Blockbuster Modifies Their Online Movie Rental Service
Tip It!Just a few minutes ago I received an e-mail from Blockbuster regarding changes to their online movie rental service. Up to this point, we’ve been receiving their Total Access service for $17.99/month. That includes unlimited online rentals (3 at-a-time) as well as unlimited in-store exchanges — i.e., if you turn your movie in at a local store, they’ll immediately ship you a new one plus give you a free in-store rental.
All in all, we’ve been very happy with our Total Access service. There have, however, been rumblings of an impending price increase, and tonight that became reality.
At the $17.99/month price point, they’ve replaced the old Total Access plan with a 3 at-a-time unlimited online plan that’s capped at five free in-store exchanges. They’re also offering $1.99 in-store rentals for Total Access customers that want more movies per month. Note that this new $17.99 plan is the default. If you do nothing, you will automatically switch to this plan at the end of August.
If you want to retain the ability to make unlimited in-store exchanges, you’ll have to pony up $24.99/month for the 3 at-a-time plan (that’s a whopping 39% price increase), or drop down to a 2 at-a-time plan for $21.99/month. This amounts to a 22% price increase for a lesser service!
For those that are curious, this is a screenshot of the full pricing grid…
All in all, I’d have to say that the new $17.99/month plan remains the best value in all of this. You still get 3 at-a-time online rentals along 5 in-store exchanges. While it’s not quite as generous as it used to be, that’s exactly 5 more in-store exchanges than you’d get with Netflix. Granted, this plan costs $2/month more than the Netflix 3 at-a-time plan (free trial), but those 5 in-store exchanges are wellworth it in my book. And don’t forget, dropping the movie at the store shaves a couple of days off your next online rental, as they ship that out as soon as your movie is scanned in. Oh, and if you go over the allotment of 5 free in-store rentals per month, you’d have to rent 3.5 more movies at $1.99/each before you’d hit the price of the 3 at-a-time plan unlimited in-store exchanges.
The main thing that remains unclear in all of this is what will happen to the free monthly rental coupons. Up until now, they’ve given out a printable monthly coupon good for one free movie or video game rental. This has been huge for us, as we purchased a Nintendo Wii this past spring and have been using the monthly coupons to test out new games. Without the coupon, game rentals run nearly $8/each. For now, I’m assuming that they’ll be dropping the coupons, as there’s no mention of them anywhere on the pricing grid. If so, that’s a pretty major blow to what used to be a fantastic deal.
All in all, we’ll probably stick it out. Given the size of our family and the disparate movie tastes between grownups and kids, the added flexibility of being able to swap out movies in a local store has been great. We haven’t once regretted dropping Netflix in favor of Blockbuster Total Access.
Published on August 17th, 2007 - 9 Comments
Filed under: Online
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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August 18th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Netflix still has better selection of movies, blockbuster tends to focus on US films, but if your looking for foreign, art house, little known films or anything that would carry NC-17 etc.. rating Blockbuster is not going to have it.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:21 am
I have tried Blockbuster not once but twice. Both times the service was atrocious. They took forever to send movies out despite them being listed as available, they’d randomly take forever to acknowledge that I’d sent something back (one took something like a month after I’d canceled before being noted as returned).
My mom just tried a two week trial with Blockbuster in the past month or two. She waited nearly the whole two weeks, and despite the movies in her queue being available, they never sent her a single one. I convinced her to try Netflix instead and she loves it, much as I do. Neither of us have ever had any problems with it, and I’ve been a member on and off for years.
So very strange that we apparently have had opposite experiences with the same businesses.
August 18th, 2007 at 9:32 am
No surprise that Blockbuster did this as they have been really bleeding red ink.
The competition between them and Netflix has gotten really ugly lately and it’s been fascinating to watch both of them “notch it up a bit”.
This is the first sane thing that Blockbuster has done to try to limit their costs, but it has certainly has angered all of us.
I’m waiting for the inevitable DVD burn-on-demand that WILL be offered in virtually any street corner retail outlet – just wait and see.
Where will all this end for Blockbuster vs. Netflix?
Who knows?
What with the real competiting coming from RedBox and DVDPlay Blockbuster and Netfix SHOULD be worried.
Let’s face it – you either want to rent the “top 20-30″ hits or are looking for the more obscure or less-popular titles.
The top 20-30 can always be had quickly and easily at a vending machine, more obsure can be found at a brick-and-mortar store like Blockbuster, but they only have SO MUCH real estate where they can store titles.
Not to mention on-demand from Comcast.
Interesting times ahead in the entertainment business, and who will be the real winners here?
August 18th, 2007 at 10:25 am
The real winners will be the consumer – hopefully! I may be old fashioned, but between Tivo and Netflix, I am pretty happy.
August 18th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Heh. Old fashioned with Tivo and Netflix?
August 18th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
You also get a number of hours of online movie viewing from Netflix. However many dollars per month you pay for your plan with them is how many hours per month you get, no extra charge (so far).
Granted, the selection online is not as extensive, but it’s kinda fun to randomly pick a documentary like American Mullet or whatever on a Sunday afternoon.
August 18th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
When Netflix first hit the scene, they were the only game in town and had terrible service. We quickly canceled.
Then Blockbuster started the dvd ship-to-rent thing and Netflix really had to clean up their act.
Now, years later, Netflix has great customer service and keeps their prices low.
I, too, am looking forward to the interesting times ahead.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I, for one, will be switching to Netflix. I had the one-at-a-time plan with unlimited store exchanges plus 1 in-store coupon. That same plan has now increased to $16.99 and they dropped the free in-store coupon as well. I refuse to give them an a 70% increase!
August 18th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I’ve been a Netflix customer for over 7 years. Once Blockbuster bought up all the mom & pop rental outlets you could only find the new releases in their stores. Netflix offered a much better selection and still does. I could see through Blockbuster’s in store return gimmick months ago and predicted it would either fail or it would bring down Netflix and then you would only be able to get the new releases…
I will gladly pay a couple of dollars more per month for Netflix then whatever gimmick Blockbuster is offering today…