Jesus, folks.
The judge should just point them at Netflix and tell them to move on.
You misunderstand me. I’ve decided to hold on to video a little bit longer. I’ve already seen it, but I’m keeping it two days past the return time so that I can share it with someone that I know will enjoy it. I’m willing to pay extra for that privilige, and past experience (and coupons giving amnesty for late fees “up to” an amount that is smaller than the price of any single rental in the store) suggests that the late fee will be something reasonable.
As it happens, I don’t know how much the video store charges for late fees, because I haven’t had to pay any yet. I imagine that the rate is spelled out in the fine print of the contract that I signed last year. I have a general idea of what to expect, because most video stores charge a per-day late fee that is in line with the total cost of the rental. I’m guessing that the people who are making a stink were surprised by the size of the late fees incurred, and were expecting something similar to what other stores charge.
If you rent something with the idea that a $5 outlay entitles you to keep it for seven days, then it would be an unpleasant surprise to find that you’re out of pocket $20 for keeping it for ten days, since that’s what the store could expect to make off the video in a month, assuming they couldn’t keep it on the shelf. That’s a damned dirty gouge.
If I were to find out that my video store charged unusually high late fees – late fees that are several times higher than the rental itself, yeah, I’d be angry enough that I’d simply settle up with them and stop renting there. I think most people sign video store membership forms without reading them carefully, with the assumption that they’re going to be substantially equivalent to every other video rental place they’d done business with.
If Blockbuster has big ugly blue-and-yellow signage all over their stores advising that you will pay the full-rental price for each day that you’re late, then nobody ought to complain at all. This is why I asked how they make people aware of the policy – especially people who signed up before they changed it. Of course, if people have absolutely no reason to be surprised by the size of the fees, than they have no complaint at all.
Again, I think that the court case is ludicrous, and that a more appropriate response for pissed-off would be to simply go to another video store.
Just get a friggin DVD burner then.
<d&r>
I swear Blockbuster in Australia is run by a different company than in America. I’ve returned dvd’s late plenty of times, and even when I expect exporbitant fees I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than 5 dollars in fines – and that’s for a 3 day movie I returned a week and a half late.
The worst fee I ever ran up was when I had 3 new releases and unexpectadly went to Canada for 3 weeks for my grampa’s funeral. When I got back and explained to the clerk why they were so late the fees were waived.
The local mom-n-pop video store where we rent has different rental periods for films depending on their status as a hot new release, a new release (not quite hot anymore) or part of the regular stock. There are also different prices for each category, and, to make things even more confusing, different rental periods for each. (2, 3 or 5 days.) When you rent, your receipt looks something like this:
Why can’t Blockbuster do something like that, plain, straightforward and easy, so that no one has to question when each item needs to be returned or what it will cost if they’re late?
As with most class-action lawsuits, the lawyers will be the only people who benefit from this.
I used to work at Movie Gallery, Blockbuster’s toothless cousin. Our policy was to rent someone a movie for five days for, say, $3.50, and for every day it was late, there was a dollar charge. This policy not only made perfect sense, but was also posted all over the store, in the membership contract, and on the movie box itself.
Well, along came some douchebags who assumed that if they keep the movie out late, they were entitled to keep it for another five days for the same price as the original rental. I have no fucking clue where they got this idea, but it was not from our store. When they brought the movie back, they would have five dollars in late fees.
In the end, the case was settled. We gave out many many many dollars of coupons to people who had A.) never paid more than a few dollars in late fees, and B.) had never heard of this lawsuit or the aforementioned douchebags. In addition, we had to change our policy to what the people who sued us thought the policy had been all along.
The big problem with all this is that the customers get it in the pants too. When a member brings a movie back one day late, they are charged for five days, and there ain’t a blinking thing the clerk can do about it!
Fucking lawyers.
Oh, screw the “blame the lawyers” thing. Last I checked, a lawyer doesn’t force you into his office at gunpoint and come up with something for you to sue over. If you think a suit is stupid, blame the plaintiff. Blockbuster sucks and has eliminated all the competition where I live (and I find their selection crappy), so that’s no fun- but given that they’ve already been sued about the same topic, this seems really pointless.
Worldeater,
Don’t be silly. What if you fall sick, or your child falls sick, and you can’t leave the house? Sure, you still have to accept the late fees, but you’re not a ‘fucking idiot’ just for not getting a movie back on time.
I rented two movies from Blockbuster last year, and they then got stolen before I’d even watched them. Blockbuster want £250 from me for them, and I’ll probably end up having to pay it. I have no sympathy for the company. But I do still hope this lawsuit fails - the existence of late fees is in itself not cruel and evil.
I might have a problem if we were talking about a scenario that could reasonably be called outrageously abusive. If they were charging $100 without any warning, I would agree that there’s a problem. However, I don’t see any issue with charging a hefty fee for the late return of an item to a company whose business it is to rent things out. Their business is run on the basis of being able to offer to the next consumer the same item at a time that it is expected to be returned. Failure to be able to deliver that reflects poorly on the business even if it is not their fault.
We could always simply call it a pre-agreed sum that is deemed to reflect liquidated damages that the business will suffer and not a penalty. That’ll take care of that little technicality.
In other posts, I get the impresson that some think that this is some manner of hidden charge. I don’t think that the business must post a 5’x12’ sign indicating what their late return policy is. The agreement is to take the video for a specified period of time (the absurdity of any such period is irrelevant, as it is up to the renter to know what it is and abide by it if they choose to rent) and to return it to the store by the expiry of that period of time. If the renter chooses to keep it longer, it is up to them to ask what the late fee is going to be. To intentionally return late and then be pissed because you assumed it would be at a rate other than what it was is just an example of being a stupid consumer. Keep in mind that this class-action lawsuit is seeking damages. I can only presume that those who are party to it have incurred the late charges on many occasions in order to warrant such a suit. Instead of suing after being penalized with several hundred dollars in late fees and continuing to return late, these people should invest in a freakin’ shrink! Or at least rent, “Analyze This”. (But be sure to return it on time.)
I knew this was coming.
Get a neighbor to return it, pay a kid down the hall $5 to return it, get a messenger service, have a family relative pick it up and return it, have a coworker pick it up and return it, etc, etc.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Never been greeted at a BBV that I can recall. In fact, I usually end up waiting in a line at the desk with about 5 other people while the cashier is absent, since there’s only 2 workers on the floor to begin with and they are attending to other matters. FWIW, I live in the San Gabriel Valley just east of LA…
You may very well be right. I was merely critiquing somebody’s argument.
Perhaps, but at a certain point you start to wonder if the business hasn’t started using late fees as a major source of revenue. In any event, I’m not an economist, but to the extent that there is a “scarcity” cost of not having videos available to the public, it seems to me that such a cost ought to be roughly the same on the first day a video is out as on the third day the video is out.
I doubt it. Form versus substance and all.
IANAL, but to the best of my knowledge, such language has been successfully used to counter the imposed penalty limitation. This is my understanding from dealing with similar language in commercial real estate leases.
While it’s true that a reasonable liquidated damages clause will be enforced, you cannot, as a general matter, use that principle to circumvent the unenforceability of a private penalty. Otherwise the exception would swallow the rule, so to speak. Just MHO as an attorney.
Dammit. I hate it when a company I despise is hit with a lawsuit, and it turns out the suit is so incredibly stupid I have to side with the company.
Or maybe when someone falls ill, or their child falls ill, or an emergency comes up, the thought of oh sweet jesus, how am I going to return the VIDEOS??? doesn’t really dominate their minds.
:rolleyes:
Actually, I’m pretty sure the last time my roommate got movies from Blockbuster, the receipt did look like that - with a specific return time/date given for each rental. I live in Alberta, Canada. YMMV.
Heard that, lezlers. One time we had a surprise snowstorm that hit and at noon on the day the video was due back, the roads were dangerous. I’m not risking my neck for a damn movie. Our local BBV is really cool about stuff like that, though, and as long as you call and tell them what’s up they will give you some leeway.
Ya know, sometimes if you ask real nicely, the nice folks at Blockbuster will waive the fees. They will also let you get away with using expired coupons, too.
They can look up your rental history on the computer. At the one we frequent (ok, live at), they can see that we have rented a gazillion movies there over the years and suddenly the late fee doesn’t matter as much. They know we’ll be back next week, bearing money.
It never hurts to ask. The worst thing they can do is say no.
Well, I must be one of the idiots who will pick cans up for a living. This happened to me last summer. My daughter wanted movies, so we went to the library to get the freebies. In the meantime, my brother in law went fishing, had a heart attack, fell in the water and drowned. Frankly for the next week those movies didn’t cross my mind. So I returned them late and had to pay $2 a day per tape. We had several so it added up. But I would appreciate it if you would not call me an idiot, because I was more concerned with my family and my sister-in-law than I was those tapes.
Well let me start off by saying that I’m sorry to hear about your loss.
Returning a video is very low on the list of priorities when an emergency arises. As to the other 99.99999999999% of the time when there isn’t an emergency, I stand by my “cans” statement.