Blockbuster avoids bankruptcy for now, but not NYSE delisting
By Richard Lawler 
posted July 3rd 2010 10:44PM
posted July 3rd 2010 10:44PM
posted July 3rd 2010 10:44PM
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Give up the ghost Blockbuster
@AlienSix
We really need to kill off Gamestop. I can't wait for those suckers to go under. There profit is solely made upon screwing customers over. I can't wait for all games to be streamed.
@JordanClay
how???
most people dont even have fast internet. and when they do have fast internet, comcast cap at 250gb. i dont see any sorta streaming mainstream any time soon.
@AlienSix
In related news... Blockbuster changes their name to BallBuster.
@dark star Cap at 250GB? Think of your self as lucky. I am paying out my ass for 60GB (unlimited in off-peak) in Australia.
@dark star
I completely agree. Proponents of these data caps say you won't hit them unless you are part of the top 2% of users but while that may be true caps are holding back innovation such as streaming media.
@dark star Umm that's 146 hours of HD Netflix streaming a month. How much TV do you watch?
***START RANT***
Being an employee of blockbuster currently I wouldn't be surprised if they go under sometime soon. Due to current financial holdings they have a really good habit of not supplying the stores with enough product to meet customer demand, they charge high prices because "everyone else is doing it" and they don't keep anything in place to make the customer's happy. $5 for a movie and $9 for a game is simply too high in todays market for renting when you can buy most movies for $17 at your local walmart. Not to mention we don't even get enough supplies to keep our stores clean (and I'm in the busiest store in the area yet they can't afford it)
Our current business model is extremely fragmented between Kiosks, Stores, Online and OnDemand rentals, and none of them work together. Say you rent a movie at a Kiosk, you CANNOT return it to a store, you also can't use the same memberships between the store and the online, and just about everything you want to do you have to jump through hoops for. OH and something you techies will love, our computers are running Pentium IIs with a custom OS based on MS-DOS.
We are behind the times and our idea of staying in business is trying to find some new "niche" market for weird gadgets and collectables instead of focusing on the core of our business. Our store recieved 10 YooStar cameras from distribution equaling about $150 a piece retail, we sold ONE. When they DO hit big on something, they can't acquire the product in time to keep with the demand before it disappears.
I hate this company because I work in it, and I KNOW they're just trying to screw the customer in order to make some of their money back. Maybe if they woke up and acquired more titles for cheaper instead of wasting money on frivolous attempts to cash in, they might not fail. Their OnDemand between phone and Samsung devices is wonderful, but the rest is lagging behind.
***End rant***
@MrFluffyThing
*start rant*
I too am a BlockBuster employee. We got 2 of the Archos 10 netbooks, and we have had them for over a year, haven't sold them at all. We got 3 YouStar devices, and we only sold them after we marked them down to $49.99. We are now selling TiVo SD boxes for $49.99. I feel our store is dying, and will likely be the next one to close in my area. I've recently seen the Blockbuster boxes popping up infront of Speedway gas stations here too.
Then there is the issues with the POS/Inventory system. I think you got some decent systems MrFluffyThing, as we have a few 486/DX2 66Mhz systems, and our timeclock/Teleo/training system is running a Celeron-Socket478 IBM that CONSTANTLY overheats. Our security system is OLD! Its a time lapse black and white tape system thats crappy as hell, and does us no good. Our scanguns have to be beat on the counter sometimes to get'em to work proper. We charge $4.29 for a new release, $1.99 for a old title, $.99 for kids/family, and 4.29 for a old blu-ray title. Games are over $9 with tax.
*end rant*
Any other Current or Ex Blockbuster employees wanna put in their two cents?
@dark star Whoops, I was wrong. Average Americans watch 153 hours of TV a month. That's crazy, but if Comcast pushed it too 500 GB, that'd be reasonable. Shame that Netflix/Hulu can't do any sort of QOS relative to a users remaining quota.
@JordanClay
Well, I'm not a big fan of Gamestop. I remember going in there once to sell them a few Xbox games I no longer played because they advertised that they buy games back and was shocked (and insulted) that they only offered between $2-3 per title... yet sold the same (used games) for $10-20.
As for streaming games... I have mixed feelings about that. They way Steam does it... yeah, it's ok because once you buy it from them... you can download and reinstall to any computer as many times as you like (like if you buy new computers or need/want to reformat). However, most other publishers are GREEDY and CONTROLLING and would only allow like 2-3 total installs, if that... and would probably have their "TOS" written in a way that if you buy a new computer or something... that you would not be able to transfer over over your game but will be able to "(re)purchase it at a discounted price".. which is stupid and unfair.
Another major problem I have with streaming games is.. they seem to always want to charge the SAME EXACT PRICE as games sold on physical media, which in my mind makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It seems that games you download instead of buying should be sold at least around a 25% discount since there isn't any extra expense (packaging, discs, manuals) ... but for some reason, everyone seems to think customers should pay the SAME PRICE as if it were boxed.
@Gh0sTly We were one of the lucky stores to get a LiveNation terminal up front that has Compass support, so we're actually able to use that since our rear compass machine overheated and died. Out of our four terminals only two work, we have to explain to customers on fridays and saturdays why we have 4 people working and only two able to check them out. Half of our shelves are falling apart and our wire racks no longer hold up very well. I'm having to find some way to jerry rig it up every week without causing a safety risk and corporate won't fix it.
Regarding our security equipment, our VHS rewinders all died and the knob for rewinding the tapes in the security system broke so we literally have no way of recording anything security wise. Both of our vacuums are dead and we can't get them replaced and our DM refuses to get us a working one.
Although my personal favorite is the automated ordering system for inventory. We get 300 copies of Valentines day which never rents, and yet we get 30 copies of Shutter Island which is out every day since release. Who the F*ck is managing the ordering for these stores anymore?
@dark star what 250 gig cap? i host servers on my comcast line, and download/torrent about 5+ gigs a day. take that and then the servers upload/download rates, and thats well over 250 a month. i have yet to see this cap (i always download at a constant 1.5 mbs, on both computers)
oh and also on the same line is 3 other computers, 1 gaming, 2 regular.
i also media stream movies at least twice a week, and remote rdp to my phone every time im out. thats alot of bandwith used, and yet i have not seen a cap.
@MrFluffyThing
I had the unlimited rental pass with them for years. I began paying a little over $20/month and cancelled about 8 months ago after noticing multiple times that they had increased their monthly fee eventually to more than $34+ on my bank statement without alerting me.
After looking back, I spent a lot of money with the company over the years ($1200-1400+) and to be treated this way as a loyal customer made the decision to transition from Blockbuster to Netflix so easy and satisfying. I regret not changing sooner. Not to mention I'm spending a 1/3 of the cost.
RIP Blockbuster
@dark star 250GB? Lucky bastards. Bell in Canada caps at 75GB and ask for $5 for 40GB more. You could go with another company with slower speeds, but they offer 200GB or unlimited in their plans. Still, in Canada, for the speeds we're getting, we're getting screwed with bandwidth caps, so you Americans should be happy you have all these streaming services (Netflix mainly) and your bandwidth... I wish companies could just cap our speeds and give us unlimited bandwidth...
@zerotwone It actually sounds like someone didn't sell you the right pass after a credit card change possibly? About a year ago they introduced the "Combo Pass" which was movies and games. You were paying the two at a time cost which was $34.99 price and you can get movies only for $29.99 or one-at-a-time for $21.99. Regardless, the prices are rather high, but you can exchange movies many times a day if it's your thing (or if you pirate a lot) and it saves you over $5 per movie at my store.
@dark star Steam. But only for pc. One day consoles will happen.
@MrFluffyThing
Not sure. We had the unlimited 2 movies out since about 2004-2005. Other than a CC expiration update, we didn't make any changes to our account. I watched the price increase from the low $20's to mid $30's in multiple increments on my bank statement. The unfortunate thing is that we would probably still be using Blockbuster if they hadn't become greedy and raised their pricing so much. I've noticed the store has seen a substantial decrease in traffic since we stopped going which makes me wonder if this happened to others as well?
The bottom line is that the culture starts from the top and poor executive decisions can lead any large company into bankruptcy. This appears to be an example of this. Instead of raising costs, they should have implemented an aggressive retention marketing program to keep existing customers happy.
@SBMfromLA
Everyone is always harping on Gamestop....
You can always sell things on Ebay... but it takes a lot more work.
Gamestop just lets you drop the games on the counter and takes them from you... even the crap titles. And you don't have to wait for your money... they give it to you right then and there...
And why do they sell it for more than twice as much? Because if you bring in 10 games.... and 8 of them NEVER sell... they at least made the money back plus some profit on what they gave you.
And don't forget that i's a company who has the primary goal of MAKING money....
... and where else will you buy small-name niche titles? I know some games are even sold at Gamestop ONLY... and i'm pretty sure it's because no one else wants to carry them.
And you may want DLC.... but when that happens, say goodbye to trading and selling games... period. D R M
@AlienSix
Yes PLEASE Blockbuster, die, DIE! I am going to party like it's 1999 when you are dead, buried and forgotten within a decade. Entire generations will never know the horror that was you. I can't wait to see it happen and it can't happen soon enough.
@JordanClay
My internet can barley get trough a single MW2 match without lagging let alone streaming it, this is the best internet I can get where I live. Netflix wont stream HD movies to me ether because of my connection. And if We Stream, we wont be able to sell our games or be able to lend them out to friends, its exactly what money grubbers like game stops wants
@AlienSix
I remember growing up when vcr players were just becoming popular and blockbuster didn't even exist in every neighborhood yet. Two and a half decades later, Blockbuster, is no longer as iconic or as culturally relevant as it was in decades past. In the next two or three decades, who knows what will become of today's most relevant icons?
@cwastell
That's like 5 hours a day. Now consider a family of 3-4 using multiple devices to stream from multiple websites/services. F comcast.
@anotherworld
PC and Mac now. But yes, Steam on the 360/PS3 would be awesome.
@zerotwone I've been working at BB since 2006, and YES I've seen a substantial decrease in customers. The biggest killer of that is the nerfing of our online subscription, which was fantastic at the time but costing us way too much money. No one in marketing ever thought about the fact that the online would get customers so many in store free rentals that it would cost our company more money than we'd made from the online, but they cut the pricing out from under customer's feet and in some cases raised plans by more than $20 just for the same service and then ended up slowing down the way the in store trade ins worked, thus making it profitable but pissing off customers...
@MrFluffyThing i think we all saw this one coming. Blockbuster is extremely overpriced, and most of the other options are just way more convenient and cheaper. I would say if they go under there will be no more pick up a movie at the last minute, but there is redbox and on demand like services.
@mackenziepricee LOL. At least you have off peak hours.
@mcbeaven I think that "right now" movies are going to be OnDemand and streaming, although Netflix probably won't be the primary source seeing as most of the library titles they offer are generally low ranked titles no one wants to watch. Blockbuster had the concept of using MS branded Kiosks initially that would burn a temporary disk with the DVD you wanted, but it failed miserably in testing as far as I've heard.
I think if Blockbuster hits bankruptcy they're going to close the brick and mortar stores, and liquidate what they can to reduce debt, then stay in the digital world and online subscription based service as those are far more profitable than the stores are. I also know that NCR technically owns the Blockbuster Express kiosks and so if we go under, you probably will still see those around, if not under Blockbuster's name then something else.
@MrFluffyThing I'd have to say that our Compass system is utter crap, and I would love it if it died out. I could easily talk the store manager into giving it to me. :D
Also, we have a dead POS terminal as well, so we are limited to 3 terminals to check people out. Our wire racks are falling apart also, and its a shame too. We're one of the "white wall tornado" stores that you likely heard of a year or so ago. Ive been with the company for about 2.5 years now, and I'm not sure if I should ride out the dying horse, or get off while the getting is good. My hours are getting severely cut(sometimes 1 day a week, 3-4 hours) but the job hunting around here isnt all that great either... so I'm alittle worried.
@dark star AT&T, Verizon, Charter, and Cox don't cap nor have any plans to. In fact, Verizon has even straight up said they don't plan to cap cuz fiber can be pushed further than we can dream of doing so.
@JordanClay What? They make their money off of ripping off gaming companies with used games and legit game sales.
@Gh0sTly We were going to become a White Tornado, but because we were east coast we were the last wave to get remodeled, that didn't happen... Oh and hours get cut every week. especially this week. It's ridiculous...
@SBMfromLA Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast - Gamestop have to make money, and as they don't turn down many games, they pay out based on the statistical probability of reselling what they buy.
It's a flawed system and totally aimed at making them profitable, but the worse scenario for me is not being able to conventiently trade in old games for new titles.
Netflix killed the radio star...
@SolidSnake More like Netflix killed the late fee star.
@SolidSnake Netflix killed the video store
Video On Demand killed the BlockbuStar
You may groan now but you'll be using it later (unlike your faded Blockbuster store card).
I rented the so-called "Blockbuster EXCLUSIVE" Blu-ray of that Wolverine movie, thinking "exclusive" meant it had more content on it than the regular Blu-ray (that they had worked out some "deal" with the studio or something).
Guess what. It had nothing on it but the movie-- no extras at all. I guess that's what made it "exclusive:" no one else had a castrated version of the Blu-ray EXCEPT Blockbuster. I shredded my BB card after that.
@SolidSnake I think you meant.. Netflix killed the video store
Almost kind of sad to think of the prospect of BB disappearing, but it was inevitable. There just isn't really a place for it anymore. It will become a fixture of history... a memory to be reenacted in the hipster, "retro" movies of our children's movies.
Maybe it was just the ones run in my town, but they all seemed to have pretty shitty employees and bad business practices. I got charged a number of times for movies I had never checked out. My friends said the same thing happened to them. Netflix was like a god send.
@admlshake
I used to work at blockbuster two years ago (first job), and I thought the decisions cooporate was making were pretty stupid. Blockbuster did try and make a counter online movie service, only they priced it way too cheapy and they started lost a lot of money. So they randomly decided to charge their subscribers more each month with out their concent. We had a ton off pissed off people coming in the store to complain and cancel their subscriptions. After that BB decided they should focus more on in-store transactions trying to sell a shitty rewards program we had to pitch to every customer which pissed people off more and drove more people to netflix. Hearing they're going bankrupt is so surprise at all.
@admlshake
When an employer treats their employees like crap it usually translates to bad customer experiences, I had the pleasure of working at a Blockbuster for almost two years and can attest to this.
@admlshake
Yea... Netflix lost me when they started purposely delaying all of my DVDs even though I was paying for the 3 at a time plan. They "throttle" "heavy" users.
If you can't provide what you promise, then don't promise it. Simple as that. Such a shady company deserves no customers.
@paul34
Netflix is great, and you know it!!
I do rarely use the dvd portion.
It's all about he online streaming!!!!!!
I have a NetFlix somewhere downtown!!
Blockbusted
@Matt da Brat Block-blocked
Gonna miss Blockbuster. R.I.P.
My neighbor will love this. Though Netflix ftw!
@Totoro
Catbus > Totoro