blockbuster

Many Consumerist readers wrote to Disney about the missing captions in rental editions of the Pixar movie "Up," either because they were personally affected or they found the omission offensive. In their response, Disney at least acknowledges the unique issue and promises to make up for the mistake of consumers submit proof that they rented "Up."  More »

Here's an idea: When your top rivals are renting dirt-cheap DVDs from ubiquitous kiosks, or streaming thousands of films as a free bonus to customers who rent mail-order rmovies, what do you do? If you're Blockbuster, you start a trial run of kiosks that will allow consumers to rent DRM-protected videos on SD cards, and play them back using a proprietary box that will do nothing else. Yeah, that'll show 'em.  More »

Blockbuster must be a very unpleasant place to work, because police say a Colorado man stabbed himself and blamed "three skinheads or Hispanic males dressed in black." (Really.) According to the cops, the guy eventually admitted that he stabbed himself so he wouldn't have to go to work.  More »

Chicago Now reports an Illinois woman is suing Blockbuster for sexual harassment because her manager allegedly twice demanded she show him her breasts in order to be considered for a promotion. He also demanded she sit on his lap for computer training.   More »

Blockbuster is apparently "celebrating the end of late fees" with... late fees!  More »

Back in the day there used to be these things called VHS tapes. They used to cost a lot of money — so there were these places you could go to rent them. The last surviving relic of this bygone era, Blockbuster Video (also known as the company that was almost stupid enough to buy Circuit City), announced in a regulatory filing today that it plans to close over 800 stores by the end of next year. This is nearly twice the number they previously announced.  More »

Brian signed up for Blockbuster Total Access, which lets you rent movies by mail and return them in store.  More »

Looking for a way to stop the hemorrhaging, Blockbuster is offering a clever little promotion to lure mega-movie geeks back into its dusty aisles for one more fling. The Summer Escape Pass offers all-you-can watch for $10 a week.  More »

Valerie just wants to cancel her Blockbuster Online subscription. They tell her to click... but there's nothing there.  More »

Robert's recent experience with his local Blockbuster just underscores how ill-equipped the rental chain is to compete against Netflix and new-star-on-the-block Redbox. Whether Robert has caught them deliberately throttling his account, or he's just the victim of a poorly implemented system, it's not the kind of customer experience you should have to settle for anymore.  More »

What do you do when the foundation to your business is crumbling and bankrupcty lurks like the Grim Reaper just outside your drop box? If you're Blockbuster, apparently you charge customers more at the register than what's displayed on the product, at least in California.   More »

If we owned a Blockbuster franchise, we'd seriously think about just renting out the space to a bunch of Redbox kiosks. Blockbuster reported a 42% drop in revenue for the first quarter of 2009, which CEO Jim Keyes blamed on people going out to watch movies at theaters instead. Regarding the Redbox threat, Keyes said they hope to have 3,000 kiosks functioning by the end of the year. Redbox, on the other hand, has about 12,000. [Reuters]  More »

With its ubiquitous DVD rental kiosks, Redbox has been known to toy with our emotions. The machines have taken up all the choice grocery store spots where your favorite stale gumball machines used to sit. And company execs taunted us by dreaming up that awesome Free Movie Mondays promotion only to vow to take it away by the end of the summer.  More »

PC Mag has assembled a list of instructions on how to wipe your account from a long list of websites, including Classmates.com (you'll have to call), Windows Live ID (it's complicated), and Friendster (ha ha ha). In many cases, canceling is as straightforward as clicking a link and authorizing the cancellation, but it's nice to see all the phone numbers and tips collected in one spot.  More »

Blockbuster's stock just dropped 79% this afternoon after Bloomberg published a story that said the company hired the firm Kirkland & Ellis "to evaluate restructuring options, including a possible pre-packaged bankruptcy." Blockbuster says they've only hired the firm for "refinancing and capital raising initiatives," and that they do not intend to file for bankruptcy.  More »

Blockbuster's Total Access subscription service—their bid for relevance in the Netflix era—used to ship the next movie in your queue as soon as you dropped it off at a Blockbuster store in exchange for a free rental. Now the next movie won't ship until you return that free store rental—in other words, now it will count as the next movie in your queue. Of course, in Blockbuster marketing-speak, that's considered a great new benefit.  More »

HackingNetflix has sent word that Blockbuster will be testing video game rentals through their Netflix-variant "TotalAccess".  More »