gets rented a lot. Movies that are repeatedly rented are going to recover the cost to replace them even if you don’t get the broken fee paid. It might be pricey on the black market to replace, but if should still only take a handful of rentals to recover that cost.
Otherwise, I recommend trashing the tape and not replacing it. It’s possible that you’ll get another copy from a mystery bundle if you buy them from the shop on your computer, or you might get lucky and find it available at a cheaper price in the normal market options at random.
Once the tape is ordered, if you decided to replace it, you can find it in the drop box in your storage area and put it back on the shelf to rent in Retro Rewind.
