Blockbuster Video Employees' Journal
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Blockbuster Video Employees' LiveJournal:
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| Friday, May 6th, 2011 | 9:34 am
[fadeddragon2469]
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Been kinda busy, but had to post...
From being employed from April of 2005, then quitting in June of 2006 and then being re-hired in December of 2006...I have finally ended my term with Blockbuster, Inc. back in January (yeah, I've been sorta busy so I never got around to posting, plus I thought this group was dead since so many people had quit lol). I quit because of the bullshit with the "Blockbuster Way" and I was just getting tired of the company not listening to employees, especially employees with good ideas (not to be cocky, but i.e. ME! lol). I'd always called out mistakes the company was making and how it would be better business to do other things. In my district for a long period of time, for example, they would retail ppg's in bluelocks on the floor with the games in them. I told them (SM and DM) this was a horrible idea, it would be better if we kept them behind the counter in the same place we kept the rental games. But no one listened... Then a rash of thefts began and I said again "This is a bad idea" but I was told the Regional Manager would have to step in and make a decision. Finally they did it and saved their asses some money. I also knew that having so many copies (for a period of time) of new video games was a mistake due to the fact that we pay money to retail those games and no one comes to BBV to buy BRAND NEW GAMES, no one listened though...and that ended pretty abruptly. Long story short, I got tired of the bullshit decisions that those in the company had made. So, here is the resignation letter I provided to not only my SM, but my DM (was going to send it to the RM but forgot): ( [Resignation Letter ) Current Mood:  bored | | Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 | 1:19 pm
[mousefarts]
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Ashford Uni question;
Is anyone in the community enrolled at Ashford Uni, mainly for online courses for completing a Bachlors degree? I saw that they are partnered with Blockbuster but I'm not sure what all the benefits/what it means exactly. I checked out the website & it looks like an okay school, I would like to go back to school sometime soon so I thought maybe it was an idea. Anyone? Bueller? I would go for a degree in English. | | Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 | 2:08 pm
[captain_smiley]
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Bought by DISH TV
I just read that DISH TV bought Blockbuster. Will Blockbuster be selling satellite tv systems in the store once again? | | Saturday, March 26th, 2011 | 5:50 am
[mousefarts]
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Really? The gift card thing wasn't fucked up enough? EDIT; Just to clear the air on gift cards, we stopped accepting any kind of BBV gift card for the time being due to the buyout by Dish Network. No cash refunds, your store should have a packet on how to handle customer issues with this, & believe me, they will have issues. Dish is currently working on a way to get gift cards back on the wagon, so lets hope this is resolved soon! | | Monday, February 14th, 2011 | 1:44 pm
[mousefarts]
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Tomorrow is my last day at my current store, where we closed due to leasing agreements. Is this happening anywhere else? We had awesome revenue & top numbers, just sad to see the place go. It was here for sixteen years, longer than I've been in this damn country. I transfer to another store across town, but it's only a matter of time before the expiration date catches up there too. I've worked at movie stores for six years now! From Movie Gallery, to Excitement Video, to Hollywood Video! Where to next!! | | Saturday, January 1st, 2011 | 12:52 pm
[kittenbabe]
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Does anyone have the phone number to payroll, or wherever I need to call to have the address changed for where to send my W-2 form? | | Monday, December 27th, 2010 | 7:45 am
[lots42]
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Dumb move, BBV
The local Blockbuster has the movie posters stored in the area that gets the most sun. The color has been swiftly bleached out of them. SIGH. | | Thursday, November 11th, 2010 | 12:03 pm
[hasitat]
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Changes... kind of
I can see it's been a while since anyone posted here, this is my first time. I'm assuming most of you lost your jobs due to closures. Guess what? All employees are getting raises! Just kidding. I've been with bbv for a year now and the only raise I ever got was $1 for switching to SL. Stupid idea. Anyway, for those still interested in whats happening with bbv, there is a policy change taking effect Nov. 15. Movies 6 weeks and newer are $4.99 for 3 days (i think). Anything older than 6 weeks is $2.99 for 3 days, except for certain "popular titles", even BSI movies. Fam/kids movies are $0.99 with $0.32/day late fee (others are still $1/day late fees). Not sure if games are changing any, though my store has done-away with ps2 games. I had a customer last night bitching about our prices. I told him the "good news" about the policy and price change taking place next week. He proceeded to snort at me and say "you think they would just stick with one policy". Some people are impossible to please. We are also starting the "Blockbuster Way". This consist of calling every customer by their first name during and after transactions. Having done this for a couple of days now, i can say it is very awkward. Most women think I am hitting on them and men find I'm getting too personal. We also no longer have bundle/ta/presale goals. We now have a set limit of how much money our till should make per night, and we must do anything necessary to reach that amount. For example, friday night my till needs to reach $1000, so I have to upsell until I reach that amount. The first time you don't reach goal is a warning and sitdown with ASM. The second failure is a writeup and sitdown with both ASM and SM. Third failure is termination. To ensure we are doing these things and upselling, we are having "secret shoppers" visit stores over the next month to rate us. I have a years worth of bitching to get off my chest, but lucky for you I don't have time right now. I want to point out that I am not a disgruntled employee who goes into work expecting a shitty day and takes it out on customers. But I am sick of having my good customer service thrown back in my face or taken advantage of. You may get 1/10 people say "thanks for taking the time to help me, I really appreciate it". But it's not worth it to have the next 9 people cuss me out, accuse me or the computer of lying, or have my CSR become a victim of some rich asshole's fucked up day, yelling because he has to pay late fees for a movie he claims he didn't have time to watch! First off, why would you rent a movie if you don't have time to watch it? Secondly, why should I believe you kept the movie for over a week and never watched it? These are grown-ass people, yet they don't wanna be held accountable for terms that they agreed to when they signed the membership application! Speaking of being taken advantage of... man: This disc is messed up, it wouldn't play in my dvd player and I had to drive 20 min just to bring it back. me: (being idiotically sympathetic) That's horrible! Normally we can only switch this out for a different copy of the same movie, but because you had to drive so far and didn't get to see it, I'll give you a credit for a 2nd movie. man: I had this problem with Redbox, they gave me 4 free movies. are you serious right now? Firstly, I know damn well they didn't give you 4 free movies. Secondly, I didn't have to give this guy a 2nd movie, nor was I supposed to! Yet he tries milking me for more? What incentive do I have to help out the next person if what I do goes unappreciated? Obviously, I did not give him more than 2 movies. However, upon further inspection of the disc, I see not a single scratch. me: There aren't any scratches, what exactly was wrong with it? man: look at it! It's a cheap disc! me: a cheap disc? man: yeah, look at it. They are using cheap disc to save money. I didn't even bother explaining that the distributors put the movies on disc, not blockbuster. And yes, I did check to see if is was a disc someone might have burned at home and switched out for our real one. The disc worked just find in our stores dvd player and looked just like the rest for Chloe. | | Monday, July 5th, 2010 | 1:10 am
[goldrose]
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After 8 years I am saying goodbye to the Big Blue Bullsh*t. I'm a SL at a store that will be Gone Forever in about 2 weeks. All 3 of my former stores are already gone. While I will miss the free rentals, the health benefits, the good customers, and my wacky partners in crime... there IS a part of me that is glad to be rid of the whiny, needy, stupid, ignorant, greedy, spoiled, lazy morons who have stressed me out all of these years, and the horrid few managers and DMs I've had to deal with. Oh, and the Hell On Earth RM. He is a psycho. He can go get bent. I feel bad for my fellow employees who will be chillin with me on the unemployment line, and the handful of loyal regulars. One kid made me cry he was so sad about us going away. I think when we lock up for good, we're gonna have a boozefest. A few toasts to the Good Old Days and the Bad New Days. Current Mood:  depressed | | Sunday, March 7th, 2010 | 11:16 am
[roytheboy]
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| | Saturday, February 27th, 2010 | 1:10 am
[fadeddragon2469]
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Regarding the previous post "Farewell Everyone"
I do believe you are correct in this statement, however I do not believe it is approaching that quickly...I work at a corporate store in the South Florida area and we are now, as I'm assuming all corporate stores, reintroducing "late fees", although we've gone around and are now going to call them "daily rental fees" starting March 1st. I love how they tell us things in advance... I saw the email today in my inbox at work regarding this and quickly printed up an attachment I'm fairly certain was entitled "Advance Notice for customers" or something quite similar. I begin taking one sign down off our entrance door to post the new signage and text my store manager about where else we should post these signs. He text me back, verbatim "No, take it down. Eric does not want us to post the signs until Monday (March 1st). That is what our store meeting is about tomorrow" I reply to him in a context not belittling his intelligence but belittling our new district manager, Eric, regarding this decision basically saying that it was fucking stupid to not tell customers in advance of such a huge change in our rental policy. It was bad enough the auto-sale timeframe was reduced from 30 days to 10 without giving customers heads up. Later on in my shift the new dm comes into my store for another issue, thus being the first time in which I met him and asked him this simple question regarding such a, in my opinion, idiotic move to not inform customers of the upcoming modification. His basic reply is “Well, banks and credit card companies change their policies all the time without giving advance notice so it’s not a big deal.” Well, correct if I’m wrong but as I recall, working at a Bank of America for six months until I became fed up with the corporate structure (yeah, I know, I should’ve stayed away from Blockbuster too) I remember it being standard procedure to notify customers and shareholders in advance of any changes regarding business. Then I bring up the “big lawsuit” which is replied with “Well, it wasn’t a big lawsuit, it was just California and a few other states”…well, whoopee fucking doo, buddy. Let’s just keep making the same mistakes. Let’s not take that extra step to be more customer-centric and let’s just keep rolling out the awful decisions we’ve made and will keep making. I made it my own duty to begin warning customers, however short notice it is, that way I cover my own ass and I won’t be needing to give ridiculous credits to anyone. I do agree with the decision, by the way. I think it is more business smart to keep the late fees. Why? Because we gain revenue and customers will help us turnover these movies that normally don’t get the turnover they should. Sure, this guy is in his position but I’ve been with the company only just a few years less than him and quite frankly I consider myself a senior member of my staff at my store considering my intelligence of store procedure as well as customer service experience and my ability to figure things out without needing a babysitter to help me. I’m growing quite tired of being told I need to get more pre-sales of a video game that isn’t going to sell well. I’m sick of being told that we need to sell candy to people who don’t bother getting it themselves. I’m sorry but if a mother of five comes into my line with four movies and neglects to get candy/popcorn/soda, I’m pretty sure she has a good reason not to. We’re overpriced for fucks sakes. If this company wants to stay afloat, you know what you do Jim Keyes? You enforce this new daily rental fee, stop issuing credits to the morons who don’t understand they cannot keep a movie for a month and not have to deal with it until then. You stop forcing employees to be salesmen without providing us with rightly deserved commission for such a job. You stop making deals with studios to sell certain games and start focusing on what is more keen to the eyes of the customers. Start asking employees what we think we should try to push in the imminent future, i.e. I would’ve felt more comfortable pushing Playstation 3’s new game Heavy Rain rather than God of War III. And by god, let the employees express themselves. If they have tattoos, as long as their not vulgar let them be. If they have an eyebrow ring, let us wear them with pride unless of course it is says something obscene on it. We’re Blockbuster, not Bank of America or Target. A fucking movie and game rental store. And hey, Jim, remember that key word: RENTAL! For fucks sakes, let’s not focus on sales so much. Putting pressure on the company for sales is just creating more issues. If we stuck to basic core of our operations we could save the falling ship we all refer to as the BBV. Will Blockbuster fall? Fuck yes. Continuing this wayward course towards being the go-to-for-everything retail and rental chain is going to be setting for sail straight into a iceberg named Bankruptcy. It won’t be within the next year. I foresee that Blockbuster will cease to exist past the year 2013 sans our online rental program and kiosks, and possibly our outlet stores. But I hope you all are gone from the SS-BBV or at the very least on your way out. I’m about to finish completing my Bachelor’s degree in history and will soon thereafter become a teacher and hope to shape the future in a way that will hopefully create a better society in the future. Maybe it’ll happen sooner. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get fired or something from someone on here or reading this and ratting me out. Hopefully I kept myself as anonymous as possible. In short, farewell indeed but we’ll see how long this tour takes to wrap up. Good times and bad, it was an experience being with this company. From the titty-flashes from strippers I got working at one store, to having sex with a friend in the office at another and to the times where I’ve been able to really make a customer so happy that he has moved with me to other stores just to keep in touch, it’s been great. Then again, that one douchebag SM Mitch…well he can go fuck himself. Goodnight, and Good Luck! lol | | Saturday, February 13th, 2010 | 6:26 am
[vio2112]
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Farewell Everyone
Well, the end for the entity known Blockbuster is fast approaching us, thus making this old journal more or less obsolete. So I'm officially calling it a day here. Those of you who are still working for the company, best of luck in whatever future employment you seek! I suspect the company will soon file for bankruptcy and shut down the remaining stores before years end. So be prepared! Take care everyone. It's been fun. | | Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | 12:12 am
[morra21]
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A little indignation is always good to pass around....
Well, well, Evening folks! It has been awhile. Let's see.... 1. Became Assistant Manager 2. Became Store Manager 3. Was told right before Christmas that the franchise was going under and closing all stores. 4. Had the fun of going through "Sale Days"---dear god the stories I will eventually tell...snicker 5. BBV Corp. killed our computers, so no more checking in people(every BBV employees revenge bwahahaha!!!!) or selling things. 6. Spent weeks packing stuff up, moving it to the buildings that the franchise owned. 7. Spent more time getting those stores set up to finish the sale. 8. The big wigs lay every one off until they can get the go ahead from the courts to reopen. 9. The last day I worked was Jan. 10th. 10. I'm still waiting for my last check, which should have come Jan. 16th 11. Now due to something getting reported to the unemployment office, I still have not gotten my aid since they said I got paid the week of the 16th. 12. Bills piling up and I want to go hunt down the jackasses that did this to us! thank you end rant | | Sunday, January 24th, 2010 | 3:20 am
[fadeddragon2469]
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Erm?
Wtf...did everyone in this group quit Blockbuster already? Jump from the sinking ship that is Blockbuster? lol. Well, I'm still there...hopefully not for much longer. Have another opportunity heading my way soon. WootWoot! | | Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | 9:51 pm
[hyperspoon]
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| | Friday, November 6th, 2009 | 7:42 am
[vio2112]
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| | Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 | 9:15 pm
[tenchichan]
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| | Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | 7:37 pm
[forex_robot] |
| | Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | 2:00 pm
[vio2112]
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The War on Redbox
Have you guys read about this? While Blockbuster's future is still very much in question, this is definitely good news for Blockbuster. I'm not entirely sure if Redbox can even survive this assault. Things are looking very bleak for them. By : Erik Gruenwedel and Chris Tribbey | Posted: 14 Aug 2009 Warner Home Video is drastically changing the way it sells DVDs and Blu-ray Discs to rental kiosks such as Redbox and by-mail services such as Netflix. The studio Aug. 13 announced that come October, it will sell to them only directly, bypassing third-party wholesalers, and will withhold all new releases from kiosks until 28 days after street date — a restriction sources say will apply to Netflix and other subscription services as well, unless they agree to share rental revenue with the studio. “Warner will be in discussions with both kiosk and mail-order subscription vendors, offering business options that will allow all parties to grow their respective businesses,” the studio said in a statement. Warner executives would not comment further. Warner thus becomes the third studio to hold off selling new releases to Redbox and other kiosks because it doesn’t want dollar rentals to interfere with sales of these releases — particularly since many Redbox kiosks are located in the lobbies of Wal-Mart stores, the country’s biggest retail seller of DVDs. But industry sources say the most revolutionary aspect of the new policy is that it targets not just kiosks but also subscription rental services. They maintain that Netflix and other by-mail renters, too, will be subject to a 28-day window on new Warner DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases unless they strike revenue-sharing deals with the studio. Sources say Warner has no such agreements in place with Netflix. Ken Ross, VP of corporate communications for Netflix, said the company has had a relationship with Warner for a decade, buying directly from the studio, and not its wholesalers, under a series of agreements. “We’ll evaluate the current proposal, and we’ll discuss it with the studio as we’ve always done,” he said. Warner also has revised its wholesaler terms to prohibit the purchase and sale of its previously viewed product. The studios have been split in their treatment of the growing kiosk business, some imposing windows and others making deals. Redbox president Mitch Lowe said Warner is trying to limit Redbox consumers’ access to new releases. “Redbox will continue to stand behind our customers and our commitment to providing convenient, affordable access to new-release DVDs from all studios, including Warner Bros.,” he said. Lowe made no comment regarding potential litigation against Warner. Chuck Berger, of kiosk company DVDPlay, said the studios are trying to block a “tsunami” of technology, comparing recent studio actions to their resistance to the Web. “They’re not keeping titles out of the kiosks,” he said. | | Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | 7:45 pm
[vio2112]
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