Blockbuster’s current marketing campaign hails the phrase-
“The end of late fees as we know it!”
Digging a little deeper tells you that in actuality they’ve lengthened the rental period to 7 days, and if you keep it longer they will charge you the full price of the dvd. You then keep it or return it to them for a refund (minus a restocking fee and taxes.)
They claim there are no late fees because “the due date will still be 1 to 2 days and will be printed on the receipt”.
That’s a pretty lame ad/marketing campaign which is more simply put “good news- rental periods are now 7 days, bad news- we’ll be charging you for the dvd if you keep it any longer than the 7 days.”
I’ve got no problem with late fees. I have a problem with a multi-million dollar ad campaign promoting “No Late Fees!” when, in fact, you will be charged for not returning movies on time. Which, if you think about it, is kinda the definition of a late fee.
This is meant to sound like a service to the customer, when in fact, they expect to make MORE money from this than they did under their old late fee program.
It’s fundamentally dishonest, and that irritates me.
Bullshit. It used to be that you were charged quite a bit if you kept a movie for a few weeks. (I know this from experience after forgetting about a movie in my work bag.) That money was completely non-refundable. Now, keep a movie for three weeks and you only get charged a small fixed restocking fee. Big difference.
Considering the amount of dishonest advertising out there, I can’t for the life of me figure out why people are getting their panties in a wad over this. “If there were really no late fees, I could keep the movie forever!”
Actually, while this might be terminologically true, the end result is still that you pay for keeping movies.
Sure, Netflix has no late fees, but you do pay a fixed monthly rate. If you decide to keep your three movies for a long time, you might not pay any extra late fees, but you are still paying 18 bucks a month for the privilege of hanging on to those movies. Even if you only hang on to one, and return the other two, you are still paying, proportionally, about 6 bucks a month to hang onto that movie, because every movie you hang onto is one less movie that you can’t get from Netflix.
Not quite. They’ve extended the rental period by an additional seven days. So if you have a movie that’s due back in, say, 2 days, you can keep it out for 9 days with no fees whatsoever.
After that, they’ll charge you the full price of the movie (minus the rental fee). But even then, you can keep the movie for an additional month before you are unable to return it at all, and for the entire one month period, you’ll only be charged a flat restocking fee.
The end result is that, for any given time between the expiration of the rental period and the expiration of the refund period, you will be charged less than you would have under the old late fee plan when you eventually return the movie.
Blockbuster, at least, doesn’t make a secret of its return policy. I use them more rarely now, because they’ve installed a sign on their front door saying “Smile! you’re being photographed!” that I find to be a little too up-front and cheery a way of telling me they don’t think I’m to be trusted. For what it’s worth, I find that just being nice to the clerks eliminates a lot of late fees.
It is probably not you. The Blockbuster I used to patronize (before netflix!) got robbed on a fairly regular basis. On one occasion, it happened right before I arrived and the door was locked (they let me return my videos though). The clerks were pale and trembly and the police were right behind me.
It does sound like a reasonably decent deal, although I’ve decided that when I get some money I’m going to join Netflix. It’s still not what they’re saying it is.
Maybe it’s the corporate propaganda kicking in,but I don’t understand why this new policy is making demons out of our customers. We explain it to them and they immediately begin thinking of holes in it, or ways that it could be exploited and abused. What, are they planning on screwing us?
This policy is the best thing ever for our regular customers, because the vast majority of people are only one or two days late. Under the new system, if our customers don’t change their habits, they will be saving money. If your movie was due on Monday and you forgot about it, or your kid got sick, or your car wouldn’t start, and you return it on Tuesday at 6 o’clock in the evening, you will not be charged one red cent. Before the new policy, circumstances like that would set you back (approximately) five bucks for a new release or one-fifty for an older movie.
Just return your videos on time, people. It’s not that hard. If you think netflix or videoself has a better business model, fine. If you read the fine print on the back of the BB card, you will see that the reason we make you sign it, is because it is a contract. Don’t like our contract, don’t do business with BB. Us lowly, gruntwaged Blueshirts have zero influence on BB policy. Don’t come in and point at our clearly displayed price lists and return times and tell us you don’t like the way we run our business. Just get out of the store, so that we can rent Napoleon Dynamite to the cute Jewish boy waiting patiently in line behind you.
It’s because BB has screwed us over so many times with bogus or too high “late fees” that we want to get even.
I have twice turned the videos in on time, then was charged late fees. After all- I can’t prove when I turned them in, so they go ahead and charge you.
I got caught shoplifting a DVD from Best Buy once, and instead of calling the police they just charged me the 15 bucks it cost to buy it. Damn Best Buy late fees!
I’ve always thought you should be able to quickly get some kind of receipt for the return of your videos. Some kind of scanning kiosk that lets you indicate you’ve handed them in. I took a bunch of videos back to Blockbuster a couple of months ago that didn’t get checked in. They called me a couple of weeks later to say ‘Hey, you still have these videos out, are you going to return them?’ To which I said, ‘Are you kidding me? I set an alarm and got out of bed early so I could get them back before you opened at 10AM so they wouldn’t be considered late. I know they’re back.’ And then he went and checked the shelves and lo and behold, there they were. If I’d had a receipt saying I’d brought them back, I wouldn’t have spent those 10 minutes on hold while he checked wondering how much the fines were going to be when BB screwed me over. I consider it a minor miracle that they did not, in fact, screw me over.
