Blockbuster drops late fees

Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

Blockbuster drops late fees

No. 1 video rental chain to give 1-week grace period; says increased business will offset lost fees.
December 14, 2004: 9:23 AM EST
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Blockbuster Inc. announced Tuesday it is abolishing late fees on all its video tapes, DVDs and video games as of Jan. 1.
The world's largest video rental company will still have due dates for their rental products -- one week for games and two days or one week for movies, depending on whether it's a new release.
But customers will be given a one-week grace period after that to return the product. After that grace period ends, the chain will automatically sell them the product, less the rental fee. If the customers don't want to purchase the movie or game, they can return the product within 30 days for a credit, less a restocking fee.
Blockbuster (Research) has been competing with the growth of by-mail rental services such as Netflix (Research), which allow customers to keep movies as long as they want in return for a monthly fee. In August, Blockbuster started offering that kind of monthly rental service itself. It said Tuesday that service will continue in addition to this new individual rental policy.
"For the past year, the company has been testing a variety of rental options in markets across the U.S.," it said in its statement. "In no-late-fees test markets, the increased rental transactions and retail sales offset the lower level of revenues resulting from eliminating late fees."

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

Topic - Blockbuster drops late fees - Duilawyer 07:23:36 12/14/04 (7)

Re: Blockbuster drops late fees - kjd2121 13:14:55 01/14/05 (0)

Re: Blockbuster drops late fees - JoeKool 22:33:14 12/15/04 (1)

Re: Blockbuster drops late fees - warrenh@optonline.net 02:32:05 12/16/04 (0)

Too late, I dropped Blockbastard long ago... - AbeCollins 14:19:22 12/14/04 (3)

Re: Too late, I dropped Blockbastard long ago... - vikvilkhu 14:32:08 12/14/04 (2)

Re: Too late, I dropped Blockbastard long ago... - jamesgarvin 16:07:35 12/14/04 (1)

My problem with Blockbuster - townsend 16:46:54 12/18/04 (0)

You can not post to an archived thread.