Blockbuster Declared Dead

Blockbuster were shite anyway.

Hmph, now I'm glad I just quit. I was amusingly working there only one night a week to get the five free weekly rentals. After a year, I had pretty much seen all the movies in the store I cared to and so ditched them about a week ago. Que sera.

BB was a dinosaur anyways. It was a company that many consumers weren't all that happy with for several reasons. And Netflix just came along at the right time and split that rock right down the middle. But I still support ma & pa retail DVD rental stores when I can.

It's funny, thinking back to the old days with the "3-day rentals" fraud (which were actually 2 days) and the fiasco that was "No more late fees", to the missed opportunities with the DVD rental window and purchasing Netflix, I certainly won't miss Blockbuster.

I didnt realize that with a simple "OK", we may have had the same deal with DVDs that we had with videos cassettes. I always wondered why that "rental window" thing never happened. That was money in the bank.

I worked in a retail video store in 1990, and I remember so many new titles were fifty, sixty, sometimes even seventy bucks because of the rental window. You had priced to rent and priced to sell, and it was just starting to move towards sell-through pricing. It was crazy -- all we ever sold were older films that weren't renting anymore and kids videos. Hard to believe DVD would have taken off like it has if that practice had carried over, especially with the ripping technology available. No one would pay fifty bucks for a new movie when they could rent it and burn it, and they sure wouldn't bother waiting for the rental window to end.

Good riddance. An evil company I used to work for. They're liars and cheats and deserve it.

I always wondered why there was never a rental window for DVD's...wow I guess Blockbuster was not for thinking too far ahead...well, this news does not bother me anyways, I usally end up buying the films I want anyways, and there is always Netflix for the ones I don't want to pay for.

Blockbuster is a pretty godawful chain. In fact, movie stores in general are pretty godawful (I don't really enjoy driving or calling around to see who might have anything in stock besides 2000 brand new rental copies of the latest Hollywood crap).

Amazon.com is basically my new blockbuster. The time and money I save buying a movie new or used is worth the extra five to ten bucks....plus I have the movie forever.

Yeah, it's not a business I've used in a while and not one I'll miss.

The drop-off has been pretty astonishing, though. A few years ago the nearby Blockbuster was packed on Friday nights and weekends. Now there's hardly anyone there ever.

And since they've raised their prices after dropping the late fees, there's less of an incentive to go there than ever.

This is interesting because I worked at cockbuster 6 years ago. The district manager told the new trainees that the model of business that blockbuster followed was quickly dying and the we should expect new ways of selling things in the future. The plan at the time was directTV if I'm not mistaken.

So long as renting a product costs 4-6 bucks (plus the time/expense of arranging the rental), while at the same buying it costs 10-20 bucks, any type of ordinary rental service is going to provide a shitty service/fail.

Netflix avoids this by completely re-working the rental industry paradigm.

What I want to know is when the big sale is going to be to buy all of these old dvds that they have. Now there are going to be some bargains there.

Well I go to the mom and pop shops. However I miss some of the foreign titles that only Blockbuster carries (usually their selection is ass though). Netflix if I could afford it would be optimal but i'm not surprised to hear this about BB.

They got what they deserved.

I like at the bottom in the ads by google section. It is an ad for nexflix

I wonder if that $60.00 late fee I "forgot" to satisfy 3 years ago is still on the books?
Fuck 'em anyway, their selection was always shit and I hated overhearing the store's patrons talk about how awesome "Glossy Decibel Bursting Shit Movie of the Year" was.

It's just icing on the cake that it was their own bad decision-making that sunk them...twice.

A question for former Blockbuster employees: would they really give late fees to customers at random just because a certain percentage of the clients wouldn't fight it? That's a rumor that's always swirled around my town, though it could have been simply started by some whining customer who was late and refused to admit it.

No, that never happened; at least not at my store. Late fees would accrue because people forgot to bring their damn movies back. Then they would swear up and down that they returned it, and that I was an idiot, and that they were never going to pay the $65 or whatever, and that we would hear from their lawyers, blah, blah blah. The next day, their wayward copy of whatever shit they rented would turn up in our drop box, and then next week they would rent something else and quietly pay their $65. Fortunately, asses like that were the minority.

Regular employees actually had no control over the late charges; the computer would assess them automatically when the movie was scanned back into inventory. The only thing I could ever do was assess a $1 "Failure to Rewind" charge. This was the best because you could do it with a single key stroke. Few things were more satisfying, especailly when the customer in question was someone like example in the previous paragraph.

I'm surprised that they lasted this long. Blockbuster was always a horrible place to go when it was the only thing around.

No late charges were ever added, but I certainly took them away to most anyone who treated me like a human being and was reasonable.

Confessions of a blue shirt.

As a teen, I worked at three different blockbuster stores, and I did witness various shady practices. Every so often one of the managers would tell us not to empty out the drop box or to just stack videos behind the counter and not check them in. Some videos would sit for a good day or two, before we were told to check them in. I was never officially told why. This happened to varying degrees at all three stores. One of the older employees told me this was to make up profit during a time of weak sales, though to be honest it just sounded like gossip. Some of the other employees held the videos of people they didn't like, or of people who were rude.

I loved the people who experienced a very scripted range of emotions.

Confusion:
"What movie? I never rented that! I handed it to so and so. I returned it! It wasn't late!"

Anger:
"This is bullsh*t! Let me talk to your manager! I sue this whole goddamn place! I bankrupt your whole company! Get ready to get fired you little punk!"

Bargaining:
"Come on man give me a break. I'm a good customer. I come here all the time. You know me, can you just wipe it off my account?"

Acceptance:
"Darn. Ok, how much is it?"

Talking about it makes me feel all sentimental...no wait it doesn't.

"Blockbuster will certainly not survive and it will not be missed."

I like this statement.

Good riddance to bad, evil fucking rubbish.

Problems with Blockbuster aside, I've found their online rental service to be excellent. I realize it's a copycat business model but I have always had very fast delivery times and comprehensive customer support. The selection is very good as well. I don't particularly want to switch to Netflix, so what are the odds that the problems Blockbuster is having will extend so far as to sink this part of their business as well?

I did the blockbuster thing through college,,,from lowly CSR all the way up to Manager. The policy for us actually was...if the customer started to put up too much of a fight and it wasn't really a big fine...just take the damn thing off. Seriously I would credit off like $100 a night. Also it should be noted that you couldn't artificially create late fees on someones account. You could certainly create a charge but it would show up as a created charge and the moment it was audited you'd be in a good deal of trouble.

It was fun to tell people the big no when they wanted to you to credit it off. I generally did this to deadbeats who would try to piss on the CSRs. I think half the fun for me was fighting with the public. The other half was working out movie rental for food deals with surrounding eateries. This was quite against company policy but I was a hungry college lad. It should also be mentioned that the stores I worked at consistently had hot chicks. It provided a sustained flow of fun and sexual hijinks in the candy room. I even met my wife working there.

As far as what Thrill said...it sounds more like your stores were just backed up...We checked in the fudgers because it was a big pain in the ass to have them stacked around and because people would want you to look through them for more movies anyways. Plus I didn't want people to get late fees if they actually did turn the movies in on time.

I have to say Blockbuster wasn't all that bad as a college job. It had flexible hours. So if you wanted to take classes during the day you could still get a full weeks worth of shifts in at night. It had it's problems but overall it wasn't terrible. I did get burnt out. I actually quit on Christmas Eve. I was supposed to be officially done the next day but I was damn sick so I left the store manager short workers...like she had always left me.

And Andrew is right. The online service is efficient. Until recently it was cheaper as well.

After maybe 3 years, i stumbled into my local Blockbuster this afternoon in an attempt to buy a copy of Junebug (which is apparently out now...when did that happen?) and the place was very different from the confident, lively place i was used to. It was desterted, signage was down off the walls, selection was sparcer than i expected, and there was just a general sense of dread that made me want to get the hell out of there.

I hope it's sticking around here in oz, out here it's fine, seems to be doing good business, and seems to not be absolute shite like you guys are always complaining about in the states.

then again its highly likely that even though its closing over there it will stay open here, just like we still have k-mart and burger king.

A naked girl walked into the blockbuster I worked at one night. Me and my fellow (male) workers couldn't believe our eyes. Too bad she wasn't very attractive, not to mention she had the body of Keira Knightley, but it was a naked girl... in Blockbuster.

She walked in, walked the isles for a minute then walked out, totally straight faced, hopped in a truck with some red neck and drove off. We figured it was a bet between them.

I hope they stick around too. I don't think their service is as good as Netflix, but every now and then they'll have something that Netflix doesn't. With my Netflix account and my girlfriend's Blockbuster account, we're pretty well set.

I just got a job at one of the local Blockbusters 3 days ago. Here's to hoping I keep it through the summer.

Man, does anyone remember when they used to have 99 cent dvd rentals? I got a blockbuster memebership when I started college in the fall of '02 because of that, and a few months later the prices went up to 2.99 then 3.99. Now I go to a mom and pop store called Video Stop. 3.75 new releases, and 2.50 older releases, and they are all 7 days. Can't beat that. They even have flyers in the store that match their prices against Crapbuster and H.video.

Up here in Canada Blockbuster's still around and actually doing better than the states. I work at the biggest one in the city and my store's super busy. It's so odd how devoted people are to the chain sometimes. We regularly get people buying brand new DVDs at our store when there's a Wal-Mart and a Future Shop within a lazy man's walking distance that they could get the same DVD at for much cheaper. The funniest part is when they point it out themselves as they buy it at our store. "I could get this cheaper at Wal-Mart, y'know." What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? "OH! Here's your complainers discount!"?

Anyway, back to the point...

That's complete bullshit about the random late fees. Working there for just over a year you wouldn't believe the ridiculous shit people will lie about. Work ANY customer service job and you will learn this really fast. If you don't, you live in some utopia.

Also like to point out the odd coincidence of me just getting home from work to check out the site. I'm posting this still in uniform. Creepy.

I stopped going to blockbuster for dvd rentals. Game rentals are occassional for me. But when it comes to films, I go to the little shop down the road that has a rent one get one free deal. 3.99 for two dvds ain't bad at all~
I had Blockbuster Online for a few months. Generally happy with it. Just can't afford to keep it anymore. I was reading about Netflix and their throttling practice last night, though. Shady business. I didn't have that problem with Blockbuster.

Another Blockbuster practice I've learned of the hard way is how they go about getting unreturned DVDs returned or paid for. I was on my way out of my hometown and decided to return Constantine for my folks who had rented it. Well, after the couple of errands I was running on my way out of town I had forgotten about Constantine sitting in the backseat inside my bag. It wasn't until 2 days later at my house, 2 hrs north of my folks' Blockbuster, that I discovered the DVD sitting in my duffle bag.

So I called Blockbuster and told them the situation: that I had taken the disc far from where it needed to be returned by accident and that I wouldn't be back in town for a couple weeks. The girl on the phone assured me the late fee wouldn't grow and that when I returned it to pay the $6 and some odd cents late fee and everything would be fine.

During these two weeks a collection agency working on behalf of BB sent me mom & pop a delinquent debt notice of the 20-some bucks that would cost BB to replace the disc. What happened to the 5 minutes I spent on the phone with BB concerning this very matter? There was no mention of a DEBT COLLECTOR, let alone any other type of action. I called BB and they said that 10 days after a movie is due the late fee is converted to the re-shelving fee and sent to a Collection Agency.

After having my mother ream my ass over the phone for endangering her and my father's credit rating I buckled and mailed the F'in movie to BB with a $20 bill and a letter pontificating the usefulness of discretion and understanding. So all is well and now my folks have a positive balance on their account from the change left over from the late fee and not the reshelving fee.

But what's the deal with the collection agency notice as opposed to a phone call or a postcard reminding the customer of their missing DVD? That's the way it used to happen. Now it's BB having taken upon themselves to discipline their customers with threats. Bollocks.

I'll fucking pay for my parents' Netlifx account as long as BB loses some business.

I find it hard to celebrate their demise, when it seems to mostly benefit Wal-Mart.

Well let's hit the Star Destroyers before we try to take out the Death Star.

The collection agency is an actual offshoot of Blockbuster, and they don't report you unless you've got triple figures worth of late fees. It exists mainly to intimidate the "They won't do shit to me" brand of bad customers.

That said, your mom was right to bitch at you. You were asked to complete a simple task and you botched it. She had every right to bite your ear off.

of course my lovely mother was right... but was BB right? a collection agency 10 days after a due date for a $6 dollar late fee? It's a bit excessive.

Hey, some people just need to be reminded harder than others.

that's a bullshit cop out. and it's a practice that gets under customers' skin. My folks were weekly renters and now I'm pretty sure they're only renting from the locally-owned place now. but, hey.... if they want to drive their locations into the red, BB can use customer intimidation all they want as I'm sure they will.