If you’re smart you haven’t been near a Blockbuster in years, but their recent, desperate attempt to destroy Netflix by getting into the online rental game using their corporate power to temporarily lower prices has unfortunately, lured a lot of you back in. Well now you’re paying for it. Big surprise, Blockbuster has started screwing over their customers. Started? Sorry, still. They are still screwing over their customers.
CB Forum regular “Allantron” has gotten a lot of attention this weekend from a post left on his blog at StopGeek, in which he relates firsthand the rental giant’s latest plan to frustrate loyal customers. Apparently Blockbuster is changing their pricing structure, and according to Allan they’re not exactly forthcoming about who it will affect and how.
A standard email sent out from the company to their users informed them that Blockbuster is now charging more. That same email assures their customers that this new policy will not affect their subscription package. This is apparently not true. After discovering that using his return envelope as a free coupon at an actual brick and mortar store, Allan spoke to the manager who he says told him, “that new accounts, in addition to getting charged more, were actually going to get less for their money. The free rental coupon has disappeared from the Blockbuster packages entirely. I thought my package wasn’t going to be affected, but I see now they only meant in terms of price.”
If you want to complain, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. While you can return movies you receive through the mail to Blockbuster locations, apparently they now only take complaints over email. Allan says, “These are all conclusions I had to come up with myself since the manager kept turning around and walking away in the middle of our conversation because he couldn’t do anything… the manager told me all complaints and issues had to be filed online with an email.”
The corporate bullshit apparently only gets deeper. Comments left by users on StopGeek seem to indicate that those complaint emails won’t do much good. Various customers report that any response sent to Blockbusters bend over and take it email results in a computer generated form message which politely tells customers to shut up.
The thing is, you don’t have to take it. At least not yet. Give it a few years and I’m sure that like cable companies, banks, and utilities, movie rental conglomerates will all be absorbed into one, all-powerful, anti-competition, all-monopoly megalith. But for now, Blockbuster has a competitor. If you don’t like it, stop bitching, and hop over to Netflix. Better hurry, before big money backed Blockbuster puts them out of business.
