I have a Blockbuster Total Access plan.
A little one: Two discs at a time, 3 instore exchanges per month.
With tax, that's $18.01 per month.
Netflix gives three discs for that amount of money.
But Netflix is still throttling without telling you.
Even after they got sued for it almost three years ago.
Different media, then. Now its streaming vid. Back then it was on the disc-mailing thing.
But I digress.
I meant to say, "But Blockbuster has a store located less than half a mile from my house."
And those instore exchanges are neat.
Were neat.
Blockbuster changed the policy supporting the exchanges without telling me.
Way it used to be--up until last freakin week, anyway:
Bring a mailed vid to a Blockbuster, exchange it for a new one instead of mailing it back.
Take a week to watch this one.
No problem.
Meantime, the wheels of mail-order support started grinding right away, crediting my account with the exchanged vid, and launching the next one in my queue.
If you count it out, that's actually three vids in the cycle instead of two.
That was a feature promoted by Blockbuster--a reason to visit their local stores where they could sell me popcorn and video games.
That's gone now.
In a policy change that went into effect--behind the scenes, as far as I see it--the in-store exchanges now count towards my two-at-a-time rental cap.
Blockbuster's policy change is on their website, of course.
Now.
That's the beauty of the web. You can make page changes and nobody is the wiser unless you tell them you've edited the page.
Or you read the copy.
But I never got word of it in an email. Nor did my account site reflect the change.
Not a word.
I just happened to notice that my Blockbuster queue total now included "unidentified store rental" in my title list instead of the next title in my queue's list.
There's a debate ongoing over who got notification emails and who didn't.
I'm one of the customers who didn't get one.
Bleah.
I can't work up a righteous anger over the change--Blockbuster is doing whatever it can in order to stay alive.
If someone comes up with a decent monthly rental plan that feeds my PS3 I'm on it.
Sony's got plenty of movies and content available online for me.
But it's single-shot rentals only.
And I'm streaky.
And there is that store just a half-mile away......