It used to be different- they charged a smaller daily late fee- until they got sued for that and had to change to the “you rented it for another week” model.
Then they got sued again for advanceing the due time twelve hours to noon, in response to customers saying they wanted to turn in movies on their way to work.
Nothing, not anything, is going to make people happy about renting movies. Blockbuster could start the “great movie giveaway” and they’d get sued by some yahoo thats complaining that “Beverly Hills Ninja” isn’t great.
Blockbuster stores in America also have a two-hour grace period – they’re not required to have all the movies checked in until 2 pm (assuming you dropped off the movie at noon). However, taking advantage of this requires two things: first, you have to give the movie to an employee. Dropping it in the slot won’t work; it’ll just sit there until the 4 pm check-in, because they empty the box at 12 sharp. Secondly, the employees have to like you.
Also, turning your movie in “a bit before the deadline” is a recipe for unexpected late fees, because, no offense, Blockbuster doesn’t care what time you think it is, just whether the movies hit the box before Blockbuster’s clocks say it’s time to check them in. If you show up just a tad before noon and you really want to be sure, ask an employee. Politely. Preferably not one whom you threatened with the regional manager.
They got sued because suddenly people began assuming that it was due by close of business on the day it was due at noon. a 7-day rental is really 7.5 days; If you rent it on Sunday, it’s not due back next Sunday but next Monday at noon. It was a 12-hour extension, but so many people started thinking that because it was due Monday, it should be due at close of business and this noon thing was a scam to bring in more late fees.
Blockbuster’s really been in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation for a while.
The morality of exchanging sex for goods and/or services aside…
A better interpretation of your twisting my anology might be:
If your date says she’ll give you a blowjob if you take her to a concert and then afterwards says, “Unzip, mister, I’m going to blow you. But if you fail to reach orgasm after four hours, I expect you to kiss me.”
And yet technically the claim is true. It takes a strawman misinterpretation twist it into falsehood.
This, by the way, was what got me to stop renting from Blockbuster. In my opinion, it was a brilliant move to give just enough extra that people would forget and be late more often. After years of returning movies in the evening, I just forgot too often. Of course, I never thought of suing them over it, I just decided not to rent there anymore.
So, Blockbuster gave you an extra half-day’s grace period at no additional cost to you, and this caused them to lose you as a customer? I just don’t get your thinking here. If you can’t make it by noon on the eighth day, couldn’t you have just gone back to thinking it was due by the end of the seventh day as before?
This thread has actually made me feel sorry for Blockbuster (I never use them, so don’t have any particular ax to grind). It seems to me that the change described above by our tusked pinniped friend would make customers happier by giving them more options. I would assume that most rentals take place after noon (can someone confirm this?), so Blockbuster wasn’t losing out much by extending the grace period by half a day. Should have been a win-win situation!
It should have been a win-win, yep, but the same people who currently accuse Blockbuster of lying about ‘no more late fees’ and are upset about not being able to keep a movie out for a month without penalty are more than likely the same people who didn’t bother to understand the noon deadline policy.
Without knowing the true reasoning behind the policy decisions, your opinion of corporate Blockbuster can go two ways: they were attempting to increase revenue by taking advantage of customer stupidity, or they were attempting to increase revenue by giving customers what they asked for so they would give BB repeat business, but unfortunately overestimated the average customer’s intelligence. Since I don’t know what their reasoning was, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and presume it was the latter. Many people have also presumed the former, which is why BB generates 3-page threads.
Look, even though Blockbuster’s is clearly in the right, the ass-backwards free market system holds the intellectually superior heads of Blockbuster’s hostage to their bleating, drooling customer base. Let us enlightened Doper’s offset the stupidity of the average consumer by doubling our patronization of the chain, lest they be forced by the oppressive invisible hand to mirror their quickly rising competition like Hollywood Video and Netflix by offering dumbed down rental structures that can be explained in a single sentence like “Pay a montly subscription fee and keep three titles at a time.” or “Pay in advance for a five day rental.” Corporations aren’t nannies - they’re not supposed to make it easy for us by offering convenient terms like “You can return your video any time during your final day”, or “we’ll penalize you for being late, but not assume the unlikey event that you wanted to purchase an entire new week of rental and charge you thusly without advertising that that’s what we do now all-of-a-sudden”.
It doesn’t really mean anything. In another thread, a rant was made that was a thing of true beauty. I made the comment “Pottery. Sheer pottery.” It was just a goof on words. It had nothing to do with clay, kilns, or ancient Greek shards.
I heard a story here about when the manager of a BB would, before the official +12hr change, waive the late fee if a person brought it in early the next morning. He still got shit from customers because they felt like they could have kept all their other movies until the next morning instead of rushing to get them back in the night they were due. See, the manager wasn’t being nice, he was lying about what the ‘real’ due date was. :rolleyes:
Like I said, give away free blow jobs, and someone will complain about your technique.
blowero, I think the ‘smaller’ daily fee was just smaller than the weekly fee, but more than the daily average cost of renting. Switching to a plan where a day late gets you rented for another week was sort of low.
Of course you’re not going to please everyone, but if you treat your customers well, you’ll please enough people to build a loyal base. Just because you can’t please every last person doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel.
