Fascinating

I’ve been seeing a lot of blogs lately (in the local area) with posts bashing BLOCKBUSTER. I find this very interesting; as the flames that I have seen so far are all about the same thing. “Late Fee’s” (actually referred to as “Daily Rental Fee’s”)

BLOCKBUSTER changed it’s Rental Terms (in select stores only) on December 18th, 2008 to:
A) Allow customers to choose THEIR length of a rental — similar to Redbox machines
B) Have more items in-stock instead of having great portions of their inventories sitting at people’s houses for 7-30 days
C) Bring discount pricing based on rental term.

Benefits of these changes:

• A) Choose Your Terms – You can now select to rent a New Release for $2.99 for 1-Day or you can select 5-Days at $4.99. Old movies are similar, but discounted – You can choose a 1-Day for $1.99 or you can select 5-Days at $3.99. Games are again, very similar. All games are 5-Day rentals by default, however. If you are renting a newer generation game; it may be the normal rental price. If you are renting an older console game it is cheaper. If you choose the DAILY option and you decide to keep it past the due date: Don’t worry – you are only looking at paying $0.99 for each additional day with the product. (Not another automatically selected 5-Day rental term at $5+ as it was previously in the past) If you chose the 5-Day Rental option; you have a 5-Day Rental period plus a 5-Day Grace period before the item will automatically sale to your account.
• B) More Product In-Stock – With the previous Rental Terms; customers could rent a movie and essentially hold onto it for 7-30 days. While this seems nice; remember how you would come trying to find a movie; only to see that everything is already checked out. When you asked “When do you think it will be back in-stock?” they could only say “I dunno, anywhere from now to 30 days — IF it comes back at all.” Let’s explain why this is nearly impossible for a Retailer to maintain without Customers spending extra $$ while in the store: Imagine that you are a Movie Rental store that has ordered 900 copies of 3:10 to Yuma at $20 per copy for a total of $18,000. (Movies come out on Tuesday) So between Tuesday and Friday you are all checked out of your 900 copies and now many more customers will have to wait to check that movie out. Keep in mind that while some customers were gracious and returned their rentals on-time; most would hold onto it for the 30 days that they could. By the time you start getting all of those rentals back after many customers have held onto it to get “their money’s worth”; the store lost customers that couldn’t catch it in-stock, the movie is no longer as desired or sellable. You now have a ton of movies that are no longer desired that you simply can’t do anything with. Even if all of those movies were rented 2 times each (totalling 1,800 rents) you only make $9,000 with the standard rental price ($5) (Keep in mind that the studios make a profit off of the rents too, cutting that profit of $9,000 even less. Also count on that a lot of customers get FREE rentals witht their Rewards Membership – that cuts the $9,000 even smaller. While you may be able to sell some of the extra copies that you can’t rent anymore; you will end up having some sit on your shelves wasting space and not moving for years until it gets stolen or destroyed. The just mentioned is an example. With the new Rental Terms; they are able to maintain movies and games in-stock for customers when they want them and you can keep your movies/games as long as you like to pay for them for a cheap price per day.
• C) Cheaper Prices! – As mentioned in Benefit A; prices are cheaper depending on the rental term that you choose! 1-Day rentals are the less expensive option. Even if you keep an item a day or so past the due date on a 1 Day rental term; its still cheaper than if you rented it at a 5-Day rental. You would have to refer to your specific store for Pricing and Daily Rental Fee pricing.

BLOCKBUSTER isn’t and has never been an “evil” company. People dislike BLOCKBUSTER for the same reason that speeders dislike the police. They dislike BLOCKBUSTER for the same reason you dislike your Mobile carrier when you go over in minutes or TXT messages.

So quit trash-talking BLOCKBUSTER; as it has constantly evolved to attempt to better suit it’s customers! I honestly have always liked that company. It was always nice as a kid growing up when the parents would stop at BLOCKBUSTER on a Friday/Saturday to rent us movies. And sure; from time to time I have had my share of late movies and paid my balances with no disputes as I accepted that I decided to hold onto them past their due date. One of the biggest issues I see with the new generations is that people are under this “lazy, no accountability/responsibility/committments” attitude. As if everything that happens to them isn’t their fault and “isn’t fair,” I see everything as being a consequence to an action. That is really what life is — a series of consequences to actions. Not all are bad and not all are good.

Be responsible, take accountability and committ yourselves!

That’s all for now.

TTFN
~siniStar~