Why I hate Blockbuster

I guess since I referenced this so much in my last post, I figured I’d say why.

I love movies. Love them. One of my favorite things to do is watch movies. For the last decade, just about the only place to rent movies has been Blockbuster.

Well, about 8-9 years ago they changed their return policy. Remember, they changed the return from Midnight to noon the next day. They claimed it was to give me another 12 hours of movie enjoyment, but I was on to their scheme. I’d never had a late fee before. With this new policy, I was always late. I remember talking to a clerk and said, “you guys must be raking it in with the late fees.” The clerk said, “no, by having a noon return time, people can drop off their videos on the way to work.”

I wasn’t buying it. I talked to a friend who worked at Blockbuster. He said that “everyone” was late with the new policy. Blockbuster eventually got sued for this among other things.

It was at this time I moved to Texas. I was done with Blockbuster. I had some friends come visit us and they wanted some movies, so we got 3 or 4 to watch. We paid almost $20. Yeah, I was done with them. However, something happened.

Blockbuster launched “Blockbuster Online.” For $20 a month, I could get 3 movies at a time through the mail. Yeah, I had to give this a try. I knew Netflix was doing this too, but Blockbuster gave me 2 coupons a month for in-store rentals. It was a no-brainer. I did this for almost 4 years. In order to make an even bigger impact on their market share, they released their “Total Access” plan. This was where I could return my “mail-in” DVD’s to the store for an exchange for an “in-store” DVD. As soon as I turned in my “mail-in” DVD to the store they shipped my next movie from my que. It was amazing. I actually had way more movies than I had time to watch. I think I actually got to the point that I had seen every movie I cared to see. My que was filled with documentaries and such.

Then they changed their policy, something they are so good at. No more monthly coupons and I could only return my “mail-in” DVDs for an “in-store” DVD 2 times a month. Oh, and the price had gone up, again. I moved to Georgia where they don’t have a Blockbuster, (they couldn’t compete with the other video stores in town) so I canceled my membership and switched to Netflix.

So here’s the deal. I use Netflix and I pay $10 a month for 1 movie at a time. I’m probably going to increase this to 2 movies at time soon. I also use Red Box. I pay $1 for a movie a night. So, going into Blockbuster and paying almost $5 for a movie that’s been out for almost 2 years is infuriating.

Okay, I know that was a totally silly post and no one probably cares, but I just felt like writing it. 🙂