Blockbuster Online review

In the beginning there was blockbuster, and blockbuster was a good place to go for new releases on Friday nights. Then blockbuster got prideful and fell from grace. They started charging over 5 dollars for every day a movie was overdue. Plus, renting a movie drained the wallet for around 6 dollars to start with.

Then came competition (no, not Hollywood video) Netflix. Netflix came on the scene as a hermit's dream. No more leaving the house to rent movies, with the exception of walking to the mailbox to pick them up. Netflix had great plans renting up to 3 movies at a time, with no late fees. I was a member of Netflix for a year or so and loved it. Fast delivery times and a massive library of movies and tv series to choose from really appealed to me. I only cancelled my membership to save a little bit of dough. With Netflix picking up speed and making "the evil empire" blockbuster shaking in its VHS boots, blockbuster decided to enter the market of online/mailbox rentals.

And this is what I describe as "The Rise and Fall of Blockbuster Online."

My friend led me on to Blockbuster Online when it was first starting up. It was such a great deal there was no way I could refuse. Here's the rundown, sorry if I get into arithmetic but it sounds a little complex. You get three mail-in videos at a time, once you are done watching them you can return them to the store for unlimited trade-ins. So in my hands are three movies I rented for free from the store. Now here's the tricky part, once I return the mail-ins for movies, they automatically send mail-ins to your house that take about 2-3 days to get to your house. Now I know this sounds gluttonous, but it's possible to have 6 movies at a time. I didn't even have time to watch them all, I just liked knowing that I had so much power.

Then Blockbuster got wise and cut off the unlimited store trade-ins to the limit of 5 per month. You could still get 3 mail-ins at a time, but could only trade them in 5 times. So that was still alright if I was craving a movie at that moment, for example if I needed an Evil Dead 2 fix.

Well apparently Blockbuster isn't happy with cutting you off at the knees. They want the entire leg. Their rental system now consists of 3 rentals at a time, whether it be mail-ins or in store. If you trade in a mail-in for a movie. They won't send you a new one until you return the store rental. Yes, for the normal person 3 movies is still pretty good, but when you have experienced the good life and then they take it away from you, it's a low blow.

To make matters worse, every two months or so, Blockbuster calls me and lets me know that I never returned an in-store rental. They will now be charging 30 dollars for the Grudge 2. Thanks blockbuster! Every time this happens, and it is frequent, I go to the store and tell them to look for the movie with that code on the shelf. 10 times out of 10, it is there and one of the employee morons didn't scan it back in right. There is always gonna be human error. And come on, have you seen the smiling employees at Blockbuster?! For that reason alone it is a better deal to go with netflix.

Blockbuster Total Rewards Online started out as a 5 star, then was demoted to a 4 star, and now sits at a 3 movie star rating. And people, it's only going down from here.