Blockbuster

My local Blockbuster is closing down. I found out last week when I walked down to rent a game, only to encounter massive closing signs on the windows, and price tags on everything. I picked up a couple cheap games instead (making it almost six months since I've bought a $60 game).

I never used Blockbuster until I lived in Maryland. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, they simply didn't exist. Meanwhile, once I moved to Baltimore they became my only choice. Yet I never went to them with any great frequency, despite it being a mere ten minute walk to the store. I can think of a couple of reasons why.

Netflix - this is the reason every else gives, though it isn't the same for me. I don't subscribe to Netflix myself, but my roomate does, giving me access to their streaming service on the Xbox 360. The amount of movies they offer to stream is staggering, more than I could hope to get through. With that kind of selection, even a ten minute walk is too much.

The main point about Netflix, I think, isn't so much convenience as it is price. They helped make movies cheaper. A Netflix subscription lets you see quite a few movies by mail, and even more via streaming. There's no reason to even spend four bucks on a rental when double or triple that price can give you more films per month.

Gamefly - Calling Gamefly the "Netflix of games" is a bad analogy, since it's costlier, and the games mail out more slowly. Still, if you use Gamefly as a compliment to your gaming diet, it can change the way you play. You can buy the big, meaty games at full price, and rent out the quick and dirty action games you might otherwise have ignored. This system has allowed me to stay current with the industry in ways that would have been prohibitively expensive otherwise.

Gamefly also beats up Blockbuster on cost. $15 a month for a single game at a time will, at the bare minimum, even out to two games a month if you take your time. At one point this meant that they were not any cheaper than renting two games a month at Blockbuster, but that changed 'Buster raised their rental prices to close to nine bucks. They went from being competitive to a non option. The only alternative was Blockbuster's deal in which you could save by renting two games at once, but that puts a severe time crunch on you that simply isn't necessary.

Flaky policies/pricing - the "no late fees" policy was probably terrible for business, but great for me. It gave me a whole extra week with my games, which was often necessary. But they quietly removed this policy, such that games were back to having a strict 5 day rental period. I suffered some fees by not knowing this, and after that happened I pretty much stopped going to them (even with Gamefly, sometimes I wanted something right away). If it was made a bit clearer to me, I would have accepted it a lot more.

I also discovered that the Blockbuster Rewards program was bullshit. It only really rewarded you if you rented a lot of new, expensive films. If you just got old, cheap rentals, or didn't rent quite enough games in a month, you'd get little in return. If they modified it so that every four or five games netted you a freebie, it would have been much nicer, but instead they reset your count at the start of every month. That just made it less of a reward system and more of a way to sucker you out of money. Which I guess was the point, but the potential was always there for something good.

They Didn't Really Compete - A year after I left Pennsylvania, a Hollywood Video opened up in town. In the one summer I was home from college, I found them invaluable. They always had a good stock, their game rentals were cheaper, and they frequently offered up free rentals on any product if you didn't come in for a few months. That got me back in the store in a hurry. The only phone calls I got from Blockbuster were when items were close to being due. They were far more concerned with you giving back their products than helping customers out. But I guess they can't be blamed for that, as my next point makes clear.

They had Nothing - For a brief period of time, I worked close to another Hollywood Video. The one time I rented from there, I was able to get Bioshock the day it was released. There were at least 4 or 5 other copies sitting there. Many people would say that this kind of fast service is what we should expect and demand, but I'm a patient guy. If you told me that a game would come in within the same work week that it hits shelves, I'd be a happy camper.

Which is why I was so often frustrated with Blockbuster - even a time frame of "within the week" was too quick for them. Sometimes you'd have to wait until the next week, and when you went down to grab the game you had your eye on, it wouldn't be there. They had one, maybe two copies, and both had been scooped up. You would come back a week later, and it was still gone. Two weeks later, and it was still missing. A month later, and you were shit out of luck. It was once explained to me that this was the result of the company's "gamer pass" plan, wherein you paid a Gamefly-esque monthly fee and could keep a game as long as you wanted. But when I tried to sign up for the service, the clerk told me that not only was it discontinued, but had been for quite some time. Yet the games were still being lost in the ether.

Here's my best analysis of what happened - when the Gamer Pass service wasn't keeping the games off the shelf, the No Late Fee Policy was. As I alluded to earlier, this system could be used to your advantage. You got an extra seven days after the due date to hang onto the item, after which they charged you full price and gave you ownership. So long as you returned it before the extra seven days was over, you just extended your rental time considerably.

But while this would keep the games out longer, it would still only be a matter of two weeks, not months. But the other, more devious side of the policy took care of that. No Late Fees was hardly no late fees, but I was amazed at how many times I saw another customer complaining at the fact that they had been charged thirty bucks for a dvd they hung on to. Blockbuster knew that those who didn't read the rules of the policy would just become lazier with returning items, in turn allowing the business to make more money. But this extra-lazy customer also kept the shelves barer for longer.

But the cherry on top was that these issues were only issues at all due to the low stock, at least for games. They will devote an entire wall to a single big film release, but games never got more than two copies. They just didn't give a shit, and it showed.

It didn't have to be this way - I know they haven't (didn't?) fare any better, but at least Hollywood Video used a simple, traditional approach. You rented stuff, and if you didn't return it, they would ream you. As long as enough people were responsible with their returns, a store could rent out an item enough times to recoup the costs. When it came to games, they offset the numerous copies that they would stock by selling them off once the game was no longer hot shit. Customers got cheap buys, and they cleared their shelves. This system wasn't better for business I suppose, but if Netflix wasn't around, it probably would have worked. And hey, at least you knew what you were getting into.

Blockbuster, on the other hand, had to play games. They had to constantly tweak their return policies and pricing, and showed little consistency in their stock. One month, the games were in one area, and another month saw them on the opposite end of the store. The Blu Rays would be in a tiny section, and some time later there are stacks of them in the week-rental area (with no clear indication that yes, these are cheaper than new rentals, but still more expensive than a dvd rental). My local store was emblematic of the company as a whole - always trying to make desperate and extreme adjustments in order to survive, which in the end only served to confuse and annoy us. People on the Internet make it sound like every consumer wants to be pampered, but we're not all that stupid. We know that we'll never get the best deal from everyone we do business with. All we really want is some consistency and a bit of respect. Whenever a company begins to act against it's customers, finding the best ways to screw them over, bad things tend to happen. People notice, and they don't always put up with it. Blockbuster probably can't do anything to stop their inevitable destruction, but they've done a lot to help dig their own grave.

Considering how fond I am of the experience of dropping by the video store every week, I wish I didn't have to say any this. But I'd rather the experience go away entirely than have a twisted version of it.