Blockbuster shutting down

[Intergalactic_Gladiator]

It wasn’t too long ago that my wife, little daughter, and I would walk to the local Blockbuster for a Friday night movie. I was put off because of some of their policies and how they cut out the smaller guy, but they were easy to get to and had a nice selection. A few years later, we started getting Netflix and shortly after that, we started getting it online as well. We’ve been back a few times since because it’s nice to browse and the nearby blockbusters have all been pretty decent to go to but the last time we went, they were pushing Dish on us hardcore. The guy wouldn’t let me go rent movies even after I told him I was happy with just having Netflix.

On top of not charging late fees, Netflix’s return model was so much more accommodating as well. My wife mixed up the Blockbuster and Netflix DVD once and mailed the wrong movie back. Blockbuster charged us for it and Netflix credited us, sent out the next movie in our queue, and arranged to get the movie back where it was supposed to go. Clearly, Netflix as a whole showed that they were looking out for the customers where Blockbuster didn’t seemed concerned.

It’s unfortunate that they’re going away, but I think I’ll get over it.

[ftg]

Netflix, early on, proposed a partnership with Blockbuster. They were turned down. Much later starting their own version of DVD by mail. Then online streaming (which isn’t shutting down, yet).

Blockbuster tried something like Redbox called Blockbuster Express. Their prices were something like $3 the first night for a new movie, $2 for a month old, $1 for real old stuff. Redbox at the time was $1 a night. (And if you look for codes you usually don’t have to pay full price at Redbox.) Guess how that turned out? Sold off to NCR who sold it to Redbox last year. Strangely, Google Maps says I have a lot of Blockbuster Express kiosks near me. Uh-uh.

This is a company that failed to see the future, played catchup with competitors and did that very badly. This is how monopolies fail.

I checked to see if there are any Blockbuster stores near me. One not too far off. The other is many, many miles away. And this is a major urban area. Dish has been planning on closing it all down for some time. This is just the final drumroll.

The franchise stores (half of them in Alaska where competition is weaker), are going to be interesting. They’ll be like those classic McDonalds. Drive the kids by one while on a trip and give them a hint of nostalgia.

The thing I’ll miss least: Their edited versions of movies. They’d tell studios to clip scenes or they wouldn’t carry them. So the studios complied. When people complained, Blockbuster would say “We don’t edit them. This is how the studios sent them to us.” Right.

What happens to the store is depends on the contract with the mall owner and if there is demand for the space. Sometimes the tenant continues to pay until the lease is up. Sometimes the tenant can negotiate an early termination, especially if the owner has other people lined up. Sometimes the space just isn’t the right size, location, or layout for anything else and it sits. I don’t think Blockbuster owned many stores outright. This would have been really good for them. The only reason KMart survived bankruptcy, and bought Sears, was because it owned a lot of real estate.

Note that a lot of strip malls are designed to make their money back in a short while, e.g., 5 years. So they aren’t built to last much longer than that. In a few short years, problems develop, especially leaky roofs, and it might not pay to fix things up enough that new tenants would want the space. This is when the thrift stores and such move in.

[FlyingDragonFan]

@Little_Nemo

I was no fan of Blockbusters either. But I feel about its closing the way I felt about the closing of Borders. Once the big chain stores had driven all the local independents out of business, I wanted the chains to survive. Because when the big chains close, it’s not like those independents are going to re-open.

Here in Denver, a mom & pop video store did recently open, after all the Blockbusters closed down. Oddly, they only carry DVDs, but not Blu-Ray, so I haven’t rented anything from them.

[Justin_Bailey]

@ftg

The thing I’ll miss least: Their edited versions of movies. They’d tell studios to clip scenes or they wouldn’t carry them. So the studios complied. When people complained, Blockbuster would say “We don’t edit them. This is how the studios sent them to us.” Right.

They’re not wrong though. Blockbuster told the moviemakers, “We refuse to carry NC-17 films.” So filmmakers would get an R-rated cut ready for the DVD and Blockbuster doesn’t care what they cut as long as it earns an R-rating.

[TBG]

@Jophiel

Family Video still seems to be running strong around here and regularly announces that they’re opening new locations and need new people. They’re a little unique in that they own the land and property their locations are on (as opposed to leasing) which I guess gives them a little more stability but that alone doesn’t make people want to come there and spend money and rent videos/games.

They have always seemed “friendlier” and more customer service oriented in my opinion. Willingness to waive or reduce fees, free children’s movie rentals, “Good grade” rental promotions for kids, etc. Blockbuster always felt like they were trying to gouge you and Family Video feels like they’re actively courting your business.

Plus they have porn.

[nearwildheaven]

@FlyingDragonFan

Here in Denver, a mom & pop video store did recently open, after all the Blockbusters closed down. Oddly, they only carry DVDs, but not Blu-Ray, so I haven’t rented anything from them.

If they’re in a neighborhood with no other video stores, they just might make it.

A couple years ago, I lived, albeit briefly, in an economically depressed town of 15,000 that had a thriving independent video store. The grocery stores rented them, there was a Redbox at Walgreens, and of course the library had them for free, but their success was clearly a case of location cubed; it was right across the street from the high school.

I just looked online a few days ago to see if it was still open, and it was.

Oh, and there was a Movies Plus (I think that’s what it was called; it had a red sign) that still had the sign up but the business had long since closed, just down the road.

[heavyhorse]

stuff like Netflix and LoveFilm are completely taking over.
although i suspect that it will just be Netflix dominating soon.

[pkbites]

Remeber that speech by Danny Divito in Other Peoples Money?

Why would I travel miles to a noisy crowded store to pay $4+ for a movie when I can walk 2 blocks away and get one for $1 as fast as I can get a soda out of a machine? And if I’m too lazy to do that I can pay a bit more and get one at home with a push of a button. The failure of Blockbuster is a good sign in the advancement of our entertainment choices.

My favorite band from the 70’s had a song called Blockbuster. Which had nothing to do with the store or this thread. Still a good tune.

[Jophiel]

@TBG

Plus they [Family Video] have porn.

Ours doesn’t but, like the poster who said theirs was crummy, I guess it varies from location to location. Ours is porn free and very friendly – although I can’t speak for the working conditions since I’ve never worked at one.

[scabpicker]

@ftg

The thing I’ll miss least: Their edited versions of movies. They’d tell studios to clip scenes or they wouldn’t carry them. So the studios complied. When people complained, Blockbuster would say “We don’t edit them. This is how the studios sent them to us.” Right.

Yeah, when I learned of this practice in the 90’s, that’s when I stopped giving Blockbuster my money.

See ya, you puritanical nitwits.

[Chimi]

@Rollo_Tomasi

So, would it be in bad taste if I called the nearest store to me and asked when they were going to start selling off their DVDs?

The store I work at has the last day of rentals on Saturday, then we’re closed until Friday, when we’ll open up with everything for sale. Or at least most of everything. They may have us ship some of the newer stuff back to distribution or something.

If I remember, I’ll post more details here.

[ekedolphin]

12-year former Blockbuster employee here.

It was a job that I loved most of the time, hated some of the time. I miss a few of my co-workers, and several of my customers. I know that in this thread, Blockbuster is synonymous with “terrible customer service”, but I like to think of myself as an exception. I never had any trouble excusing people’s late fees within reason.

Competing against oneself with the online business (and later, by selling Dish Network in the store) was a bad idea.

The “No Late Fees” thing was a bad idea, but it’s been misrepresented here. There actually were no late fees for the entire first week you kept it past the due date. From days 8 through 31 you could return the movie and end up paying only $1.31 for a restocking fee. On Day 32 it’d be unreturnable. That was crazy good for customers, and completely unsustainable for Blockbuster.

Blockbuster closing its remaining stores doesn’t come as a roaring shock to me. I’ve known from the very beginning that DISH Network only wanted them for the name brand, and had no intention of doing the things necessary to make the stores profitable. If the stores could ever have been made profitable.

It’s pretty difficult to succeed as a video store when there’s a Redbox everywhere.

[Quimby]

Once the format switched to something as easy to store and mail as a DVD, the Video Store as it existed’s days were pretty much numbered.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@ekedolphin

The “No Late Fees” thing was a bad idea, but it’s been misrepresented here. There actually were no late fees for the entire first week you kept it past the due date. From days 8 through 31 you could return the movie and end up paying only $1.31 for a restocking fee

I see. So it wasn’t a late fee, but a fee you paid for being late.

[Little_Nemo]

@Quimby

Once the format switched to something as easy to store and mail as a DVD, the Video Store as it existed’s days were pretty much numbered.

It was always a vulnerable business. Video stores have to maintain a large and very expensive inventory, which requires ongoing expansion and quickly degrades in value.

[joebuck20]

@ekedolphin

The “No Late Fees” thing was a bad idea, but it’s been misrepresented here. There actually were no late fees for the entire first week you kept it past the due date. From days 8 through 31 you could return the movie and end up paying only $1.31 for a restocking fee. On Day 32 it’d be unreturnable. That was crazy good for customers, and completely unsustainable for Blockbuster.

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

I see. So it wasn’t a late fee, but a fee you paid for being late.

I seem to recall that the “No Late Fees” deal wound up turning into a huge PR disaster for exactly this reason. They didn’t do a good job of making clear the details of their policy.

At the Blockbuster I went to at the time, they had a bunch of signs saying in big letters “NO LATE FEES!!!” but most of them didn’t even have fine print mentioning the restocking fee or the fact that you could be charged for the movie if you bring it back more than a month late.

[iamthewalrus_3]

Even though they were playing catch-up, Blockbuster still could have caught up if their execution hadn’t been so terrible.

For a while, they had a movie-by-mail offering that also let you bring the movie back into a store and get another rental from there. It cost the same as Netflix, with great upside, so I tried it out.

The first movie they sent me was misfiled (ie, the wrong disc). I marked it as such on the website and sent it back. Despite marking it as a misfiled disc, the movie disappeared from my queue, so I had to manually add it back again. The second disc they sent me was disc 2 of a season of a television show in my queue (they hadn’t sent me disc 1). I complained on the website and sent it back. Then I got the same misfiled disc from them again that I got the first time. It had apparently made the round-trip from the distribution center but not been corrected. Cancelled.

[CarnalK]

@ekedolphin

Competing against oneself with the online business (and later, by selling Dish Network in the store) was a bad idea.

You really think this? The whole world is shifting to online viewing but they were silly to move in that direction? You think it’s a bad idea that every single TV network is “competing” with itself by putting shows on their websites?

[foj3000]

Around Here all 7 Blockbusters are not closing, the stores seem to be doing well. The stores always seem to have a lot of customers during weekends and evenings. The rental fees aren’t bad ( older releases at 49 cents overnight or 99 cents for 5 days- new releases are still around 3 bucks though). I usually go in to buy cheap DVDs or Blu-Rays. ( Recently got Season 1 of Dead like Me for $4.99 and got Season 2 for free!)

[drewtwo99]

I would dance on their graves but I kind of already did that when I saw the writing on the wall. I hate Blockbuster with a passion. I was a very temporary employee there for some time when I literally up and quit because I couldn’t stand how they made us treat our customers. I have no problem pushing sales and upselling, and I worked another retail job that included this sort of thing but it a much more helpful/nicer way to the customers. But Blockbuster was absolutely soul crushingly evil, and I knew after working there (that was when they were really pushing their online DVD service to rival Netflix) that unless the whole management mantra changed, they were going to be done for.

I remember time after time, customers rolling their eyes at me and telling me they weren’t interested, only for me to quietly apologize to them individually and have to tell them that I have to finish my sales speech because my manager is right over there giving me the eye making sure I say my script word for word every time. And yes I know you’ve been in the store 3 times this week, and yes I asked my manager if I still have to tell you the same thing over and over again every time I see you, and yes he said that I do. I am so so sorry.

Fuck them and fuck their “brand” for whatever it is worth at this point. Their whole “No Late Fees” thing was the biggest scam I can honestly think of perpetrated by a major retailer. I remember that was pretty new too when I started working there, and when I realized the truth of it, it was incredible. I remember incredulous customers storming out in a fit of rage when they learned that they had been charged for the full price of the movie because they were under the impression that “No Late Fees” meant that there were no late fees.

I remember when my parents got a Blockbuster card and started to rent movies at Blockbuster. Normally we used small local video stores, but for whatever reason wanted to try the Blockbuster in town one night. We kept the movie a few days past the due date and racked up a few dollars worth of late charges. Returned the movie at the drop box or something, and didn’t go back to Blockbuster again. Now, at a normal local movie store, that would be no problem. You just have to pay the late fee the next time you go to the store. But for Block-Fuckyouuptheasseverychanceweget-Buster, they actually sent a threatening letter to my dad saying they were going to turn him in to collections if he didn’t remit payment for the rather low late fee IMMEDIATELY. So my Dad sent in the payment with a check by mail, along with his cut up membership card.

So, fuck you Blockbuster and good riddance. Every single time I saw one of your stores closing I was a little happier every day. My only regret is that the franchises will get to keep your name and keep their stores open, but at least the shitty company behind them is basically gone. Hopefully the franchises that stay open with your name know how to treat customers well.