I’ve been a Blockbuster Movie store customer since the store first went up down the street, what, ten or twelve years ago. I confess my family and I – we’re regular customers. The kids that work there – they know us all by name.
Renting a few movies a week was always an inexpensive form of entertainment. The only downside – those blasted late fees! But then blockbuster came up with a solution – the In-Store Movie Pass. The “End of Late Fees”. A BONANZA! We joined it immediately, the cheapest possible package. For $19.99 per month (plus tax, of course) we got unlimited movies – Yes, as many as we wanted – as long as we only checked out one at a time (We could have gotten two or three at a time, but I’m cheap). Best of all, though, we could keep our movie as LONG as we wanted – no “2-Day Rental” or “5-Day Rental. We never had to worry about late fees! Just bring our movie in when we’re done, swap it for another one – like “in with the old, out with the new”. It was the perfect plan that kept our movie habit neatly in a budget.
But then, the next “improvement”. I guess Blockbuster wanted to be more like Netflix, you know, have their brick and mortar and mail it, too. They took their business on-line and started promoting the program … hard. But we were so happy with our In-Store Pass. We ignored the new program. We resisted. We “just said no”. Until, one day, we could resist no more …
Get this … Here’s the program: For LESS than I was paying for my one-movie-at-a-time In-Store Movie Pass, I could have THREE movies out at a time. I could order them on-line, from the warmth and comfort of my own home, then have them show up at my house a few days later. Wow. No dolling up, no braving the California elements or fighting neighborhood traffic to traverse the grueling eight blocks from my home. Nope, just a short, healthy stroll to my mailbox and back. But wait, there’s more! With Blockbuster Online, when you’re done with your movies you can either pop them back in the mail and wait for your next selections (like Netflix) OR you can return them to your local Blockbuster Store and trade them for THREE MORE MOVIES – FOR FREE! The store then returns your selections for you and your next on-line selections are sent, all while you’re watching the three you got from the store! Perpetual-movie-maniac-heaven!
Or so I thought.
Well, here was the thing. First of all, as I suspected, the reason I resisted NetFlix and Blockbuster On-line for so long … My family and I, we don’t know three or five or ten days ahead what we feel like watching today. We put things in the queue that sound good, then they show up and, doggone it, we don’t wanna watch ’em. So, okay, at least with Blockbuster, we can take them to the store and swap them for something we DO feel like watching. But what’s the point in that? And then there are those times when we just can’t wait for the next movie we have on the list, but for some, unknown reason, even though our selection says it’s available, the good folks down at the on-line warehouse skip right over THAT one, the one we REALLY DO WANT, repeatedly sending us movies way down our list. I’ve never been able to get an explanation for that. Oh well …
But then, here’s the real rub. Those extra movies we get from the store when we bring in our mailed movies? They’re back in the “2-Day Rental”/”5-Day Rental” category and, yeap, if we’re not careful, we wind up with LATE FEES AGAIN. And if we want something else, by golly, we’re just gonna have to pay to rent it … you know, like some common customer off the street! There goes the budget. There goes the status. There goes the joy!
We’ll, okay, maybe we can learn to work within the system a little better. But who needs another thing to figure out? I miss my regular visits with Toni and Alex and Matt down at the old Blockbuster and that fantastic feeling of bringing in the movie I’m done with and swapping it with the movie I want right then, without ever opening my wallet. I’m going back to the old Blockbuster In-Store Movie Pass program, if they’ll have me. I’m just too traditional a girl. And I hope, for some of you, my experience will help prevent heartache in your home as well.
Enjoy your movies, however you choose to obtain them!
