Forum - View topicNEWS: Blockbuster to Shut Last U.S. Video Rental Stores, DVD-by-Mail
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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Sucks for people out of work but they had to see the writing on the wall. It was there for like a decade.
This is not a reality-based statement. Last edited by Mr. sickVisionz on Wed Nov 06, 2013 6:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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firedragon54738
 Posts: 3113 Location: wisconsin |
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Wait Blockbuster wasnt all ready dead that a new one by me
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unready
 Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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I've got a little personal knowledge on this point. Back before Redbox was Redbox, they were a couple guys who put together a technical solution for renting movies from vending machines. They tried to interest existing video chains in licensing the solution from them, saying existing chains could expand their customer base to people renting a movie while they're buying groceries, etc. Blockbuster specifically told them it had no interest in vending machines, because its corporate location strategy was brick and mortar. If Blockbuster had simply failed to innovate, that's one thing. But it had a vision for the future handed to it on a platter, and it said "No, thanks." I suspect Blockbuster was thinking that streaming to PCs was all it needed to do to future-proof itself. But that overlooks the fact that something like 25% of American households don't have any Internet service at all. (20% live in areas where it's not even available, even by dial-up.) Something like 5% of those that do have access are dial-up only. (10 years ago, when Redbox was shopping around their idea, it was even worse.) On the other hand, everyone shops for groceries. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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Another thing that the ANN story skipped over, is that this only affects corporately owned stores. Blockbuster stores that are franichised or licensed will remain open. Though without corporate advertising and distribution centers, I'm not sure what advantage there is to being a franchise now.
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Block Buster is now block busted.
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RAmmsoldat
 Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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"Emily....Emily the war is over. lets go rent an movie at blockbuster. The hounds are calling Emily, lets rent something now"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd3zF1CCLmI |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I haven't been to a Blockbuster in many many years, and now with a combined usage of piracy, legal streaming, and borrowing from the library, I wouldn't need a brick and mortar rental store anyway. I do know that "browsing and picking" feeling that you get from the rental store, when you want to discover new things, and I still get that when I browse my library's DVD collection, so it's not missed. I just wish the library would expand their collection and start getting more BDs; nothing's better than walking out with a stack of films.
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Shiggity
 Posts: 366 Location: Boston, MA |
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Not that I didn't see this coming, but it's a sad sad day. I too remember every weekend going to a BBV to rent SNES game(s). Am I the only one that'd make a small marker mark on the game's case of let's say... Donkey Kong Country 3 so when rented next it'd be the same cartridge? Those were the days. I also remember renting NES games.
I know this is somewhat OT, but anyone here old enough to remember when Stop and Shop (Super Stop and Shop in some areas) had their video rental 'store'/section? It was essentially the same concept but it slightly predates the popularity of BBV. This might had been a New England thing , as I grew up in Connecticut and New York, but yeah. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I worked at a Blockbuster part-time for a while, which means that I have no sentimentality about its demise at all.
Maybe I was just being grumpy or had a poor perspective, but I often got the impression that the company was run by people who didn't know what they were doing. Several times we were pushed hard on some thing only to end up reversing course or running into problems. They tried hard to sell "movie passes" for unlimited rentals at a flat monthly fee, but all but the heaviest renters (who saved a lot, meaning the company lost a lot) thought it was a bad value and didn't bite. I'm not surprised; I always thought they were trying to trick people into getting hooked up to a recurring fee and not taking full advantage of the service. They discontinued most of the varieties of pass, jacked up the price on the only remaining one, and told us not to try to sell it anymore. Then they were big into trying to get people onto the online Netflix-alike thing. They even brought laptops into the store so we could get people to sign up right there. After a while they took the laptop away and never mentioned it to us again. I don't even know if they got the sign-ups they wanted or not. I do know they enticed people with the ability to trade the envelopes from the mail-in service for free rentals from stores and then took that away in favor of a monthly quota of trades, confusing and annoying customers. At some point they started being forgiving about when you returned movies, essentially giving everyone a week with any movie with no repercussions. Because of this the new releases were always picked clean on the weekends because people would just rent them during the week and hold on to them rather than return them. The last thing I remember before I quit was how we were told to stop suggesting the cheaper of two candy deals we were running (3 for $2 and 5 for $4 or something like that) because it turned out we were losing money on it. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
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@Fronzel: Did you ever work for them during the whole "due by noon on the next day" program? Boy, what a well-intentioned disaster THAT turned out to be. People would constantly use the excuses, "But I was at work!" or "I thought it was midnight!" Or my personal favorite, "He didn't tell me it was due back by noon!" Trust me, if you rented from the Blockbuster I worked at, WE TOLD YOU.
And those stupid Blockbuster TV videos that played in the background. Over. AND OVER. AND OVER. God forbid you wanted to break the monotony and at least put a kid's movie in or something, but NOPE!! Corporate wasn't havin' that. 
But the WORST thing about working there? If you were an employee, you had to wait at least a month before you could rent a new release, and that was only for Monday-Thursday. If it was a Friday or Saturday night, it had to be THREE MONTHS OLD. 
Still, free movies and games aren't anything to be scoffed at. You just had to hope that the movie/game you wanted hadn't been stolen by one of the customers yet before it was a month old..... ......Yeah, I don't have too many fond memories of working there. I do still miss being able to rent from them as a customer, though. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4392 Location: New York |
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I remember raiding stores going out of business for values. The last time this happened was two years ago.
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2287 Location: In front of my computer |
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Quite honestly, I'm not surprised they're closing down the rest of their stores. I haven't visited a Blockbuster in years, and the last time we did it was when the store in my city was closing, probably about six to eight years ago.
I never really liked their selection, since I can't recall ever leaving there with a movie I liked, it was surrounded by stores and restaurants that have failed so the location looked like an abandoned shopping plaza (and still is), customer service was poor, and their rental prices and fees were too high compared to the other rental chains in the city, Family Video and Hollywood Video. Sounds like they still haven't got any better after that point, so not really surprised they're shutting down the rest of the stores. Hopefully the spaces left behind will be filled quickly instead of being left to rot. I know the building my local Blockbuster was in is still standing, but like the other failed buildings around it looks beat up and damaged by the weather. |
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Eisenmann V
Posts: 212 |
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This is exactly why I go to used book stores. The paperbacks are usually cheap enough to buy a ton on a whim. |
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bglassbrook
 Posts: 1243 Location: Gaithersburg, MD |
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Roughly the same as it has been for years now. Considering how sporadically I ever saw any of their advertising, I cannot imagine it would have been worth the fee anyway. |
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mewpudding101
Industry Insider
 Posts: 2206 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Goodbye. Blockbuster had a huge influence on my childhood, renting me Sailor Moon tapes because I didn't have cable for 13 years of my life. I also started playing video games by renting from Blockbuster.
Farewell, old friend. |
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