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Blockbuster Settles No Late Fee Suit

Posted by Zonk on from the truth-in-advertising dept.

fistfullast33l writes "In a followup to a previous Slashdot story, Blockbuster has settled a lawsuit with 47 states and the District of Columbia over its No Late Fees advertising campaign. The New York State Attorney General's Office released the following: 'The Attorneys General alleged that the advertising campaign launched in late December 2004 was misleading because it failed to clearly disclose that, seven days after a movie or game's return due date, the consumer would be charged its selling price if the item were not yet returned. The Attorneys General also alleged there was insufficient disclosure that not all Blockbuster franchise stores were participating, leaving customers of those stores wrongly believing that they, too, would not have to pay late fees.' Blockbuster will be refunding customers as part of the deal." Additional commenary available on MSNBC.

6 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one? by slapout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow. Am I the only one that said "there's got to be a catch to this" when this thing started and went to their website to check it out. I knew that they would charge you for the movie because I looked it up. Did you think they were just going to let you keep the movie?

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    1. Re:Am I the only one? by porcupine8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well, given that Netflix really has no late fees for real, I don't think that it's entirely ridiculous to think that Blockbuster was offering the same. True, Netflix works on an entirely different business model, with a subscription fee and a limit to the number of movies you can have out at one time, so upon further inspection BB's deal is unlikely to be the same.

      But for some random guy whose buddy is using Netflix and just knows his buddy can keep movies as long as he wants, why shouldn't he take BB's claim at face value?

      (Aside from the inherent problem in taking any advertised claim at face value - but in reality, you can't expect the general public to think that way.)

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  2. Good. by LewsTherinKinslayer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to work at GameCrazy (a part of the Hollywood Video chain,) and we had a lot of customers who would come in, and basically say, why should we be renting from you anymore? Blockbuster has no late fees. When we informed them that if they didn't return the movie within a week of the due date they would be charged the full price for the item, not a single customer told us they were made aware of that fact.

    I went to Blockbuster myself a couple months ago and the man who checked me out, the manager, said to me "And don't forget, we no longer have any late fees!" Certainly a misleading comment.

  3. You must be the only one by AtariAmarok · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Did you think they were just going to let you keep the movie?"

    That is what the ads strongly implied.

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    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  4. The entire store has no movies now by diediebinks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anybody actually been in a Blockbuster since they instituted the No Late Fees? The only thing this promotion did was make it so there are no movies in stock.

  5. Re:And this is important becuase... by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 5, Insightful
    And this is important to Slashdot readers who probably download their entertainment because...

    Do you really waste hours of time downloading television programs and movies from the Internet? I've found it's much easier to just go rent a movie than to spend hours downloading some 8 gig DVD rip only to find it's gay porn some jackass put up with the same name as the movie I was looking for (which was not gay porn BTW). I guess I'm just getting old, but I have more money than time these days.