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Blockbuster Video Now Has Just One Store Left On Earth (apnews.com)
Cutting_Crew writes: After the last remaining Blockbuster Video store closed in Australia on March 31st, there is only one remaining left on earth. That location is in Bend, Oregon and seems to be a thriving location, where they write out membership cards by hand and the system is rebooted using floppy disks, apparently only something one person, the general manager, knows how to do. If you are wondering how there could be still blockbuster videos open since they went bankrupt back in 2010, the remaining stores left open were independent franchises and were separate from most of the other corporate stores, thus not part of the bankruptcy. There was also an Onion video before they even went bankrupt that's pretty funny. I remember getting a membership way back in late 90s and new releases were $8 per night. Even then, that seemed way too expensive. What are your most memorable (good or bad) memories of your local blockbuster?
Similar late fee problem here -- except it was for a movie that had been rented (and forgotten). Returned it weeks before and finally wanted a new rental. The late fees came to something like $96. I laughed at them and offered to buy the movie instead ($40 range). They declined. They wanted their ridiculous late fees.
They're not charging you for the price of the physical DVD. They are charging you for the lost revenue they could have been making renting it out to others while you were holding on to it. If they only expected to make $40 per copy of a movie, of course they would go out of business (sooner than they did) - they aren't even covering their overhead at that point. Every rental business is predicated on making more than the cost of the item back by charging more than it is worth if you had bought it outright.