Screw Blockbuster Video!

I've stop renting at BB Video because it's just way too fucking expensive. It's a rip-off. I used to work there too, and the horror stories you may have heard aren't too far-fetched. I had an asshole of a boss, he was some elitist white bread who was racist and shit.

$4.10 for a rental is a rip! At my BB, they also raised the price of the "old videos" from $2.15 to $4.10 as well. Fuck that shit.

So I found a mom and pop store near me, and hell I go there every time now. It's cheap! Hopefully you guys have that luxury too. This place it's 3.00 per rental, no tax, or 2.00 Sunday-Wednesday. Everything. Now that's what I'm talking about!

So far I've rented:

-Out of Time (great)
-John Q (great)
-Hulk (the incredible dull)
-Swimfan (pretty bad)
-Cabin Fever (bad)

Right now I got Head of State, Lost in Translation and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Bout to pop one in before I head out to my evening work shift.

Screw Blockbuster! For 4 bucks, instead of ONE rental I can get TWO. Saves you money. I'm never paying BB another dime.

They really wiped out mom and pop shops, which is why I had to use BB for the last couple years after I stopped working there (they give employees FIVE FREE rentals a week)... I'm glad I found a mom and pop shop near my place that has a much better price guide than BB, which screws you up the ass.

I have similar experiance but there are no other rental shops near me and the games up there are $4.99 + Tax. I don't know how many times I have had to return games on a regular basis b/c they were FUBAR even new releases (Splinter Cell Pandora Tomarrow). Movies on the other hand are about $3.99 from what I can remember.

Did you also get that little piece of paper telling you how many of these point things you have and to spend them at Freebie.com? Our family account has 52,000 points and I stil can't seem to login at the site and they refuse to help so I said fsck it!!

TrailerTrash said:

I have similar experiance but there are no other rental shops near me and the games up there are $4.99 + Tax. I don't know how many times I have had to return games on a regular basis b/c they were FUBAR even new releases (Splinter Cell Pandora Tomarrow). Movies on the other hand are about $3.99 from what I can remember.

Did you also get that little piece of paper telling you how many of these point things you have and to spend them at Freebie.com? Our family account has 52,000 points and I stil can't seem to login at the site and they refuse to help so I said fsck it!!

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Yeah it's really quite dumb. I forgot to mention the games were super expensive too. Shit. Just give me the game for 2 days for 2 dollars, that's all I need. That was the good ole days....

I think over here it's 6 bucks for a game rental. *ROFL* pathetic

I hear ya. I go to a small chain where its 4 bucks for a new release and you get a free old movie to rent too.

In every Blockbuster in my city, there are always more customers in the store than actual items to rent.
When Windsor got its first Roger's Video, we went there to give it a try. You can rent three items for almost a week and it'll cost the same as Blockbuster's shitty two for three days offer.
Blockbuster's one-day new movie rental, high prices, idiot employees and lack of selection and go lick themselves from behind.

Yeah, BB is pretty crappy sometimes. I used to work at one during Highschool and another in college. In HS one of the managers used to date one of the managers at a local Little Caesars pizza so we'd get free pizza for lunch...until some clown decided to tell the higherups and got him fired

I've heard BB has been losing lots of money and at one point was for sale. Mostly because of all the people in the movie rental biz and since everybody with a broadband connection and a CD writer downloads their movies. Nobody wants to run to blockbuster only to find out the video you want is out or if it's in have to run and return it with that nextday crap. It's just not worth it when you've got online services where you don't have to go anywhere or you've got pay-per-view.
It's too easy to be lazy and get the movies you want instead of going to BB. They'll either change with the times or die...

Videos are indeed much too expensive to rent, especially since you can just buy them now for $20 and under. But I'm afraid you lost all credibility with me when you said: "Cabin Fever (bad)."

Cabin Fever was the best new horror movie released in years, IMO. It contained all the elements that made horror movies great, from before the era of the sanitized and watered down for mainstream teen audiences, like the Scream movies, etc. Not to mention it was filled with loving homages to great horror movies of the past, like Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw, and Evil Dead. The movie had a great sense of humor too; something missing from many recent horror flicks. If you're not a fan of horror movies, I guess I could see it, but... Oh, well. Matter of opinion, I guess.

Back on topic, I think rentals are down, and Blockbuster is desperately trying to keep itself alive bringing in the same amount of money, by raising prices. If this is the case, it's doomed to failure, they'll eventually go out of buisiness, and we can expect to see the thousands of BB employees scrambling for the ever-decreasing number of jobs in our beleaguered economy. Go USA!

The "Mom 'n Pop" video stores around where I live were dirty as hell, had no selection, and carried a maximum of two videos for every title. Good riddance. I fucking love Blockbuster.

Yes, their prices are exorbitant, but there are plenty of ways around that.

Get a Discover card. For every $20 in rewards you earn, you can redeem it for a 10-rental card. Just put all your purchases on the card. You'll have more rentals than you'll know what to do with. I've got three of these cards I haven't even used yet.

Alternatively, you can buy them off ebay. Average going price is about $30. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=31411&item=5500963695&rd=1 Averages to $3 per rental.

There are printable coupons that come up on the web every few months for 99 cent rentals. Check fatwallet.com.

And if your movie or game "skips" (all the discs are always scratched to hell), notify the clerk when you return your rental and they'll credit your account.

chemical said:

The "Mom 'n Pop" video stores around where I live were dirty as hell, had no selection, and carried a maximum of two videos for every title. Good riddance. I fucking love Blockbuster.

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That's a good point. It's not Blockbuster as much as it's the franchise owners. I have seen some Blockbuster stores with a great atmosphere, staff, selection and store-incentives to buy/rent there. Not in my dirty-ass city, though.
There are a few mom & pop shops around here, but most of them have never heard of DVDs before. Some of them probably still are sticking to Beta, by the looks of them.

Eh, I just go to movie gallery. Its 5 nights on everything, and they usually have a deal where you can rent five movies for 10 bucks or something.

I'm also a BlockBuster hater, but it's mostly because of a shitty experience I had with one of their cro-magnun manager whores - one of their employess had fucked me over on late fees and the bitch wouldn't even listen to my argument.

Anyway, they're overpriced and crowded - I don't why people flock to them.

I'm not even really that keen on the whole movie rental thing altogether. Why should I pay 6 bucks for it when I can just buy it for 20? Just seems like a waste to me.

Sorry BB and "mom n pop" both suck. BB the biggest movie rental chain in the country and does not even get new releases in on time WTF?
They cater to the "Oh lets see is the special edtion of Charlies Angels,American Pie,Dude Wheres my Dignity? out yet? kind of crowd you know my baseball hat size is larger than my IQ kind of people.

Every "mom n pop" video store I've ever seen is filthy unhelpful and not worth my time. Just buy the damn thing your gonna owe that much in late fees anyway plus you can usually tell if you'll like or not before-hand.

Be happy! In the Uk it's £3.50 for new releases (yes that's right $6.40)

I dunno, my local Blockbuster is cool. The manager is a gamer, and they have a nice selection of games and new releases compared to most locations. Hell they have Metal Slug 3 for Xbox, I was surprised about that.

Expensive? I pay $20 a month and I can rent as many titles as I want (1 at a time). Considering they charge $6.29 for a week long game rental, and I get an average of 10-12 rentals a month, I save a lot.

Ghost-Dog said:

I dunno, my local Blockbuster is cool. The manager is a gamer, and they have a nice selection of games and new releases compared to most locations. Hell they have Metal Slug 3 for Xbox, I was surprised about that.

Expensive? I pay $20 a month and I can rent as many titles as I want (1 at a time). Considering they charge $6.29 for a week long game rental, and I get an average of 10-12 rentals a month, I save a lot.

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Yea I was shocked as hell to see Slug 3 there the other day.

The 19.99 a month deal works for me. My xbocks is loaded now.

Now they have $49.99 for 3 months. If you rent a lot of games, you can't beat that.

Yeah "Block Buster Video" indeed sucks the big one. It was that shitbird chain that got me into watching weird/obscure/underground and foreign stuff through mail order companies like Video Search of Miami back in the early 90's as I bored with "The Norm". It's how I discovered John Woo and Beat Takeshi and then got into the even weirder stuff. If you can find a good Mom & Pop video store you should definately give them your business as it's rare that they can make it outside of small towns where POS chain stores like B.B. or Hollywood Video dominate with an iron boot. There's one here {2 actually} called Pop-in-Go Video that also rents XXX Porn and every tuesday is SUPER TUESDAYS $2.99 a tape or DVD. ---OF course this section of the store is what has probably kept them in business since 1986 though since B.B. would never have anything up for rent racier than those stupid softcore porn vids.

MERCENARY X99

Off-topic, sorry

I like when places like Blockbuster or other rental shops/retailers unknowingly put Happy Tree Friends in the children's sections.


For movie rentals, I admitted earlier I go to Roger's Video, but for purchases and for my games, I deal with the smaller, dedicated shops where the employees actually care to learn about their stuff.

Stop bitching and "Flip It!"

Later

shir0

Nesagwa said:

Eh, I just go to movie gallery. Its 5 nights on everything, and they usually have a deal where you can rent five movies for 10 bucks or something.

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That's where I go also. I wonder if Movie Gallery is just a Central Florida place?

We got lots of Movie Galleries in Virginia as well.

Hell I dig quite a few MG's around the state, cuz they got almost 10 shelves of VHS tapes they sell for 10 and under. I used to walk out with 5 movies every weekend. So I've pretty much kept up with movies I haven't seen for teh longest!

rhiohki said:

netflix

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Whoa, you came out nowhere!

Okay, I'm guilty. I'm a Blockbuster CSR part-time only two days out of the week.

My main job is game testing M-F for a very fimiliar company over in Redmond, WA. Hmmm... I wonder who could that be? Only two guesses here people.

Anyway, i'm real anal about Blockbuster and it's, "extended viewing fee(Late Fee as some of you may know it)," policy. I don't know why our movies are due by 12:00 noon instead of midnight. At least that's how my store works. This forces everyone to get up extra early that third day to return that 2 day release.

I'm real cool with credits for these EVF's just as long as your story is legit. I can understand if your movie is an hour late, but four hours??? Forget it!

Why the price of rentals are so high? That's all corporate. They're in charge of that. New Releases are $4.12 up here in Washington State. That is both DVD and VHS. Old VHS(Blockbuster Favorites) are $2.17. This is the catch, though. DVD's whether New or Old are all the same price of $4.12. Customer's are always confused with that.

Some of you may know, about our Movie Pass(good for both DVD and VHS). You've probably been harrassed about it one too many times by a Blockbuster CSR(No, we don't get commission on the fucken thing). Basically, you pay one flat fee a month for one($19.99), two($24.99), or three($29.99) movies to keep out for as long as you want and you can come exchange either one or both movies anytime you want. Yes, our version of, "Netflix."

Sure, you don't have to leave home when dealing with Netflix but, it's going to take a couple of days for that movie to reach you while you can just come in and get it from us. Anyway, were coming out with something to counter Netflix this coming Fall. For those who care anyway.

The Movie and Game(Flip) pass are great for those who constantly keep getting Late fees. It's a great way also to, "Try before you Buy." Coming in and paying a $50 late fee everytime you walk-in to Blockbuster, you might as well save yourself some money and get a pass. God, I sound like a fucken sales Robot.

Well, i've been with Blockbuster since the introduction of the Hamster and Rabbit. How do I feel about Blockbuster? I'll tell you this... It's made me hate movies from time to time. We still don't have some of the basics in our inventory. We don't even have Rocky IV(yes, I am a fan of the series), for crying out loud. We have 1, 2, 3, 5. WTF? It's like having the Alien collection without Alien, and Aliens.

In the long run, I'd keep me main job anyday of the week if it weren't for these DAMN gas prices. Redmond isn't exactly walking distance from Seattle.

"What a difference.... Blockbuster Video." "Make it a Blockbuster Night."

I have the $29.99 for 1 month deal. I've already watched almost 30 movies in just over 10 days. It's sure a lot cheaper than their regular $4 per video rental.

I generally try to support local mom and pop businesses when it comes to amusement or restaurants...but I have some very cool local businesses to patronize, so I digress. I try to stay the fuck away from McDonalds, Wal-Mart, or Blockbuster though. Turning America into one giant homogenous strip mall is fucking awful.