(AP Photo/Ron Heflin)
By Sandra M. Jones | Blockbuster Inc. quietly unveiled a new rental policy on March 1 that essentially brings back late fees.
Now customers pay $5 to rent a video for five days, instead of seven. After that, a fee of $1 a day is charged for up to 10 days when an auto-sell feature kicks in and the movie is automatically sold to the customer.
Blockbuster had gotten rid of late fees to compete with mail-order video rental firm Netflix Inc.
The Dallas-based video rental firm made the new rules “to be consistent with the industry,” said company spokeswoman Michelle Metzger. She said the dollar-a-day charge is not a late fee but an “additional daily fee,” akin to keeping a rental car for longer than planned.
Coinstar Inc.’s RedBox, a DVD vending machine firm that like Netflix has been cutting into Blockbuster’s market share, charges $1 a day for video rentals.
Blockbuster said last week it lost $435 million in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 3 as sales at stores open at least a year fell 15 percent. The company closed hundreds of stores in 2009 as it refocused on kiosks and a mail-order rental business.
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It is good to read that the customers would pay $5 to rent a video for five days, instead of seven. But the main question is that how long the Blockbuster would continue in the business by showing negative results.