As depressing as it is to see an American icon come this close to collapse, is it really any surprise? While the world kept turning,
Netflix kept reinventing itself and movies found their way onto the internets (legally),
Blockbuster sat still... and that's putting things nicely. Sure, it tried the whole movie set-top-box thing, but no on will argue that it went about things
the wrong way. In a recent SEC filing, the company made perfectly clear that there was serious risk that it wouldn't be able to refinance its crushing debt load in order to stay afloat for a wee bit longer; in fact, it noted that said quandary raised "substantial doubt" about its "ability to continue." 'Course, hampering its
Total Access rental plan and
promising less stock in-store doesn't exactly sound like a brilliant plan to be successful, but maybe yesterday would be the best time to completely revolutionize its business and go online only. Just an idea, is all.
posted April 7th 2009 11:04AM
Someone may have posted this already, but The Onion nailed this last year:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/historic_blockbuster_store_offers
;-)
I dont understand why ppl r saying their plan prices have gone up? I still pay 17.99$ a month and have 3 movies out at a time and 2 free game rentsls a month. I was grandfathered in, but so should have many if u. My movie exchanges are also not counted with online rentals.
Butttt my main problem with all this is, i too have started streaming and really only keep the service for the game rentals and the movies i cant stream. Which are never in stock in store. I have gone to the store 6 times now trying to rent 2 games i wanted to play but they are still out of stock, making the store useless to me and in return making my plan useless. Btw the normal price here for a game rental is 9$. Rediculous.
This isn't new news it is on the financial reporting. There are several companies with the same wording as a disclaimer (something to do with auditors). If BB does file bankruptcy it will probably not be until August.
I'm a casual renter. Blockbuster lost my business 2 years ago when I had to pay almost $5 after tax for a new release and that was only for 2 or 3 days, ridiculous! I went to the smaller stores in my area and have recently discovered redbox. I don't mind redbox being 1 day rentals because if nothing else, I can copy the movie and just return it. Plus their customer service rocks!
Blockbuster is still around?!
Not surprising at all I rented 2 New Releases while visiting my girlfriend at school in Philly and it cost me $13!!! Anymore I just hit up the RedBox and get the same exact movies for $1!
Oh how I hate this company and will enjoy watching it fall. They bought up and converted so many awesome locally owned video stores with great selections and character into these bastions of bland. The business model is changing, and they will shortly be a remnant of the days when visual meant something physical. Viva Netflix!!!
F- Blockbuster and the late fees they built their empire on.
Block Buster's total access is great! I changed from Netflix and hope to never go back. If they die off before the videogame part is implimented then I will be ticked.
I must admit I will be slightly sad to see them go....if they truly do go out of business. I mean its nice to be able to go down to the store and get a dvd whenever I want..plus rent a game whenever. Now I do pay a huge premium for that "privilege" because new rentals are $5.35 and game rentals are $9.35 which I think is completely out of control. But the way I look at it is I can pretty much keep the game for as long as I want without a late fee and its better then buying some stupid game that I'm going to beat in a month anyway for $60! But I do agree with everyone else that their prices are out of control, their selection is crap and their "total access" prices are laughable. But I've been going to that blockbuster since I was a little kid and renting movies and games...it will be sad to see it go. If only they would wake up and realize the error of their ways...drop prices, increase selection, drop late fees completely, don't charge your credit card for the full price of the game if you keep it out too long and rent online for cheaper then in store and they would have a winning combination. But alas they will not wake up, the corporate zombies who run blockbuster will run it into the ground and they will go out of business leaving netflix. Which isn't a good thing because without competition they can set the price to whatever they want...thats not good either : (
Blockbuster is too expensive, and the selection is too small. That and the stupid 'morality' issues that they have. I DON"T WANT TO WATCH A BLOCKBUSTER EDIT.
(Yes, I know blockbuster does not edit the films themselves, but they try to obtain the 'cleanest' edit of a film.
I'm glad that one of the worst companies is about to go down I just feel sorry for (most of) the employees.
Serves them right for being both crooks and dinosaurs.
"Wahh... six dollars rentals and late fees up the a$$.. we don't know why we can't stay in business..."
$6 late fees? were have you been for the last 6 years (or more?) I have not paid any late fees
Frankly I like getting out of the house, picking up some (good) take out food, wandering the isles and picking out a movie. When I'm in the mood for something, I go get it. sure they don't have _Everything_ but, the brick and mortar walk-in will be missed by me.
I have never found online movie browsing to be very conducive to "outside the box" selections. When I stand in front of walls and walls of movies I feel like the world is more literally at my fingertips.
I feel like a comedy and alien vs predator shows up in the mail.. great.
I, for one, will miss brick and mortar... I won't say blockbuster is in my heart but, online rentals does little for me.
Wow. How old ARE you? When I am online the world is at my finger tips, literally. but sometimes illegally so. :)
Though I will agree with you, on the feel like comedy but get horror bit. Thats the one reason I like blockbuster, you can actually go into a store and exchange it. If Hollywood Video started doing online movies I would switch to them.
If you mean literally, then yes, blockbuster is more literally at your fingertips, because you can touch the movies. You can't reach into Netflix to touch a movie, so they aren't LITERALLY at your fingertips, lol :)
First of all why would I want to touch something about a thousand people a day touch. Eww! Secondly I can do more than just touch a movie box online. I can read and watch reviews, watch trailers, find out who plays in the movie what other movies they have been in, context behind the story, find any easter eggs that might be on the movie, etc. I can on forever. Just picking up a box and looking at it does nothing for me but think about how many other people have touched it. Online I can research everything about the movie and watch it. In many ways I can touch the movie more online than a messily little box with 4 picture on it and an over rated, over paid, half a paragraph review on the back.
Blockbuster should have moved to an online delivery method before EVERYBODY else! They could have capitalized hugely on their name. BIG lost opportunity!
Sad, but such is the business world.
Yeah I quit Crapbuster a while ago when they started, make that always charged over $10 to rent a next-gen game. The late fees, oh wait, no late fees, unless you keep something more than two weeks and then they charge it to your credit card until you bring it back three weeks later and get a $1 dollar charge for re-stocking, sounds like a late fee to me. Oh I'm sorry sir we don't have that on blu-ray seeing as how we only have one copy of that on blu-ray to start with if you will look around though we have 40 or so copies of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL on DVD. I do feel sorry for the few drop outs that talked on their cell phone the whole time I stood in line for twenty minutes because that is probably the only job they could get anyway. F*** Blockbuster this is just a few of the many reasons they did not survive.
Why is it "depressing" for this "American icon" to "come close to collapse"? How many mom & pop video stores did *they* knock out of business? In the 80's it was all about individual corner shops, in the 90's it was all about big chains gobbling up all of the market share, and in the 00's it's all about online wiping out brick & mortar behemoths.
Meh. Digital streaming will win in the end. I'll stick with my VUDU Box.
Blockbuster needed to change a little bit faster than they started attempting to. The movie rentals industry has changed so much from the original scheme of walking into a movie store, finding your movie, and bringing it back on time. I mean people can rent movies through PPV from their satellite TV providers, they can rent using Netflix's movie mailing scheme, they can rent through set-top boxes like Apple TV, Popcorn Hour, and Roku, they can rent on their computer (from say iTunes), they can rent through RedBox at the local grocery store, the list goes on and on and on. It's just plain fact that a significant amount of Blockbuster's customer base, say 10 years ago, has likely moved on to more convenient methods of movie rental, and as Blockbuster continued to sit still, they were literally watching their customers walk away. They should have seen this coming, but I do understand that Blockbuster is truly an American icon, and I'm sure they will be missed if they go. They're definitely more iconic than Circuit City ever was, that's for sure.
And there are advantages to brick-and-mortar rental stores... my family always rents from brick-and-mortar stores (largely due to my parents), our favorite being Movie Gallery. I guess it's just the peace of mind that physical stores give my family that keeps us coming back, as you pay up front, and therefore, don't have to worry about another bill coming in the mail for god knows how much. And when we don't rent for a while Movie Gallery calls us and tells us that they have a free movie rental for us when we come back, which always draws us back too. We would never go to Blockbuster though because it's not only out of the way and a burden, but they're so expensive and they edit like all their movies. Regardless, American History will mourn the loss, if noone else. Good riddance to Blockbuster, may God have mercy on your soul!!!
The only bad spot here is that Netflix will lose the competition.
aww damn, i've been going to my local Blockbuster for years. I'd hate to see it disappear. Shit, guna have to go digital. But where will i rent my games? Any suggestions?
dont matter foe me, I just downlaod everything anyways,
Good riddance! I never liked Blockbuster and probably never will. Most of their movies were gone the few times I have ventured into the place, too expensive, and too many "stupid corporate" rules that chapped my behind. Then they stole the Netflix idea and that put them into the "I'm never going to visit you again!" category :)
Blockbuster doesn't stand a chance when there are Kiosks like Redbox around. How can you beat $1/ night rentals when at Blockbuster they're at least $5/night now days.... probably more since I haven't been back in almost 3 years. Netflix is cool, but waiting 2-3 days is too long and streaming for $5 just doesn't seem worth it when you can get new releases for a $1!!!!!! or for free if you use a code.
Blockbuster should buy Redbox at any cost and then come out with Bluray Bluebox. After that they can close all of their lame retail store and send their clerks packing. It is the only thing that will keep them from complete liquidation...
Ha, that's the Blockbuster in Tucson, AZ on Broadway and Craycroft. Ironically, it's directly across from what used to be Circuit City.
It sucks that more people are going to lose their jobs but I use to work there and I couldn't figure out how they were still in business then so I knew with the way things are now they weren't going to last long.
Ding dong the corporate witch is dead! (or soon to be). I despise Blockbuster and their shitty tactics.
You know, we had their "netflix" type deal. It was not too expensive, we could turn movies back in at the store, to have an immediate credit to our account, AND could "rent" games and videos from the store (like 2 or 3 a month) in addition to the mailers. We used this service, until the Blockbuster near our house, closed shop and moved, OVERNIGHT.
I thought it was better than Netflix. About the same price, with more convenience. Too bad they came up too late. Their draconian return policies, I think, more than anything is what killed them. Does ANYONE really have any good thoughts about Blockbuster? Back in their hey-day, it was story after story about their horrible late fees, and screwing their customers over. When they were the player in town, they could get away with it. With the move to Netflix, and more customer oriented renting... they lost horribly.
no on 15!
I'm not sure you people understand that some people don't like to pay a monthly fee to rent movies and such.
I watch a movie every couple of months. Maybe less. Why should I pay a monthly fee for Netflix if I'm not going to watch any movies that month?
Downloading movies is an even worse option, because I live in an area without any kind of cable/DSL internet, so it would take me three or four days to download one movie from iTunes or whatever. It's much easier for me to hop in the car and go to BlockBuster when I feel like watching a movie. I'll be without an efficient way to rent movies if they go under.
"but no on will argue that it went about things the wrong way"
English nit of the day: even ignoring the typo, this means exactly the opposite of what you *think* it means. "No one will argue that it went about things the wrong way" means that everyone agrees it went about things the right way.
You could say "No one would argue that it went about things the right way", or "No one will argue if we say it went about things the wrong way".
I've seen this one several times on Engadget lately, please fix it...
Ya'll need to go to a library and read a book... J/K
Seriously, you can borrow movies for "FREE" at "most" libraries. They may not be new releases, and there might be waiting lists on a certain movies, but it's free. Another neat thing about it (again depending on your library) is that you have longer check out times. My library lets you check out 3 movies for two weeks. They also have tons CDs for you to rip (free music). Some libraries have games, as well.
Well thinking about, it's not totally free. I mean, you are paying taxes to support your library. It's kind of waste if you don't make use of something that you're forced to pay for. Also to note, some libraries suck and don't have any of the things previously mentioned. However, you might have better luck in the next towns library.
Anywho... While waiting for your dvds/bluerays/movie downloads, head on down to your local library and save yourself a buck or two. (Also, it's nice to get out of the house and get some Vit D).
Um one word....REDBOX