Long time reader, first time tipper. I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about Blockbuster and their shady Total Access dealings, but I thought I’d send along my experience with them.

My girlfriend and I have been using the service for a few years now, almost since day-one, and while it was pretty easy going for the first year or so, things started to get strange last summer. Her account was inexplicably put on hold when she had to change her debit card number. The CSRs told us that it was going to be a week or two to authenticate the new card, but months went by and nothing changed.

Then, a month ago, out of the blue, two DVDs showed up in our mail and the service was reinstated. No explanation, no nothing, but there was a nice debit from her account in the form of $16.99. We took the mailers into the local branch, got them replaced with a couple more movies, and it looked like everything was back to normal.

Then today, she checked her Q to see if the next movies had shipped – they had not. She checked My Account, and sure enough, the account was cancelled, and the only option open to her was to re-subscribe. I wondered if it was just a glitch because of the old debit card issue. I logged into her account to re-sign up, and I’m presented with the new options. (see the photo below) Just notice our current plan, and those not available to us.

Our $16.99 account will now run us back $34.99. A $18 price bump. Or we can stay at the same price-level, and get a crippled in-store exchange program (which for us was the main advantage of going over to Netflix). What a great way to treat a couple of loyal customers.

Thanks Blockbuster, but I don’t know if we’re going to take you up on the new offer, or the Mario-Kart pre-order offer either.

Thanks for listening Consumerist. Keep fighting the good fight.

Yeah, we’d pass if we were you. There are other fish in the sea.

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