How many pople complained that their DVD “wasted all that space on the TV”? From what I understand, Blockbuster is phasing out widescreen releases due to customer feedback(?). Is that correct?
OK, I’ve got some questions you might be able to answer:
Does anyone actually argue their way out of the late fee that’s shown on the computer?
Does anyone ever try to get the free movie from the “guaranteed to be there” list, than say “never mind” when you manage to dig up a copy that wasn’t on the shelves? (I’ve been tempted to do this for movies I wouldn’t pay to rent but would take for free.)
How often do DVD cases come back empty?
How often do you pick your favorites? Do they even still do that? Do the workers even care?
I don’t know about phasing out widescreen, but I did have to explain the whole concept of widescreen to quite a few customers.
People argue their way out of late fees all the time. My store tended to give the customer the benefit of the doubt, and several times a day I would personally cancel an extended viewing fee for some reason or another.
We really don’t like to do that, because the computer keeps track of how often we refund or cancel fees. Everything- even perfectly legit transactions- counts against us. Having too many refunds makes your record look bad, and makes you less likely to get promotions, good hours, and all the good stuff.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can get out of a legit late fee. We kept extensive computer records, and saw hundreds of customers a day. We know every scam there is, and we know when you are telling lies. We just see the same things over and over again far too often to be fooled.
Although there are the occassional mistakes (as there will be when you are moving hundreds of videos a day), almost all late fees are legit. What happen is that people just walk out of the store and don’t pay attention to when the movie is due. They are lost in their own little world, and don’t really think to mentally mark down the day it is due. Then they get it in their head sometime during the week that it is due on, say, Thursday. Then they turn it in late on Thursday, thinking that they were right. A week later, when they come to get another video, they learn that their video was late. By this time they’ve forgotten what days they rented it and turned it in, all they remember is they were “on time”. Then things start getting ugly.
How do I know this? Us workers still had to pay fees on movies we rented for free if we turned them in late. Even though I should have known better, I racked up lots and lots of late fees. If the employees do it, you probably do it, too.
DVD cases don’t come back empty as much as they come back with the wrong thing in it. We’ll call you so you can correct the problem, but if your information is wrong or out of date, there is nothing we can do and the late fees will just rack up until you happen to come in and learn about the problem. This is just one reason why it is very important to keep your number updated.
We never picked favorites at my store, but the workers did care about movies a lot. We all got free rentals, which we were encouraged to use so that we could make informed reccomendatoins to people.
Your fine establishment claims I didn’t return a video and has charged my credit card over $150 ($130 for the movie, $25 in fees). It was returned. Do I have any way at all of proving this to the store?