Blockbuster Actually Does Something Positive

by Sean Fallon on November 1, 2006

in Misc. Gadgets

Blockbuster Total Access

After years of pissing me off, Blockbuster has finally done something positive with their “Total Access” online program.

Heres how it works:

If you rent a movie via their online store, you can either return it through the mail or through a brick and mortar store. Either way, the next movie on your list will be immediately shipped. Users can also receive a free in-store movie rental plus a free in-store rental coupon each month for each DVD returned to a Blockbuster location. Essentially, this will allow subscribers to vastly increase the amount of movies that they take home each month under their plan.

Blockbuster also noted that “movies exchanged or obtained with coupons in stores do not count against the total number of DVDs that online customers are allowed by their subscription plan, but those rentals are subject to in-store due dates.”

I was still a little unsure about the whole in-store exchange for online rentals policy, so I checked the FAQ and found the following:

“Instead of receiving just a few movie e-Coupons each month, now you can get unlimited free in-store movie rentals whenever you want, simply by bringing any online DVD sealed inside a return mailer into your local, participating BLOCKBUSTER store. And for those times when you find yourself without a movie or a return mailer, you’ll receive one monthly movie e-Coupon to use just in case. The bottom line: you’re getting more, free, in-store movie rentals, at no extra charge.”

As far as I’m concerned this program would be a good reason to switch from Netflix. Hopefully they could do something similar for game rentals in the near future.

Total Access plans range between $5.99 and $17.99.

Reuters

  • Brandon

    Beware of what total access is saying they offer! I switched to it from Netflix because I didn’t like how it took netflix anywhere from 2 to 5 days to recieve the movies I mailed out. I always thought it odd that when they shipped a DVD I got it the next day but when I mailed my DVD back it always took much longer for them to recieve. I didn’t care so much so that I could get a free in store rental, although that is pretty cool, I cared more so that if I returned the online rental to the store that the next movie would ship right away. Fact of the matter is if I return an online rental to the store it takes anywhere from 2 to 5 days for the next movie to ship anyway. For example, today is tuesday, I returned a movie to my local Blockbuster store last friday. Not only has the next DVD still not shipped out but the one I returned on friday has been removed from my que indicating that it has already been mailed out from the blockbuster store and recieved in the wherehouse. I’m on the 2 DVD rental program and right now it’s indicating that I only have one DVD shipped. And to add to the frustration that one DVD in my que I already returned to a Blockbuster store yesterday morning.

    And yes I called their customer service center to complain. Their number was busy the majority of the times I tried to call and when I did get through the wait time was 22 minutes. The lady on the phone offered to send me a free in store rental coupon which I declined because that really offers me no solution to the true problem of the DVD’s shipping right away. I never use my in store coupons anyway because I don’t want to rent movies from the store because it’s a pain for me to return them on time. The only other thing she could offer me was a futal attempt to adjust my expectations. That kind of ticked me off.

    To test to make sure that the people in the store are scanning my DVD’s that i’ve been returning i’ve been renting a movie in the store with the DVD return and just dropping the in store DVD in the return slot on the way out. That hasn’t helped.

    So due to all this I intend on canceling my blockbuster account and going back to netflix not just because of these problems alone, but because i’ve had 3 DVD’s at the top of my que that haven’t shipped due to being on short wait availability. All these problems combined have caused blockbuster to be a much worse service for me than Netflix. Worst thing is I know that I could complain all day and all night to them and it would yield no result. Trust me I really really want what blockbuster says they’re offering. But they are promising something that they clearly are failing to deliver. :-(

  • Sean Fallon

    I mentioned a similar problem when I did a final review for Total Access on Nerd Approved. I solved the queue issues by manually deleting the movies I had returned in-store, which kick starts the update. It is definitely a problem, but I managed to rent 29 movies in a single month on the 3 DVD program (including in store exchanges), so it wasn’t all that bad in the long run.

    Still, I live pretty close to a Blockbuster so it wasn’t that big of a hassle for me to head over there. Plus I’m a big gamer so the coupons work out really well.

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