Blockbuster has announced that it's eliminating late fees on it's video rentals. They think this will make their customers really happy.
The thing is, they actually haven't eliminated them, just reduced them, and changed the structure.
Here's how it was described in The Boston Globe:
Under the new policy, movies and games will still have rental periods -- two days for a new movie release and a week for games and all other movies.Customers will automatically be given a one-week grace period to return a movie or game. If the movie or game is not returned by then, the customer will be automatically charged the sale price of the movie. The purchase price can be refunded, minus the $1.25 restocking fee, if the movie or game is returned within 30 days.
So the way this works is, that after 9 days there's a late fee of $1.25, and after 30 days the late fee is the price of the video. And remember, that a lot of these rental videos are "priced to rent", ie not $10, but $60, or more. I wonder if each video will be labelled with their "purchase" price?
That's not "eliminating" the late fee.
Posted by jackhodgson at December 15, 2004 10:38 AM