One down, and it's too early in the day for me to need a drink.

Hello, Your Friendly Neighborhood Video Store here. How can I help you?

Um, there’s a $60 charge on my credit card from your store, and I’m sure I never signed a charge for that amount.

<looks up account> Right, that was for two DVDs you rented in December and never returned. We charged the credit card you have on account with us after 90 days.

That’s outrageous. $60 for two videos? And you don’t send out a notice first or anything?

Well, we called you four times the first month to remind you. Our policy is to charge you for replacement copies after 30 days; these went 90. And if we notify you that we’re about to charge your card, sometimes people change their credit card numbers.

But I never agreed to that!

Yes you did. Why do you think we put your credit card on file? It’s a deposit, like when you rent a car or anything. And every time you sign a receipt at the rental counter, you’re signing a legal document that says you agree to pay any outstanding account balance with your credit card on file. It says that at the bottom of every receipt you sign, and we keep them all on file.

But $30 dollars for a DVD?

We reduce the cost, for replacement, to $15, even though those were both new releases that retail for $29.99. And we reduce the late fees to $15, instead of charging you for 90 days of late fees.

Why didn’t you call us?

*We did, we called you four times in December, I have the logs right here. I called you twice myself. *

Why didn’t you call us after that?

Ma’am, in the first place, the phone calls are a courtesy, to remind you if you’ve forgotten you had the discs. We reminded you four times. Even if we hadn’t called you to remind you, it’s not actually our responsibility to remind you to return the discs you rented.

I could’ve bought them for that amount!

Well, you should’ve. It would’ve cost you the same amount of money, and we wouldn’t need to have this phone conversation.

That’s it, I’m going to Blockbuster from now on.

Stop in, I’ll give you a map.

At first I was going to say that the video store clerk sounds completely reasonable and that the OP comes off as entitled and clueless. Then I saw who the OP was and realized that he was the video store clerk.

Silly customer.

Oh, sorry, never occurred to me that’d be unclear.

Yes, the OP’s quotes are in italics. Sorry I missed the edit window on that . . .

You just did.

Actually this situation happened to me a couple of years ago. Except I actually remember returning the DVD, and they never called. Or apparently there was some problem with the phone number.

Oh yeah, I did switch to Netflix right after, thanks for asking.

Not to doubt you specifically, but EVERYONE remembers returning the video. In the numbers we get that excuse, we just can’t accept it in lieu of payment. Besides, if a disc is returned but somehow slips through the check-in process–if it gets shelved but still shows checked out and accumulates late fees while it sits on our shelves–it doesn’t just disappear into thin air. Before we charge anyone, we double check the shelves to see if it’s that one in a thousand discs that didn’t get checked in properly. We do that regularly anyway; a couple times a month I print out a list of all movies more than two weeks late, and check off every single title after a search in the store. Of course occasionally we find such things–usually it’s because someone hasn’t dropped a vid in the slot, but instead they’ve come in and stuck it on top of a stack of videos they see on the counter, not realizing that those are on their way to be reshelved; I’ve even had people come in quietly and put their movie back on the shelf, thinking they’re being helpful–but again, when that happens the movies don’t simply disappear into thin air. Each one has an inventory number, and we only charge someone if THAT DISC has never come back to the store since the day they rented it.

Put it this way, FS, if we took “But I know I returned it” at face value, and just went, “Oh OK then, we’ll eat that one,” we’d write off a dozen “vanished” discs a month, at least. As it is, if we politely insist that a customer should look under the couch, in the kids’ room, on the floor of the car, whatever, 9 times out of 10, they do indeed find the disc that they SWORE they returned. Not to insist that they look one more time would mean that we would have to eat that 90% of lost discs, which is just unacceptable.

That’s a good point. That rental place in general was known for bad service, they’d been shut down for illegal activity at one point, the rental people were super rude to the customers, and they’re now out of business because their prices were insanely high and couldn’t compete with Netflix. So I feel a tad vindicated.

Which movies were they? Do you sell used (which a rental is) copies of the titles? If so, what do you charge for them?

If nothing else it seems reasonable to allow someone to physically replace the discs so long as they’re in rentable condition. Or even new. Have you seen Wal-Mart’s prices on DVD’s?

Just wondering.

Ah. Of course. And like I said, it does happen, but we have a system–we’re trained professionals! The only way that can happen is if a couple of minutely-unlikely things happen:

[ul]
[li]It’s that one in a thousand discs that slips through the system without being checked in[/li][li]It gets shoplifted before we find it[/li][/ul]

(I explained this to a guy once who swore he’d returned the THREE videos we charged him for. I’m like, that’s gonna happen separately to THREE different videos?
He goes, But isn’t that possible? I’m like, Well, only to the extent that ANYTHING’S possible. He’s like, Well? I’m like, Get out.)

BTW, it’s never too early to need a drink at work.

Not always an option. It would be, of course, if all we did was SELL videos. But if it’s a new release, we’re more than likely losing rental income until it’s replaced.

In any case, many of these things that seem like a good idea when it happens to you, when you’re talking about a disc or two, are unworkable on our end: we rent thousands of videos a week. For every one that’s out for more than 30 days, we’d, what, have a spread sheet? “Where are we with that replacement of The Big Lebowski? I’ve got another request for it.” Uh, I’ll call the customer and check. . . . They say they’re still looking for a good deal for a replacement copy. . . .

Totally unworkable system. (That said, we do do that for an “irreplaceable” movie. Someone lost our last copy of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My boss was like, Charge them $100! I was like, wait a minute, let me see what I can do. And the customer got a copy from eBay for under $50.)

Back when videos were videos and not DVDs, unless a movie was released for “sell-thru”, they were only available for rental. It wasn’t uncommon for say, “Batman” to come out for rental, but you couldn’t by it “new” for months later. And routinely these movies were $60 (or more) per copy. I remember having to charge someone $99 for a new copy of “Boyz n the Hood” when they didn’t return it.

Also, every Christmas someone would always come in and buy The Godfather boxed set (at the time it was just 1 and 2) for $200. It was sick.

Yeah, we do sell thru at 30 days. A lot of the major releases–the ones we need 50+ copies of–we don’t buy them, we kind of lease them. We split the rental fees in exchange for our shelf space with a company that doesn’t have any stores, they just do this revenue sharing thing. We have a contract with them, and if we sell one of their titles before 30 days, we can be fined up to $1000. Just for another level of complication . . .

Excellent rant. I take it you’re familiar with the Acts of Gord?

“I’m never renting here again!”
“You make it sound as if I were giving you that option.”

I know, right? I have actually given people a google map to Blockbuster.

I love Acts of Gord.

This story sounds like one of his.

Maybe I’m him; I could do one of these daily, without having to make anything up.

Gord’s Canadian. I understand you’re in Seattle.
ETA: :stuck_out_tongue:

That happened to my family. My brother and I kept renting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Hastings (back before they moved across the street to the other side of Wyoming and when Hastings was still a good store–someone from Albuquerque chime in if they remember; by the way, my excuse is that it was like 1991 and I was 8 or 9 and my brother 6 or 7) and one day it got lost under a seat of my mother’s old Pontiac. It must have been in the winter, since an Albuquerque summer would have melted that thing (by the way, does anyone still have the melted tape on display to show that heat kills tapes?) and one day I came home from school and noticed the tape on the bookshelf. It stood out because it was in that plastic clear plastic case that was only used for rental VHS. Turns out that it had been lost long enough that the late fees meant that Mom had effectively bought the tape. That was probably the most expensive VHS my parents ever bought.

I once returned a video to the library instead and the video store waived the late fee. That made me a loyal customer. I have no idea who or how they got their video back, but I wasn’t charged. yay!