So the worst company in the world got a little bit bigger. I was
informed via email that Vudu, Walmart's simple streaming service that
plugged into the now-defunct Ultraviolet library, was purchased by
Fandango.

"Wait, not another Apple rant?"

Yeah, no. As anti-consumer as Apple is, they pale in comparison to the
venereal disease that is Fandango, the company that is little more
than a legal version of scalping without nearly as good customer
service as you'd get from some shady character wearing a trenchcoat
selling "Rollex" watches in an alley.

Consistent with their avalanche of 1-star reviews, I also had an
absolutely terrible experience with them (thanks to Fandango gift
cards). I wanted to see Jurrassic World. The first one. I was going
with my date when an emergency cropped up and we couldn't go. It was
just before the show so the official refund window was closed. Fine.
We never got the tickets, so surely I could get a refund anyway.

Wrong. Wrong on all counts. After being in a chat or on the phone for
hours with their "customer service" department, the best offer I got
was a $20 credit to Flickr, a paid image hosting site owned by, you
guessed it, Fandango. I ignored the offer and unfortunately didn't
have the foresight to challenge the purchase with my bank, literally
the only way you can get a refund from those disgusting Nazis.
Actually, calling Fandango upper-management and PTBs Nazis is a
horrendous insult to Nazis. Pretty much all the other reviews have
similar "You'll get a refund when hell freezes over even when it's our
fault" stories. I feel really sorry for the ones that got screwed over
because the site glitched and randomly assigned it to the wrong
theater, wrong showtime, or ate their gift card codes. Does it strike
anyone else as wrong or illegal if you pay for tickets and when
tickets are not received, you're not allowed to get a refund? Seems
exactly like fraud and depending on jurisdiction, a felony. I got
"lucky" and was only out ~$20 of gift card money.

So now I'm going to have to find a way to either stream-capture my
Vudu library (most are BD/DVD Ultraviolet copies, so I already have
those, but around 5-10 of them are not available to me anywhere else)
or buy the movies I own so I can get away from those dictators.
Thankfully most movie theaters have their own online ticket sales
programs, and they don't upcharge you for getting to use an orange
eyebleed-inducing UI, a "convenience fee" that is supposedly
non-refundable, upwards of $3 per ticket. Loathsome thieves.

Suffice it to say, never ever ever ever ever ever use Fandango. If the
CEO was dying of thirst in the desert and I had more water than I
could carry, I'd dump the water out in front of him (where he couldn't
possibly drink it) and kick sand in his mouth. There is not a word I
know that adequately describes how much I loathe Fandango.