Interesting, but still pathetic. An acclaimed movie, starring Batman, Wolverine, Alfie, Ziggy Stardust and that chick whose butt opened Lost In Translation, gets round-filed rather than seen by people because the studio doesn't make any money from PPV sales? This is the same madness that causes the RIAA to attack music downloaders. If someone buys a PPV movie and watches it with a friend, that friend may go out and buy a new retail copy for themselves. However, if no one can buy the film for cheap, then there is ZERO chance to pick up any new customers. Real frigging smart there. I buy PPV movies because I'd rather spend $5-$8 and have the option of keeping it rather than spending $3-$4 renting something that I may then want to own. Stupid stupid STUPID!!!

Yeah, everything he said is right on the money. I coudn't even begin to count the amount of dvds I've destroyed, it's depressing. At least 120 copies of Arthur and the Invisibles, nobody really rented that one. My store constantly has to destroy older previously-viewed inventory too. They'd just give us a list of a few hundred titles to find and destroy; for instance I destroyed three copies of Warner's two disc King Kong (the original) a few months back. I felt bad, it's such a waste.

And I don't know about most stores, but from the way I understand we pay super high prices for each copy we get. My store manager told me that every single copy of a new release had to rent something like 24 times before it even begins to breaks even.

My store had a good supply of The Prestige for quite some time, but two weeks ago I destroyed 64 copies of it, so now we have like 12 to rent and none for sale.

As for new stuff... I transferred eight copies of the two-disc Ghost Rider at my store. Another new one was Catch and Release, which I only moved two copies of. I can't remember if we already had or not, but just in case, there were also about five or six copies of The Messengers.

This is ridiculous! Is that BB management's decision or the movie studio's order to destory?
If they are going to trash hundreds copies of prefectly good DVD, why can't they use them as some kind of freebie/special promotion to get people back to their store.

It's the studio's decision on the newer releases that get destroyed. The older films though are based on rent history. It sucks I had to destroy about 200 the other night.

when you say destroy, do you have to physically cut up the discs/put them in a trash compactor? or do you just scratch em up and throw em away? do they keep track of the destroyed ones, like have a manager count them? or is there some way around like having an employee sneak em out. granted, seeing as its against policy, i'm sure no one would do that, but that is such a horrible waste that i can't believe they actually do that. they should at least just give them away, but then i guess that would be purposeless since the whole point is to get people to buy it new. sad.

Here is the process we have to follow:

1. Pull the disc out, put it through a dvd shredding machine that pokes thousands of tiny holes into a disc, rendering it useless.
2. Pull the cover art out and rip it in half, then throw it away. At this point we throw away about half of the cases and keep some, depending on how well stocked we are at the moment.
3. Put the pile of destroyed discs into a manila envelope for the store manager to count.

After that they're either sent back to the studio or to the dumpster. They're usually sent back to the studio though.

Edit:

Also, this deal is officially DEAD at my store. We're back to 2 for $20 and 4 for $20.

Wow, I don't think I could bring myself to do that to a DVD

I agree with one of the above posters, that they should use them somehow as a special promotion to get people into their store, instead of destroying them.

this is part of an agreement with certian studios.
bbv gets a good deal on dvds for rent.
bbv agrees to destroy a percentage and not sell them, so no revenue brought in for
previously viewed dvd.

any money made for selling pvd is 100% profit.

We take scissors and cut the disc. Then we rip the cover art in half. The deal is also dead at my Blockbuster. We are back to 4 for 20 and 2 for 20.

Yeah, the deal's dead pretty much nationwide. Not really sure as far as franchise stores go.

Yeah, promotions would seem a good idea, but they technically aren't really BB's property. Warner Bros or Sony don't give a hoot if they can draw people into BBs by giving away the free stuff. They only want to ensure that their profits are protected. There is a whole web of annoying policies like this in place for any store that sells used stuff. Like, if they want 200 copies at every store to rent, they HAVE to order 30 retail copies. Or if they want 150 of certain hit release from Studio A to give an entire bay too, they have to order 50 of box office dud from Studio A and give it more shelf space than it really would deserve. Gamestop and the like are absolutely LOATHED by most game companies, and some will not ship as many retail as the stores request, instead opting to overload stores like Wal-Mart and Target.

interesting! i always wondered this when i'd see certain titles taking up like two or three rows that weren't even box office "hits" in any sense of the word and curious to know why they got so much space/attention. i almost wanna work at a blockbuster/video store now for a few weeks just to learn all these inside facts...