filmwad.com — "I worked for Blockbuster Video for the better part of six months. As a way of exorcising the demons in my video rental past, I now present my completely unbiased and totally honest list of the ten biggest lies Blockbuster Video tells their customers."
Jul 25, 2007 View in Crawl 4
ahknightJul 25, 2007
It's the internet. Who needs sources?
louie510Jul 26, 2007
Digged for last sentence..."Long story short, I was fired from Blockbuster for calling a female customer a ?****.?She was totally acting like one, though."
sb76117Jul 26, 2007
anything to make such a crap job remotely worth while, is ok with me. i never did stuff like he did at bb but i know why he did it
volonixJul 26, 2007
".. heard this lie from the coolest manager I ever worked with – a guy with a vanity license plate reading “WOOKIEE” and a son with the middle name “Vader.” Stopped reading there.
coffeecrmnsugaJul 26, 2007
Blockbuster is weak. Stupid censorship at Blockbuster. Gimmick "no late fees" campaigns. I'm not saying Netflix is any better, with their rental-throttling. They both the middle finger. Does Amazon.com have a rental service yet?
zmjone2992Jul 26, 2007
i steal drinks from blockbuster all the time..... and i work there :) gotta love full throttle
dragonopolisJul 27, 2007
And what company doesn't bend or break the rules and tell white lies to sell a product. You make sound like this unusual. Just the other day I had those D.A.R.E fund raiser people at a Grocery Store tell me and everyone coming through the door that they were $20 short of their goal and could you help them out. First of all, chances are the sucker who falls for that line won't ask for prove of what their goals are and chances are it is easy to manipulate the numbers to make it look like it was their goal. (of course this sales pitch only works toward the evening and probably would look even more foolish if they tried it in the morning).Face it people, your not going to find very many 100% perfect little companies that treats you like God's gift to the Universe. It all comes down to money and business will cut corners, give you the least amount of service that is possible without loosing actual customers just to save a buck.I and many people have used Blockbusters service and had no major issues. The best bet is to just use your own person experience and judge it by that and not these cruddy little stories that are in away not a shocker. If Blockbuster gives you grief drop them, if Netflix gives you grief then drop them, keep them, or take the lesser of the two evils and choose between the two top support Online rental companies.I, like many high schoolers and college kids, have worked fast food during their school years. I can guarantee that any one of use could write this exact same article but against some fast food company (mine would be on Arby's). Life is risks, we all takes risks but the funny thing about it is that Life's risks don't affect everybody at the same time. So basically there will be many users of Netflix and Blockbuster that will never ever see these risk or be affected by Society's imperfections.Digg down for waste of time.
jflysocalSep 24, 2007
As a current BBV employee I gotta say that we really do hate are customers and thats why this list does exist! Not all of it is true though ... for instance, the "NO LATE FEES" policy onnly applies to corprate BBs ... the one I work at is privately owned and therefore does not participate. And I don't blame the owners ... we make a s**t-load of money off of extended viewing fees!Listen, the fact is, they don't pay us enough at BB to put up with most of the bulls**t we have to deal with when it comes to customers ... it's just not worth it as an employee to care about a customers problems. If you really, really, really, really want that credit though, the best way to get it is to be f**king nice to the BB employees and not bitch and moan and complain about stupid s**t we don't even care about!
mattman2900Nov 15, 2009
Remind me not to go to Phoenix. I worked for BB back in the day, well back then we called it BBV. I haven't worked there in over 9 years so I can't say (to everything) what happens now, but based on my working days there, and my current experience at a Blockbuster in Southern California were I am a member I have never once had someone lie to me, nor have I had a bad experience with ANY employee at the four stores in my area. One thing I do know is Blockbuster takes ANY theft very seriously. Yes it is true that employees are not allowed to "chase" after the theft due to legal reason. However the Blockbuster employee is very much allowed to question the thief, ask the thief, etc. If the thief shoots the employee and the gunfire injures innocent bystander in the store, Yes BBV can be held liable otherwise, the thief is now guilty of armed robbery instead of just stealing a bunch of movies, games and other stuff. As an employee I witness a theft taking place, the female suspect we'll call her "Anna" and her skinny male friend call him "Junior", who by the way was standing outside the entrance wearing a BRIGHT orange hat...why? I was a confused as anyone else. It was midday so, it was me, and my co-worker and our supervisor. My supervisor and Manager were in the back of the store putting up banners on the wall just below the ceiling. I was alone at the front desk. The suspect walked, and she looked me in the eye, I greeted her, and she looked up frightened, but smiled wide-eyed and not wanting to try and draw attention, I continued what I was doing. I saw the UPS guy come and I opened the exit for him, as that's what I did. I worked full-time M-F and I knew the guy by name. I signed for the UPS package and he said what is that teen doing standing outside. I said not sure, I think he's waiting for his friend. The UPS guy leaves and I again eye the suspect, she's now trying to see what I'm doing, hiding behind the first row of DVDs, I believe HD DVDs. I grabbed a couple of movies from the counter and kneeled down below the counter to pretend to see if the return box had movies (I had just checked it before said thieves arrived) So within in about 7 seconds I rose again and saw the girl storming out of the store through the entrance with Orange Hat Junior by her side. Okay first of all, Junior had apparently, not seen any heist movies, as if he had HE'D BE IN THE CAR, waiting for ANNA. ugh. Anyway I ran to get my Manager, between me and her we got the license plate of their car, and called 911 to let them know we had been robbed, then called the next store nearest us, to warn them. Later that day, the police didn't show up (even though there was state trooper literally across the street), not the city, county, or state police showed. But Law enforcement did show up. It took the a couple hours to show up, but they did and it was the FBI. The thieves stole 60 pieces of DVDs within matter of 5-10 minutes and at that time they estimated the total stolen loot to be about $20K It took law enforcement two weeks to find the thieves but they did, and oh yes they were arrested and prosecuted.Later, our store manager and big 6'4" 260 pound man, witnessed a guy trying to stuff DVDs into a giant baseball like duffel/equipment bag. He went up to him and got as close to the guy, who was probably 17-18 without touching him said, if you put back all that stuff that's in your bag, I'll escort you out and I won't press any charges, or I can call the police across the street and you can go to juvy. The kid took one look at our store manager and chose option one. I also just witness a few weeks ago an attempted theft. The guy walked out and the alarm sounded and stuff dropped form his shirt. When I left there were three police officers questioning him. I didn't stay to find out what happened to him.I thouroughly enjoyed my time at blockbuster and have heard about incidents like the 10 in this post, but I should clarify that:1) The bathrooms are not broken. I've not heard anyone say they are. The only reason I've heard is "Bathrooms are not for customers" which is still kind of a lie. A store MUST let a customer use the bathroom if the ask to use the restroom, or in the event of an emergency. If the employee refuses to comply, they themselves ALONG with Blockbuster can and most certainly will be held liable.2) Computers lock down: I had another manager try that with me when I went to rent something when I lived up in Northern California, and I told him I used to work for Blockbuster, and there was still ten minutes left. He sighed and was very apologetic, and gave me my movie for free. HE CAN AND WOULD GET FIRED for doing something like that. My old superivsor got fired for that exact phrase. It was a secret shopper, oops. 3) Just two weeks ago, I went to a store to see if they had a PS3 game in, they didn't. The guy called another store, they had it and held it for me. I went to down and picked up. No trickery. 4) EVERY manager I talked to or worked with in the last ten years HAS SEEN ALL 6 of those MOVIES: -City of God-Fight Club-The Wild Bunch-Gone with the Wind-Citizen Kane-Casablanca5) The only whole truth about the post is yes, Blockbuster take a lot of heat and hot water for their wording in their "late fees" or "restocking fees" In reality their neither, they are "re-rentals". Blockbuster got sued about 10 years ago by a bunch of lawyers over the wording of the "late fees" Blockbuster settled but out of that settlement, the company had to change it to "re rental" charge and also that lead to the movies being due back on the 6th day. 6) Blockbuster Online has not and will not over take Netflix. Netflix is too good and is company that put online movie rentals in the foreground. Blockbuster is having to retract some of their policies like no late fees and shut down some of their smaller stores in order to save money and try to stay in business. So blockbuster lost again. Hollywood video is practically out of buisness and Blockbuster is soon to follow. But that does mean that Netflix may want tot try and purchase Game Crazy, and/or Gamestop may want to try online rentals...oh god not the latter!7) The poster of this 10 things about Blockbuster article probably got fired or is about to get fired for being a bad employee. Remember bad mouthing your employee IS, CAN, and probably WILL get you fired, but I'm sure that's what he wants. I am not here to say that all his post, material or insight is a lie. I'm just her to clarify that there are ALWAYS three sides to the story. Yours, Mine, and the Truth. Also to point out that just because he thinks the majority of Phoenix's stores are bad and awful doesn't mean the entire company is. And to poster: Using big words and phrases does not make you sound smarter, it just makes you sound pretentious and whiny like Jay Cutler. Oh crap, there I go thinking out loud again.I should add, I know this was written two years ago, but this is the first I've seen of it. I was trying to google trade-in policy for Blockbuster video, but got stuck on this.