That is a clear case of false advertisement, and they should be sued. So I guess my question is are they going after the corporate stores or just the franchise stores advertising the end of late fees but not participating?

It's been a long time, and it's a little early, but here's another installment of "Abob's Random Page 3 Thoughts!"

First of all, what is so damn hard about returning your movies on time? I'm not talking to the people who are a day or two late. I'm talking about the people who are consistently a week or two late and feel that they should be entitled to do so without repercussion. If I rented a car or a power washer and didn't take it back for two weeks the police would probably be knocking on my door looking for stolen merchandise. Granted, I understand (unlike most video business employees, particularly those I work with now) that renting a movie is NOT a major event in a persons life, and that things happen in life. It is the attitude and the sense of entitlement that baffle me . . .

Next, as a former English major who needs to take his butt back to school . . . look at the full slogan: "The end of late fees. The start of more." Gramatically the implied object in the second sentence is "more fees." I'm sure it probably wasn't intended that way, but . . .

I don't understand how you can construe that $1.25 as a late fee. At that point you have purchased the product from Blockbuster. It is no longer a rental product. (And it does not appear in Blockbuster's inventory once that sale has occurred.) Essentially Blockbuster is buying the product back from you for $1.25 less than you paid them for it. Technically they could tell you to kiss off, you bought the product. Or offer you trade in rate for it (in trading stores).

In the case of the non-participating franchise store who is still donning the garb, yes they should be sued.

Antioco (Blockbuster's head honcho) has gone on record as saying that this is not a promotion, it is permanent. Should Big Blue change it's mind (as they are very prone to do) this lawsuit or investigation or whatever you want to call it actually could provide them with the out. "We tried to do something for our customers, but government and lawsuit happy customers are forcing us to recant." Think about it . . .

Speaking of this sense of entitlement people have with BBV, when I worked there we would have people bring in NEW retail movies they bought wanting to exchange it for something else. Some managers would fold, but mainly, we stood by the policy that open merchandise must be exchanged for the same title. I am not a lawyer or a major in law, but we were told the policy was so because of copyright laws or such, and it's the same with computer software and music that if you take any of those things back opened to any store, they should flat out refuse to exchange it for a different new item. And I know other retailers wouldn't put up with that kind of thing, not at Target, Best Buy, or even Wal-Mart because I've taken open items there and they said I had to exchange it for the same thing (which was no prob for me, as I didn't want something else anyway!). But when it comes to BBV, people always seem to want something for nothing. They want to use the previously viewed movies as their free rentals (you know the type, they rent a bunch of previously viewed movies then bring them back and want to keep exchanging them for different previewed movies. It doesn't work that way, folks), they want free rentals when they have to come back up because they got a defective movie or don't know how to clean a DVD properly, and when they charged late fees people would want their fees taken off arbitrailly because they just felt like they should have them taken off.

Maybe they should change their minds and go back to charging late fees. It amazes me BBV is attempting to do something good here and they are getting basically screwed for it. None of the other polices about rentals have changed: you are still expected to bring them back on the date due, you are charged for the movie after 9 days, and they just hid that restocking fee in the late fee prices before. (And how can people view that fee as a late fee? It is merely to cover their costs in getting the movie back from the customer) I say go back to charging them for late fees then, if that is what made customers so happy.

as abob said, who can't bring their movies back after 10 days? sheesh, that's just ridiculous. as much as i hate BBV, i don't fault them much for this. i fault the generally stupid public. about a week after the promotion started a friend of mine and i were in a local BB as she wanted to rent a movie. me being the inquisitive sort, asked how the whole no late fees deal worked and the guy told me the whole thing. pretty reasonable i thought. i think that they should just go ahead and start charging late fees again. after all, their normal rental period is what, 5 days? if you can't watch your movie and get it back in 5 days then you deserve late fees.

When people ask "How does the no more late fees thing work?" I tell them that we won't charge them for being late, but don't be surprised if a big guy named Guido kicks in their front door looking for my movie. That or we come break their kneecaps.

Humor makes everything easier . . .

My local Ballbusters (franchise stores) are charging late fees again.

that and not mentioned a "re-stocking" fee

To be honest, Blockbuster didn't start this program out of the goodness of their hearts (and neither did they start it to screw over their customers). It's a publicity thing. As you state, nothing really changed, besides the marketing ploy of "no late fees."
As to the sense of entitlement: as anyone who's visited the dvd bargains or hot deals forums can attest, there are many, many, many people who are more than willing to use any loophole in the system to save a few bucks (in some cases, me included). And when that loophole is closed, they complain. If people can get away with something, they will, and I don't think it's just at Blockbuster stores either.
My only real complaint about late fees with blockbuster were back in the day when they charged me a whole new rental fee if I was an hour late returning the movie. That plus the fact that their rental windows are from noon to noon, not midnight to midnight. Personally, I think the grace period they give now is more than generous, and if anything, the only reason why I wouldn't go there that's directly related to this policy is because they would never have anything in stock (especially when you take into account moviepass holders, who can hold movies for as long as they desire).

I didn't mean "good" as in some sort of morality thing (of the heart), but it is good for the pocket books of customers no matter how you look at it. You sited being slapped with a fee for being a few hours late. That has changed. Keep a two day movie out nine days and you're stuck paying 15.96 per movie before, but now that has changed.

Yes, the "No Late Fees" is for marketing. A ploy? I guess you could call everything a ploy in marketing, whether it be BBV or a local furniture store or whoever. What do you expect from advertising? And it's also said by some insiders that BBV is doing this in an attempt to weaken the stock of Hollywood so they can buy them out (but it looks like Movie Gallery is getting Hollywood now, unless something changes in the last hour, so if that was the case it backfired on BBV terribly.)

Love them or hate them, it is good for the customer to not have to worry about late fees. The other things I pointed out that are still intact have nothing to do with late fees. Those are the procedures they follow in their collections process if you don't return a movie.

Oh, and the noon due time? You do realize that was because they extended the rental period by 12 hours. If you rented a two day movie on a Saturday, regardless of what time it was, Saturday was considered the first day and Sunday was the second day, thus your movie had to be back on Sunday by midnight. Now your two day rental, if rented on a Saturday in my example, has to be back Monday by noon. Under the previous late fee policy, if that was a problem to get it back by noon, then just return it the night before by midnight. How hard is that? If you knew you couldn't get it back by noon on the due date and couldn't manage to get it back the night before it was due, that's not on BBV, that's on you. They gave people 12 extra hours, I suppose as a ploy, but just because they gave it to you didn't mean you had to use it. And if you chose to use it and incurred a fee because you couldn't return your movie in that time frame, the only person that should get the compaint is you.

The official line is that they started it in an effort to try to get back part of a rental market that is (supposedly) declining due to sell-through. In other words, this was intended to compete more with mass merchants than other rentailers. Of course, that could have been said to help try to paint the notion that owning Hollywood would not constitute a monopoly.

Uhh, the whole noon thing is an EXTRA 12 hours to return the movie.
EXAMPLE (old midnight)
You rent Shrek on Tuesday night
It would be due back THURSDAY night

New way (well, as of 2 months ago)
You rent Shrek on Tuesday night
It would be due back FRIDAY before NOON.

Thats an EXTRA 12 hours. Keep in mind, all stores had a 2-3 hour GRACE period after noon too. People would always say "But I returned it at like 12:05!". "No, you actually returned it a 8PM...the NEXT day"

Agreed. I working at BB for 7 months, and those customers were EVERY day! They felt they should get a free rental because there was a fingerprint on there DVD. How DARE we rent it to them without testing it out. SERIOUSLY. Towards the end of my employment I would simply say "Ok, go ahead and pick a movie out you want to rent. Ill sit RIGHT here and watch it. Then you can pay and get out of my store!".

I had customers buy new movies, 2 weeks later come back returning it because they didn't like it. Uhh, too damn bad.

There is a great website, and I think the webmaster posts here, called www.ihateblockbuster.com . You can usually here rumblings of future promotions or news there.

I once went to rent something and was told that i had a Late charge of 10 dollars for late return of the Dvd Bad Boys. Funny thing was, I owned that dvd on the times they said i "supposedly" rented it. Apparently i frequently rent and pay for movies that i own according to blockbuster

I don't understand why that is funny. Unless you have somebody else on your account, somebody is renting under YOUR NAME. BBV requires ID or a BBV card for rental, so they are doing it convincingly as well. I am assuming it's somebody renting on your account that thinks they are entitled to for whatever reason, as opposed to fraud. If it was fraud, they would likely rent 9 games at once and never return them and leave you with the bill.

And you do realize it is YOUR responsibility to let BBV know in person and in writing if your card has been lost? You are liable for those rentals until you do so, so laugh it up!

yes, i'm aware of this. This was the only infraction on the account. It was 7 years ago and i cut up the card and cancelled the account on the spot.. that was why it's funny.

Shit! Sound the alarms! Glassdragon is on to the conspiracy! Blockbuster better find a new scam on Glassdragon's account! Now his updated DVDAfficinado list is of no good to them!

Granted guys, I despise Blockbuster just as much as anybody here. And they have done plenty to deserve that. But really, some of you start to sound like your tinfoil hats are on a little too tight. Maybe it was the "Magic Bullet" that exited Kennedy's head and then ricocheted into your local Blockbuster and hit the right keys to check the movie out on your account?

man, some of you people really need to stop taking everything so seriously. I was just relaying a story i had. I never said it was some Blockbuster conspiracy. It was just a story for crying out loud. I don't dispise blockbuster, I just thought it was kind of a funny story that they told me that i owed a late charge for something that i owned at the time. That's it... end of story. No conspiracy here. Carry on with your flames if you like.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._settlement_11

I guess this is settled. 630,000 in settlement costs, including refunds in Dallas. Of course, the 630,000 is going to be used to refund the various states who investigated this, and not to the consumer who supposedly suffered from it (unless you live in Dallas, for some reason). So lawyers get richer, and move on to the next class-action-type lawsuit...

As it ever was, as it ever shall be.....

I noticed my local BBs now have 8x11 stickers on the front doors detailing the, er, details of "No More Late Fees" in not-so-fine print. You can't miss them, and they are painfully clear.

I noticed on my last receipt from them, it said 'Be Kind-Return on Time'. I guess they can't say "Be Kind - Rewind" anymore since half their stock is dvd's.

Completely agree. Some users need to take off their tighty whities (and go Kramer-style).