We probably all know about the downfall of Blockbuster, the company that is declaring bankrupt and has the whole world saying, “Wait, I thought you were already bankrupt.”
They tried their best to keep this from happening. For example, their “No Late Fees” campaign where you take out a movie and don’t accrue late fees, but instead you own the goddamn thing after 30 days. They figured that if you liked it so much that you kept it for 30 days, you must be cool with paying to own it. I don’t know where they were buying their movies or why they cost $28.99 to replace, but maybe they should have looked into a new vendor to save some cash. The good news is that you didn’t HAVE to buy it. Usually they would take it back, but then you pay a five-dollar shelving fee. Note that this is not a late fee, just a fee for putting it back on the shelf. Although don’t bother offering to put it back in place yourself in exchange for waiver of the fee. Believe me, I tried.
After that, they put back the late fees. So, if you rented a movie ($4.99) and ket it for ten days (dollar-a-day late fee), you would owe them about ten bucks, or approximately the cost of one month of unlimited Netflix rentals and “Watch Instantly” titles.
This is not to mention the eight-dollar movie magazines, four dollar candies, and three dollar cokes. Have the owners of this company never been in any other kind of store?
If this was their shitty, misguided plan towards the end, what would they have done if they’d gone another six months? Here are some guesses:
-The New Late Freeze Plan
In the middle of a blizzard a Blockbuster employee will bury DVDs in your yard, underneath the snow. That way, when it melts, you’ll have to bring it back in and pay the late fees, plus water damage.
-The New Blockbuster On-the-Go Plan
Blockbuster understands that you’re busy, and that you don’t always have time to come into our store. That’s why we’ll just bring movies by your house. When you’re on vacation. Don’t worry, we’ll use our mobile checkout station to put them on your account, slip them through the mail slot or broken (by us) window, and then they’ll be super late when you get home.
-The New Franchise Plan
Companies like Subway make a lot of their money by selling the franchise so often. That’s what we’re doing too. Just text any sort of message to any of the 1,000,000,000,000 numbers we’ve purchased, many very close to a lot of the numbers you use every day, and the price of a new franchise will automatically be added to your wireless bill.
-Retroactive Pricing. Totally Groovy!
As part of a big throwback campaign, all movies made before 1970 are only one dollar to rent for five days. Also, we will be tracking all the movies you rented since 1970 and retroactively charging you our current price of $4.99 per rental. Let’s hope you didn’t get into movies until pretty damn recently, huh?
-Doing Away with the Employee Picks Shelf
Actually, this one already happened. They always get rid of this shit, but I don’t know why. What fun is it going to Blockbuster if you can’t make fun of the dork with bad taste and fantasize that “Claire,” the only other person who would really gets you, based on her love of Beetlejuice, might just sweep you away after she sees how interested you are in her picks?