consumerist.com — A Blockbuster manager responded to reader Sarah's refusal to sign up for Blockbuster's rewards program by declaring: "f**king customers, I'm tired of everyone not listening when they don't even know what they're talking about." Sarah had politely declined to enroll in the program several times before the outburst.
Aug 26, 2007 View in Crawl 4
docholiday22Aug 27, 2007
True Story: I went to Maplins once to buy a hardrive for my PC and asked for a IDE hardrive, the guy then said, no what you need is the newer SATA Drives. My PC is old, 1999 old so SATA was a big nono, I then said "Nah, I need the IDE one mate", at which point he said "are you sure, because you can't return it if it's wrong and you've opened it", I said "That's fine, I do know the difference because I'm doing a computer science degree at Uni so I know my PC isn't capable of SATA". At this point, another sales guy came up to me and goes "Well I have a computer Science degree, a Masters Degree and Cisco and MSCE Certification". I was like WTF?? So then he went on to tell me that he was just trying to make me feel the way I had made his mate (also a sales guy) feel. At this point I was just confused and said, "All I said was I'm doing a computer Science degree so I do know the difference so rest assured I won't bring the HD back all messed up". He then said, "Doesn't matter, I was being rude." I left it at that, and told them to get the Hard drive from downstairs, and then told them I didn't want it. Before I left I told the guy - You have all those qualifications and your still working at Maplins for minimum wage - Well done zippy. I then escaped.
adamweedenAug 27, 2007
Same here. I was an Assistant Manager and never saw anything like the crap that guy pulled, and if any of my employees had they would have been sent home immediately.
thelonehootAug 27, 2007
"would have" or "would've", goddamn it!then/than, their/there/they're, to/too/two - come on.
somerledAug 28, 2007
Blockbuster eats s**t....I hate going there because I know the employee is going to ask if I'd like 2 candy bars and a popcorn for $2 or if I'm a member of the rewards program, etc, etc...just like Barnes * Noble and their tedious membership program. Why don't these big box businesses go eat s**t, wait, I said that all ready.
nicholas761Aug 30, 2007
xDTrue, true...
shikkabaAug 31, 2007
You rent 5 new releases and get the 6th free. Doesn't matter what the 6th rental is, you can get whatever you want. You can even waste it on a FAVORITES if you wanted to. The only thing is if you don't rent 5 by the end of the month, it starts over the next month. If you use a coupon on one of the new releases, it doesn't count as one of the rentals towards this. There is no limit to how many you can earn. You really wanna rent that many movies per month, you really will get as many free movies as you deserve.This is in Canada though, so... yay. We don't have internet movie rentals here. We don't plan on ever getting it considering how hard it is to do the free exchanges in store when the store doesn't have enough stock for everyone as it is. It doesn't make sense for the store to buy more than it needs to service people for one day seeing as after the demand is up (one week if it's not popular, two - three weeks if it is) we're stuck with alot of movies that now need to be sold to gain space, and with all the other stores out there, we won't be selling THAT many.
shikkabaAug 31, 2007
Why is this being dugg down? IT'S TRUE.
slonctSep 1, 2007
Blockbuster must die!!!!!
aphrabennSep 20, 2007
Ah, a moment of honesty, a cry for help from the relentless pressure to always, always be nice. An cry in the wilderness against the edit that the customer is always right.I can understand a customer who feels badly when something like this happens, but it does give a lie to the impression that retail people live only to please customers.
ichauffeurOct 31, 2007
so what a customer does not have to accept every service they provide....
pmettesJan 3, 2008
as late as this is, I feel its important. I recently has 3 netflix movies either stolen from my mailbox or lost by me while partying. went on netflix's website, filled in movies lost in mail. not charged a dime, movies started flowing in again. that my friends is customer service.
steveneJan 27, 2008
This is true.
blainekyleJan 12, 2009
I used to be a Blockbuster manager. I know this sounds bad, but believe me when I say that it's the company that makes the employees of Blockbuster behave this way. They scream and shout at their managers to sell these programs up to a certain quota. When managers say that they just don't have enough customers interested, their told to be insistent, that clearly they are not making their customers understand the programs (common programs sold by BBV are the Rewards, BB Online, and Movie/Game Passes, where you pay $30 to $50 per month for unlimited, one at a time rentals). Before I quit, though, I found a barcode that could give any account free rewards. I used it to give the benefits to all the customers I encountered without charging them anything, so they'd just get free rental coupons every month for free. Blockbuster is terrible with bookkeeping, and had no idea that there were no coupons to match those transactions. They even counted toward my quota, and I actually met and went over the quota for the first time in a year. That's really impressive, as I know from the weekly conference calls that no store ever consistently met the quotas, because they always set them unrealistically high, which is why nationwide BB employees are so high strung. My best memories there were the months just before I left, when I didn't care anymore, and literally gave away free rentals to most customers. It was nice to finally be able to make people happy, instead of having them leave angry. Of course, I never angered them in the same way as the story above, but the policies for exchanges and returns of defective merchandise alone were enough to make more than a few customers scream and curse at me in my time there.Consider this: If a customer purchases any retail item from Blockbuster, and wishes to return it for any reason (even unopened!), the only action the employee is authorized to do is give them a store credit for the Blockbuster-determined "used" value for the item. And even that requires about five minutes worth of forms.
masamune2984Jan 18, 2009
Working at Blockbuster myself, I am pretty annoyed myself listening to these responses. Our job, like most in retail, depends on us advertising our stores products, whether we want to or not. As shikkaba said, they threaten us unless we offer these programs. It's not fun. In fact it downright sucks. But living in a small town, and dealing with the economy as it is, some of us can't afford to just up and quit, I have bills, student loans, school, and my health insurance riding on it. That being said, I can understand when people push these programs too hard. The polite thing to do is ALWAYS hear them out, NEVER EVER interrupt them during the pitch (the rudest thing imaginable, justevolvin.) and then, if you have heard the offer numerous times and are just flat out interested, ask to have them mark it in the computer that you have been informed. Be a PRO-ACTIVE customer for once, and understand the employees side of things as well, instead of just complaining about being offered services that can SAVE you money. Now on to the topic, that employee was an absolute moron to say what he said.