FloydianOne

Please delete this if its discussed elsewhere, I searched.

According to Blockbuster they will no longer charge late fees..

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041214/nytu067_1.html

Im not exactly understanding how they consider this not charging late fees, from what I understand you get a week grace period, so i suppose for the normal person you dont have to worry about late fees. But say someone takes this seriously and decides to keep it for a week and 1 day, in which blockbuster assumes you want to buy the movie and charges you the fee of the movie minus your original rental fee. However now you decide you dont want to own this movie and you return it you get charged a "restocking fee". Isnt this still a late fee?

Maybe im just being picky, what do you guys thing about this?

Coppertop

They're feeling the burn from Netflix and this is their response. Until they adapt a business model closer to Netflix' they'll be hurting.

In all, still sounds pretty crappy to me. It's a late fee in all but name.

uncle_el

for context, i once worked for blockbuster.

i bet the restocking fee will be the rough equivalent of the late fee over the same period of time. not to mention the price of a brand new video/dvd for rental is crazy. unless the game has changed, videos are sold in bundles of 3 or 5 for $300 (the price of the 3 video bundle) or $500. the store then has a certain period of time in which to rent those videos. after that time, a certain amount or sold as used, and others are returned to the distributor for a refund. while a video is new, a customer could be charged $100 for a brand new video/dvd... again, this is from the info when i worked there a long time ago. in any event, the charge will be significantly more than if you just bought a dvd from best buy/circuit city/other retailer.

the game goes like this:

$5.00 (not sure what the current charge is for a video) for a 3 day rental... but you get 7 days at no charge.(via the new system). after that, the full price of the video is charged... where you'd be charged, from my figures above, $100 minus the rental... for $95 dollars. you then have another 23 days (since you get 30 days total, and it's already been 7 days) to return it for a refund of the 95 charged, for which they charge the 5.00 rental fee and add on a restocking fee. the restocking fee will likely be what the cost of a late fee would have been over that time any way (some odd amount of like 1.72 each day).

the restocking fee is b.s. because all that will need to be done is simply go into the computer, manually enter the number to log the video back into the system, and then scan the number. it's one more step than it is to return a video on time (where the employee scans the video and puts in back on the shelf).

it's just another way for blockbuster to confuse the customer (now people will think they have 7 days, but forget that if you rent it on sunday and return it the next sunday, you'll be 1 day late. remember, blockbuster counts the day of rental as the 1st day, and thus saturday would be the 7th day) and still make money. and since the fees past 30 days will now be higher than before, it will be easier to get collections agencies to move in on people renting videos, as well as be easier to take someone's credit down, since the amount of money owed will be larger than before.

FloydianOne

I love it, they are really good at deception... i guess all buisnesses are.

yellowchef

My friend is a manager, this is how it goes, DVD's are like regular price since 99.9% of DVDs come out for sale at the same time they come to "video" theyre like $20 or a little more each. You get 9 days of your original "one week" rental plus a real week 7 days to return the movie. Your credit card is only billed after that 16 day period for roughly $20something dollars, and if you return it you recieve a full refund

blockbuster also has an online rental for $19.99 you get unlimited rentals 3 at a time with 2 in store rentals.

edwhit

I thought I heard that Blockbuster was having a class action law suit against them for unfair buisness practices due to their late fees.

Does anyone recall something along those lines?

I stopped going to Blockbuster because of late fees and am very happy with Netflix and the occasional Hollywood Video rental myself.

Grasshopper Green

I remember that lawsuit. Since we switched to Netflix...no more Blockbuster late fees for us!!

FoolThemAll

I'd love to hear the reasoning of the plaintiffs there. I've paid Blockbuster late fees before and I saw nothing 'unfair' about them.

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yellowchef

I dont remeber, but it was part of the reason they dropped the late fees as well as the no late fees from Netflix and the no late fees on blockbusters new online division

Grancey

My local Blockbuster is not participating in the new "no late fees". The reason being is that the new "fees" would be too confusing for the consumer.

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Roark

You still have late fee's according to the jist I got but you get like an extra week past the actual due date before incurring said fees. Then again maybe I misunderstood. Either way as stated before they're just trying to compete with Hollywood Video and Netflix

Justsomeguy

If you keep a movie one day late, they now only charge you per day. In the past, I believe you paid the same late fee whether it was one day late or two. A very long time ago, I believe you got charged a whole new rental price for every day the movie was late.

The logic is, Blockbuster should not be able to use late fees for profit. For example, they should not be able to charge more than they would have gotten for the rental had someone else checked it out. A good example is in regard to my second sentence in my first paragraph. If a movie costs $4.50 for 2 days and I keep it three, they should not be able to charge me $9.00.

However, I am not that well informed about the more recent no late fee program.

FoolThemAll

The first two situations seem fine to me. I've only experienced the second. Never heard of that third situation before, though.

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vitalogist

its an effort...

crossova

i only use blockbuster for games. Movies i have no real need to keep for more than a week.
*life of a dvd/game burner*

taylorspl

My ex works at blockbuster, I was really drunk when she explained it but return it within 7 days no charges, keep it over 7 they charge the price of the movie minus rental fee, but you have up to 30 days to return it and all you have to pay is a restocking fee of $1.25. She said that her newsletter said they were going to lose something like $700 million a year in profits just from this. The movie pass is still a the best option if you rent over 5 movies per month.

PS. They also only charge you the amount that they sell the movie or game for new...not $100 or something rediculous like that.

PPS. They've had the Movie Pass to compete with Netflix and the like for a while now, this is completly unrelated. My only qualm with thier Movie Pass is they require a debit/credit card in order to get it I can't just pay the monthly fee in advance.

loonatic8her

Whatever... just return the movies when you are supposed to and there will be no fee... no bullsh.... ya know!?

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cyrnel

Good news:
------
Blockbuster Settles 'No Late Fees' Claims for $630,000
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
New Jersey Sues Blockbuster for Deceiving Customers
Reuters

NEW YORK — Blockbuster Inc. (BBI), the top U.S. movie renter, has agreed to pay $630,000 to settle claims from 47 states that said its "No Late Fees" rental policy deceived customers, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office (search) said Tuesday.

Under the agreement, Blockbuster will also be required to make full refunds to customers who claim that they were misled and were charged restocking fees or the full price of movies rented if they were returned seven days after the due date, a statement from Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett's office said.

It said the agreement, which also includes the District of Columbia, would dramatically alter the way Blockbuster advertises its "No Late Fees" policy in the future.

New Jersey last month had filed a lawsuit that accused Blockbuster of failing to disclose key terms of its new rental policy.

Under the "No Late Fees" policy, Blockbuster said customers would have a one-week grace period after the rental due date. If a movie or game were returned after the grace period, the customer would be charged for the purchase of the item.

If the item were returned within 30 days, the customer would receive an account credit but would be charged a restocking fee of $1.25.

Full details of the settlement were scheduled to be released later on Tuesday, Corbett's office added in a brief news release. The Pennsylvania attorney general's office was one of six leading state agencies to negotiate the agreement with Blockbuster.

A Blockbuster spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Blockbuster -- which recently abandoned a bitter takeover battle for No. 2 U.S. movie renter Hollywood Entertainment Corp.(HLYW) -- unveiled the "No Late Fees" policy in December in an attempt to reinvigorate its business amid growing competition from online renters to discount retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT).

amonkie

How many problems would have been solved if people had just taken the time to read the fine print? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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cyrnel

There's a big truth in advertising element here. If marketers have absolute freedom we'll run out of hours reading all of life's fine print.

taylorspl

Buyer beware. Blame the corporation, not the idiots that can't grasp a simple concept.

cyrnel

"No late fees" sounds like a simple concept to me. The clincher in this case was that the company took excessive liberty with wording their offer vs. the reality of their offer.

However flexible our language, fine print rarely excuses explicit guarantees. The exceptions are when the offer is vague and open to interpretation, or "marketing humor". By my reading, "No late fees" is too straight-forward to be an exception. I'm guessing they dodged an FTC bullet by settling.

I haven't rented a movie in quite a while. Probably 5yrs from these guys. So I could be missing something that would make the offer seem less deceitful.

sashime76

Our local libraries have more titles than the two, three Blockbuster stores in the area. I don't know if they have nearly the same selections as Netflix or even Walmart DVD rental. I switched from Walmart to Netflix since the fees are about the same but Netflix has a larger selection. It wouldn't surprise me if Blockbuster change their scheme again or even be bought out by either of the above two.

d*d

if you get rid of late fees there will be no films to hire out - they may as well just give the films away

taylorspl

Blockbuster isn't getting bought out by anyone, believe me on that. Although it would not surprise me if they did change this deal as the one I rent from is having seious inventory problems because of this. Appearantly if it was hard to return a movie within a week before its now even harder to return a movie within 30 days. This is a neat little experiment they're doing though.

lk_3000

If people are/were confused about the whole late fee thing, they should check the receipt or ask the people behind the counter for details.

asudevil83

i held onto two movies for a week and one day after they were due. i knew that after a week after they were due the movie would be charged to my account. so i just dropped it in the return box expecting nothing.

a few weeks later i went to rent a movie, and i owed them money. i was a little puzzled and asked what was up with that. i was told of their restocking fee. i was a little pissed, but hey, whatever.

now, here is the problem. the fee i incurred was because i returned the movies LATE. therefore, i was charged LATE FEES. i wouldnt call it a restocking fee, because well, they always restock their moves.

but whatever. i'm just not going to go there anymore. IMO, they knowingly mislead consumers. they said they wouldnt charge late fees, so instead they just renamed their "late fees" restocking fees. that's kinda low.

it would be like some company advertising free memberships to something, but charging a service fee to process these free memberships.