Okay, I rent games at Blockbuster. Not individually, that equates to financial rape. I signed up for their Gamer Pass. Actually, I opted for their 2nd tier of Gamer Pass that lets me have two games out at a time for $35/month. THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH?!?! I hear you say? Yeah, I could afford to buy one game every other month for that price and frankly, not a ton of games have come out over the last few years that I find myself playing more than a month and it’s worked out really well to just rent games until I’m done with them. I’ve rented games and had them for weeks before (honestly, I’ve had them for weeks before I even put them into my system, but I guess that’s my right, eh?). But the story not always so rosy…Before I get to the specifics, I feel I should explain the key feature(s) that keep me renting at Blockbuster over other local establishments or rent-by-mail places such as GameFly. My local(est) Blockbuster rents games for: PS2, PS3, PSP, GameCube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360, and Nintendo DS… all systems that I own. And it’s local. I can simply drive 5 minutes, exchange a game, and if it really sucks, I can have another game in as much time as it takes me to drive back and pick one out. That’s a convenience that GameFly can’t touch.
So that brings us to the nature of this post, this isn’t Rothbart’s Blockbuster Commercial, it’s Rothbart’s Rant. And I’m about to. Here’s the way renting at Blockbuster works (it’s slightly different when you have the Gamer Pass). You take the game you’re wanting to return and hold on to it… you roam the store with it still in your hands (in other words, you don’t drop it in the return box or they get annoyed with you as they have to dig it out to rent you your next game; this also makes for awkward “I didn’t find anything to exchange for” sessions where you just walk out with stuff in your hand.) You find an empty game box behind a coverbox and bring it to the front where they’ll return your game and exchange the empty box for the one with the disc(s) in it. The problem is, at my local Blockbuster, increasingly, I’ll often pick out a game I’m excited to rent (say, Orange Box for the 360), wait in line, and hand it to the clerk only to begin the 10 minute long “search” for the game that ultimately isn’t available for rent. Why in God’s name is the box on the shelf if the game isn’t available? Now once or twice I can sort of understand… one stupid employee I can even understand. But this has happened to me 6-7 times in the past two months and it’s just ridiculous! I’ve complained to the manager to no avail. I worked in the video/game rental industry for years. I managed multiple video stores. This should not be happening. I’m –><— this close to moving my Gamer Pass membership to another (less local) Blockbuster to see if it gets any better (the Gamer Pass is location-specific) but would prefer to take my business somewhere else completely if only I had a store in town that could match their selection and platform variety.
So I ask all of you, have you had similar bad experiences renting games from Blockbuster? Have you found a better (national) place to rent games? Let’s hear your horror stories and tales.
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6 responses so far ↓
1 Lono // Oct 22, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Yes i have. After I lost my copy of Rainbow Six, i went on a 3 hour tour of the local Blockbusters in my area. Finally one place still had it. Except they didn’t… This dumbass employee couldn’t find it and then did a shrug your shoulders oh well move.. That really pissed me off. F U Blockbuster.
2 Lono // Oct 22, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh and I only pay 22 bucks to have two games out with gamefly.
3 MadMikeMan // Oct 22, 2007 at 6:01 pm
my blockbuster has 5 xbox games, most of them I’ve already played or beat, thus I am forced to pay 60 dollers If I wanna play a game, hows that for a horror story.
4 Wizard // Oct 22, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I hate Blockbuster. It was a good idea in theory, but somewhere along the line, someone messed up.
When I go to rent a TV series season, I either want to find a totally empty box or a copy of the entire season, with at least one other copy there for reassurance. Instead, I go and find TV seasons spread out across multiple DVDs, some of which have two or three empty boxes, but no DVDs or random pickings from totally different incomplete seasons of the series that have two or three empty boxes, but no DVDs.
I went to rent “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”, a movie which has been seen by everyone except myself and a few retarded Australian hillbillies, only to find that they didn’t even have it there. Nor did the they have any Monty Python movies. Or Bruce Almighty. Or the Grinch Stole Christmas. What they did have was an interesting horror flick entitled “The Gingerdead Man”, in which a small brown Pillsbury Doughboy that has been possessed by a homicidal maniac goes on a psychotic rampage and kills several people. His methods included vehicular manslaughter, even though he was only about a foot tall, if even. Needless to say, my friends and I were in hysterics.
But I digress. Blockbuster sucks, which is why I go to TV Links. Except…not…anymore…
5 AriesDog // Oct 22, 2007 at 9:36 pm
But if Blockbuster folds where will burnouts get jobs to prove to their parents they’re not worthless. (Full disclosure: I worked at Blockbuster too.)
And Wizard,not only do I own a copy of Gingerdead Man, I have it autographed by the director. You also forgot to mention the killer gingerbread man is voiced by “He’s Already Crazy” Gary Busey.
6 Lono // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:20 am
Hey! I worked at blockbuster too… And for the record, they did drug testing by cutting off a hair sample soooo I don’t think there’s too many burn outs there…Sheesh… You take that back Aries Dog, you take that back right now, Mister!
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