Blockbuster, you make it so easy for me to hate you

10Apr09

Once again Blockbuster has silently changed their terms of service and removed the single greatest advantage they had over Netflix:

If you exchange your online rental for a free in-store movie rental at a participating store, that store rental will count towards the number of rentals you are allowed out for your online Total Access plan.

Thanks for at least notifying me of this bullshit, guys. I had to dig around in your unlinked-to FAQ only after realizing after a week that my next disc hadn’t shipped.

Apparently this is all part of Blockbuster’s attempt to drop customers. Seriously. CEO Jim Keyes says he wants to “prune the tree” of its least profitable consumers, so only suckers remain. Well, Mission Accomplished.

The best part about all this is that behind the scenes, apparently the driving force behind the “piss on your most loyal customers” strategy is billionaire jackass, Carl Icahn:

Blockbuster’s online program had been a source of contention within the company. Former CEO and chairman John Antioco, who led the company for a decade, saw online movie rentals as the future of the industry. Some investors and board members, led by Carl Icahn, believed management was spending too much money too fast in the online business while neglecting the core source of their income: Retail stores.

You can read lots more about Blockbuster’s sordid history online here.