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Blockbuster Sued Over Late Fees Claim

Posted by Zonk on from the read-the-fine-print dept.

DesiVideoGamer writes "CNN has a story about Blockbuster's violation of New Jersey's consumer fraud act in which they made false claims in their "No More Late Fees" campaign. New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey filed a lawsuit today in hopes that Blockbuster would stop misleading their customers into thinking they could keep their movie rentals as long as they want without penalty."

5 of 650 comments (clear)

  1. Phone reminders by Brian+Brian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My local Blockbuster kept calling multiple times a day when I decided to press the new policy. By shear nagging alone I gladly returned the movie.

  2. Re:Price Point by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 5, Interesting
    How about a move away from censorship? I stopped going to Blockbuster and Rogers Video after I found out that they perform their own censoring and scene-removal on films.

    It's bad enough that the movie industry waters everything down into mindless pap without the video store trying to decide what I should and shouldn't view.

  3. Cable ISPs did the same thing by freeweed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For years, they advertised, in large capital letters, UNLIMITED INTERNET ACCESS.

    After they oversold an insane amount, realized they were going to lose their shirts, they started introducing bandwidth caps. All while still advertising UNLIMITED INTERNET ACCESS.

    It's sad that we need lawsuits and regulations to deal with this sort of thing - but I'm sorry, don't advertise something in 100% plain english if you're not going to follow through.

    Blockbuster just rolled this campaign out in Canada, and I've been waiting to hear the catch. Call me a hopeless optimist, but NO MORE LATE FEES means, in English, that if I return a movie LATE, there will be NO FEE as a result of my returning it late. Looks like NO MORE LATE FEES just means DEFERRED LATE FEES.

    Morons. They deserve whatever they get. This is about as ethical as advertising $25 cars - with small print explaining that there is a $25,000 processing fee.

    --
    Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  4. Netflix Rocks by HangingChad · · Score: 4, Interesting
    We dumped all our satellite premium channels in favor of Netflix.

    Now instead of watching the same cheap movies over and over we have a great selection that includes foreign films, documentaries, TV (including British TV series), special interest and, somewhat ironically, the series from the recently disposed premium subscription channels.

    I couldn't imagine going back to anything as primitive as a video store, especially Blockbuster. *urp*

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  5. Re:Why do we need a lawsuit? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we've reached the point where a company can advertise the end of late fees when it actually charges a late fee (just calls it a restocking fee), all without being subject to a lawsuit, then we have reached a new level of stupidity in the legal system.

    I'm sorry, I'm a big believer that some of the disclaimers we require are ridiculous, but saying you don't charge late fees when you do is just wrong.