Late fees are back at Blockbuster; good luck with that

The Blockbuster business model has come and gone. The trip to the video store to view the boxes is yesteryear. Netflix brought a paradigm shift that Blockbuster could not compete effectively. Red Box enters the fray with a lot less capital invested than Blockbuster. Now comes streaming video and video-on-demand and you wonder will that cause a paradigm shift.

Then consider Blockbuster is bringing back late fees at the same time the U.S. Post Office wants to cut back to 5 day a week delivery. Hello management, do you not understand the public wants better, faster service not less.

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I think they are doing it the wrong way. What they need to be doing is coming up with a monthly subscription program, say $4.99 for unlimited rentals and no late fees.

If they can get a few million people on board with that, they will have a regular monthly income and may just have a chance.

Some businesses (the dying ones) still haven't learned, when profits are down, you don't make up for it by raising your prices on your remaining customers! Case in point, we have a local BBQ restaurant that was struggling. They started offering a lunch special for $3.99. Yes, they are charging a few dollars per meal less than they were, but now, the restaurant is packed! They are making more money than they ever have. Last year was one of their best years ever! Think about it, they are charging less, which is bringing in more customers, and making way more. It was the difference between life and death for this company. They wisely chose life.

Okay, let the negative attacks commence...

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Wait,
I agree with you. Been saying this for years. Why don't the stores and such just reduce prices and sell a lot more as a benefit? Also save a lot of big bucks on advertising and sales pitches, etc.

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While I hate late fees, here is the problem.

Every perused the blue-ray section of Blockbuster on a Thursday, Friday, Sat night? If you have you probably found it fairly bare. They probably only had no more than 10 of that new movie you wanted to grab anyway, so you mosey up to the desk and check on returns. The employee informs you that all the copies have been checked out for 7 days.

You see, they do eventually sell the movie to you automatically, but they don't have a policy to auto replace every copy that auto sells, and even if they did it would be a month later at best. The capital to purchase additional copies of frequently over-held titles has to come from somewhere, and late fees is where. Now, they should be auto-renewal fees not late fees, but that's semantics. If you want available copies there needs to be a process in place to manage stock and cost. Netflix does it the opposite way - they restrict the number of rentals you can have but draw recurring revenue. By doing this they can budget, it's a novel concept I know.

The solution seems self evident, either bring your movies back on time, pay out the nose for late fees, or use Netflix and deal with the turn around time. Nobody is robbing or deceiving you.

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Whether you realize it or not you have just described the difference in being a Democrat and being a Republican when it comes to DC debates on taxes. Dems always want to raise taxes (prices) on existing customers (taxpayers) and further "drive them out of business". Repubs want to lower prices (taxes) so they can stimulate more business (place is full, doing better than ever!). Always intersting to see how these philosophical differences play out in the real world.

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Not the right approach - specially with all the competition. If I know there is a chance I will have to pay late fees I will not get the movies from Blockbuster and I will just get them from 'on demand' (directv) the moment I am ready to watch it and will have no worries about the late fees.

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Blockbuster is dinosaur. They need new leadership and need to replace all the upper management. Any decent MBA student could analyze their problem and fix their business model. Leader and upper managers are too stupid to understand what they have and how to leverage it. You know what, they deserve to be gone. And who care. These stupid managers will get another job from some other company and bankrupt that company too. Only people who will be hurting are average Joe workers. Welcome to capitalism.
Here is hint for you stupid managers of blockbuster. You have something that takes great amount of time to create and competitors does not have. You have something that other competitors do not have and they can not afford to have but you can.

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Great stupid idea, you rich upper management will be bk and crying why.... you are pricing your self our of business.... i am no longer going tp be a customer.... you know where i will be sending my money glad i don't own stock in your rip off.... upper management has stolen so much money through loop holes,,, if you were paid for doing a great job , all of the U.S banker, brokers and upper management has stolen too much... hope you are on your way to BK...

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Blockbuster actually has a fantastic subscription program that people don't seem to know about. I have been a Blockbuster Online member for about 6 years now (since they first developed it). I pay a monthly fee (about $18) and in return I get unlimited rentals via mail. I watch 1-2 movies per week and the mail turnaround is always 2-3 days. In addition, you can return your mail-order movies directly to the store and get a free movie in return! None of the movies involved have any late fees or return due dates. So, if you watch 3-4 movies a month, online is the way to go, no brainer.

That isn't to say the company isn't losing money. But for those of us who don't stream movies or buy them on our tv, Blockbuster is clearly superior to Netflix (if you live near a store, that is). Its too bad that they're struggling and if they go out of business I will definitely upset.

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First off, Blockbuster where I live, has had additional daily fees for 2 years now as well as the 5 day rental or the overnight rentals.. I don't need to hang on to a movie forever like some people do, if I rent a movie I'm going to watch it right away. And if you choose to keep a movie past its due date, then you are choosing to keep it an addtional daily day.. Kinda like renting a car, or a vacuum cleaner, your choosing to keep it an additional day!! Second, Blockbuster has the Blue Box, and Total access, and now has streaming access with iphones.. And Third, I can ask a blockbuster employee's opinion on a movie, so I'm not renting a movie that really sucked! Your negative out look on Blockbuster is just hurting the situation of our economy, and without businesses in America we are all screwed!!

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I can't believe people still rent movies from Block Busters.

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wHY DONT YOU JUST GO TO BEST BUY AND BUY THE MOVIE. THAT IS WHAT I DO BECAUSE I LIKE TO OWN IT FOREVER. THERE ARE SO MANY $4.99 MOVIES TO BUY NOW AT BEST BUY AND THE LIKE (TARGET) THAT IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO RENT. SURE THE NEW MOVIES ON BLU-RAY ARE ALOT MORE EXPENSIVE, BUT I WOULD ALWAYS RATER OWN THAN RENT.

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I don't know how the hell Blockbuster stays in business. Practically everytime I visit the local Blockbuster here they've changed their policies. Any other company doing that kind of crap would have had to pack it in a long time ago.

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