Andrew is having some trouble with Blockbuster: the 360 and Wii games he rented were unplayable, and the store manager refused to refund his debit card or apply the cost of the unused rentals to a purchase, saying “It’s not store policy.” She even tried to upsell Anrew to their Game Plan, saying, “Five bucks additional wouldn’t have killed you, with what you spent on the games previously.” What? He finally convinced her to credit his debit account—”however, she terminated my ability to rent games from the store” as a consequence. Andrew, don’t you understand? Blockbuster needs that money if they’re ever going to buy Circuit City. Here’s Andrew’s story:
I’ve been a regular personage at a Blockbuster in Mishawaka, IN for some time. Just recently I moved into a new house, so I was rather excited to know that your store was within walking distance to rent movies. Not having a car, this meant plenty of rentals of video game software for my 360 and Wii.
However, just recently I rented Halo 3, and when I brought it home, it was cracked. They graciously replaced it with a “free rental”, so I went to another one of your stores and rented Halo 3 there. I returned it on time, and proceeded to rent Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and Oblivion, both for the 360 again. When I got it home, neither worked. When I opened my 360 Oblivion had a scratch on it, which 360′s are known to do. Rainbow Six’s disc looked just fine. It however wouldn’t load. When I called your store that night because it was already too late to head back over, they told me they’d grant me a “free rental” and return the games for replacements. Now here’s where the problem begins.
I went over just a few minutes ago, and brought the games in, and told them what was going on. When I couldn’t find anything else to rent and asked for my money back, even though I’d rented the games on my debit card, the manager (Adrian I believe) told me “It’s not store policy.” I asked if I could put the money toward purchasing a product (a used copy of Halo 3, for 39.99), and she told me she couldn’t allow that either because it wasn’t store policy. I had my receipt from the rentals, that clearly said debit card, and she still wouldn’t put the $17.10 toward the purchase.
She finally refunded the money, however, she terminated my ability to rent games from the store.
They also tried selling me on their “Game plan” which means you get unlimited replacements for ONE game for 20 some odd dollars and said “Five bucks additional wouldn’t have killed you, with what you spent on the games previously.”
(Photo: Getty)
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@Brad2723: I want to start by saying You’re a prick. This article (and site) is here to promote the awareness (and if possible, to resolve) injustices by corporations upon the consumers. Not for you to flame random people who go and submit a problem with an issue they can’t resolve on their own.
As far as a car goes, there can be several factors (which have been addressed since this post) on why that may be. Either way, it’s not the issue here. For shame that your post was the first post, and that you made it go off topic.
@prameta1: Love your sense of humor
I used to work for Blockbuster. The only way they can cancel is removing the credit card off your account. Unless they made a major overhaul in the system, you/he/whoever, should still be able to rent games at other stores until the person’s info reaches another store. Not that I would recommend it though, I have been happily using Gamerang.com for years.
@JustAGuy2:
I assume you’re not an investor.
500M is a ton of money considering Blockbuster is a lot smaller of a company than Comcast. Blockbuster has a market cap of 600M or so. Comcast’s is around 60B.
Let’s not forget Blockbuster is losing customers and money gradually (problems with customers such as described in this story probably don’t help much either).
A completely post on this…but yeah…I worked at BB for over a year, was even a Supervisor.
It really isn’t store policy to do that thing, but it’s up to judgement of the MOD at the time…but revoking your renting is utter BS.
If it’s at the Erskine store, that’s in Elkhart. Not only a different city, but a different county all together. Talking a good distance. But anyways. Since the guy said Mishawaka, I’m assuming it’s the one on McKinley. And since it’s the only one in Mishawaka, it has to be the one. But whatever. I used to rent from there until they scammed me by saying I didn’t return a product. I haven’t been back since!
Working 14 years in a video store, you start to know the scams customers play. I’ve seen it all, heard it all. You start to learn who the cheaters are and who the honest folk are.
Some of the classics are the brand new movies or games trick, saying they don’t work and bring them back. (Generally after they’ve burned or ripped them). Our store policy: no money back. We exchange for the same title or equal price title only (if not other copy was available).
That means. If you rent say Call of Duty 4 or the PS3 and you brought it back and said it didn’t work–we’d exchange it for another copy of CoD4. And if it was a freebie. Too bad.
There were arguments. There were problems.
Did we cancel peopele’s memberships? Yes. Did we tell them no more refunds? Yes. The sole reason being: them scamming us was costing us money and our customers product because we’re having to give away free product.
Anyone who makes the excuse “don’t you check” hasn’t worked in a video store. Getting back litterly hundreds of dvds and games a day, you can’t check them all. You’d never get anything done.
I tried it one day just to see how much time it was. I spent three times as much time on hammering product (read, returning product to shelves) than I normally did.
So it’s possible this guy was having a bad day. Could be that he’s lying. I don’t know.
I’m too old of a dog at this game to really care.
So happy I’m out of the videotailing business.