Friday, November 3, 2006
Blockbuster Total Access
Posted by Chris Gohlke in "CONTENT" @ 03:00 PM
"Now you can exchange online DVDs for free in-store movie rentals*. When you’re ready to return an online DVD, drop it in the mail OR bring it, sealed in its return envelope, to your local participating BLOCKBUSTER store and exchange it for a free in-store movie rental. The store will mail back your DVD for you and the next available movie in your Queue will ship out right away, giving you double the movies at no extra charge!"
I've been using Blockbuster's on-line rental service for a while now and I've been patiently waiting for them to come up with a good way to leverage their bricks and mortar locations to make for a better experience than Netflix. Up until now, all they had done was given you some free in-store rentals every month. This was cool in that you could go pickup a movie locally without having to wait for it by mail. I've had problems with their mail service often taking four or five days to log the return of a movie after I mailed it back. I'd been hoping that they would offer you the option to return your mailers to a store and have them immediately checked in. Well, they've done my hopes one better. Now you can return a movie to the store and get a free in-store rental for each movie you return this way, effectively doubling the number of movies you get. Since the blockbuster is right around the corner from my house, this is ideal for me. I tried it out yesterday and it worked without a hitch, the cashier did check with the manager to make sure they were doing it correctly since this was the first one they had processed. Today the movie was removed from my queue and a new movie mailed out. This is the kind of thing that Netflix really needs to be afraid of as it is the first real advantage Blockbusters service has and there is no real way for Netflix to counter it.
I've been using Blockbuster's on-line rental service for a while now and I've been patiently waiting for them to come up with a good way to leverage their bricks and mortar locations to make for a better experience than Netflix. Up until now, all they had done was given you some free in-store rentals every month. This was cool in that you could go pickup a movie locally without having to wait for it by mail. I've had problems with their mail service often taking four or five days to log the return of a movie after I mailed it back. I'd been hoping that they would offer you the option to return your mailers to a store and have them immediately checked in. Well, they've done my hopes one better. Now you can return a movie to the store and get a free in-store rental for each movie you return this way, effectively doubling the number of movies you get. Since the blockbuster is right around the corner from my house, this is ideal for me. I tried it out yesterday and it worked without a hitch, the cashier did check with the manager to make sure they were doing it correctly since this was the first one they had processed. Today the movie was removed from my queue and a new movie mailed out. This is the kind of thing that Netflix really needs to be afraid of as it is the first real advantage Blockbusters service has and there is no real way for Netflix to counter it.
