Jason's Place

So, Blockbuster.com’s customer service give a less the spectacular response regarding the late fee’s I had been charged.

My Message To Them:

I do plan on returning to the store and discussing this with a manager, but I’m a little upset about the fact that it was not mentioned to me that late fee’s had been re-instated for store rentals. When I came to the local store to get a couple movies with ones from Blockbuster.com, I was informed that I had a ~$8 balance on my account for a movie and a game that I had returned four days late. Despite my better judgment I proceeded to pay the fine, however I wanted to express how frustrated I am over the fact that I had not been informed of the late fee policy change when returning the movie and the game.

Blockbuster.com’s Response:

Dear Jason,

Thank you for contacting Blockbuster Customer Care.

We’ve received your email about the late fees in stores.

I am sorry if you feel that you were not informed sufficiently about the change on the account. We recently enhanced our policies. This was decided upon the objective of providing our subscribers with better title availability.
Thank you so much for understanding and for making Blockbuster part of your home entertainment.

Sincerely,

Philamie
Blockbuster Customer Care

So obviously they have no problem not informing their customers, and feel that a simple “sorry” is perfectly ok.  As I mentioned before, all Blockbuster customers be warned, that late fee’s have returned, and they really don’t seem to care if the store tells you or not…

Update 1/23/2009:

Davis Freeberg found this article regarding Blockbuster going through some market testing.

I’ve replied to Blockbuster with the following:

I don’t really seem to gather that you connected the main reason for
my complaint.  It isn’t the fact that you’ve reinstate late fee’s that
bothers me.  That’s Blockbuster’s decision to make and I will have to
accept that if I wish to continue as a customer.  What bothers me is
that the employee’s at the store indicated nothing to this fact.  I’m
still looking for the receipt to see if it had anything, but
regardless, most people aren’t going to thoroughly read the receipt.

As a matter of common courtesy and good customer relations, I would
think that you would understand explaining these things to customers
is a good thing.  Blockbuster has had a number of lawsuits brought
against them in the past for not explaining rental policy changes
completely, both through marketing and the in-store employee’s.  One
could only hope you wouldn’t want to repeat the same actions again…

For almost two years now I’ve had a Blockbuster.com account for renting movies.  The main reason I’ve had a Blockbuster.com account as opposed to Netflix is my ability to use the movies from Blockbuster.com for free in-store rentals.  Additionally, for some time, Blockbuster has had a no-late-fee policy on movies rented in the store. While you may eventually be charged the cost of the movie if you don’t return it within a certain amount of time, you were not dinged for bringing something back a couple days late.

Monday night however, with great surprise, I found that this is no longer the case.   I was informed that I had an ~ $8 balance on my account.   I asked for what, and they said it was for a movie and a game that I had returned four days late.   I again asked what she was talking about, and she explained that there was a new .99 cent per day late for for any movies or games. Despite my better judgment I proceeded to pay the fine, stating that I was never told of the policy change when I had rented the movies.  In hindsight I’ve decided that this was a bad move and I’m going to return to the store and talk to a manager regarding the charges.  It wouldn’t bother me so much if I had been informed of these new fees when I had rented the movies.

That being said, I would highly recommend that all Blockbuster customers verify their stores late fee policy before grabbing that next movie.  Especially if you’ve gotten a little used to not racing to the store a 11:50p.m. for that forgotten movie.

I’ve done a little bit of searching online to see if anyone has written an article about this, since I very well could be the last Blockbuster customer to know about this, however I have yet fo find anything.  If your a regular customer of Blockbuster, I’m interested in hearing from you about this since I live in a small town that only has one store.