Things that have impressed me recently: Blockbuster Video

[simont]

After a somewhat hectic first week of holiday, today I finally got round to doing the thing I usually do when I take time off work, which is to pop down to the local Blockbuster and rent all the recent films that I was too disorganised to see in the cinema.

So I browsed around the shelves, picked up some DVDs, took them to the counter, looked in my wallet for my Blockbuster card, and to my great embarrassment it wasn't there. Moreover, I had not the faintest idea where else it might have been – it never comes out of my wallet except in Blockbuster stores, so unless it fell out of its own accord somehow I was at a loss.

The woman at the counter was unfazed. She asked me for a credit card for ID, which I handed over, and within about ten seconds was able to tell me that I'd accidentally left my card in the store the last time I'd been in (September), and that they'd destroyed it.

I was reasonably impressed by the fact that they routinely kept notes on that sort of thing and could retrieve them that efficiently (and also somewhat relieved that I wasn't going to have to go hunting round dark corners of my house and car desperately trying to work out where the errant card could have got to). But ‘reasonably impressed’ gave way to ‘gobsmacked’ when she then – pretty much as part of the same motion – promptly reached under the counter and handed me a shiny new card with my name on it and everything.

I asked whether they'd been keeping that card ready to give to me since they knew I'd lost my previous one, or whether she'd just printed it on the spot on no notice in under ten seconds. She said the latter. In retrospect, I'm not sure which would have impressed me more: the former would have involved very shiny corporate procedures, while the latter involves very shiny technology. Either is good.

(The new card is prettier and less flimsy than the old one, too. Bonus :-)

Comments

[lnr]

Um, printing a new card and then keeping it handy to give to you would be silly when they could have just kept the old one instead of destroying it.

Last I went in and said I didn't have my card it turned out to be over 2 years since I'd last used them, so I had to get a new account :-) And I've since switched to lovefilm.com instead, and get them in the post.

[simont]

they could have just kept the old one instead of destroying it

Good point. Perhaps I'm not fully awake :-)

I've since switched to lovefilm.com instead, and get them in the post

Ha. I might try that once I move to a house in which the letterbox is wide enough for postmen to fit DVD cases through. At the moment, that would be particularly inconvenient for me!

(Also, I like the immediateness of Blockbuster: I don't have to organise myself days in advance to decide what I want to watch, I can just make an impromptu twenty-minute walk and be sitting in front of the goggle box minutes after returning. It even gets me exercise :-)

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Oh, lovefilm don't send DVDs in normal DVD boxes - you'd have to have a very thin letterbox indeed not to fit the lovefilm packages!

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Netflix here do a nice thing where DVDs are either with you or in the post. So, if you keep a good number in your queue, then if you are flexible about what sort of film you're in the mood in, you always have a couple from them around the house. (They also don't use proper DVD cases.)

[lnr]

DVD cases> they don't use full size ones. The packages are typically about 2mm thick, maybe 4 at a push if they send two at once.

Organising> I just have a big bunch of stuff listed and watch whatever turns up, but I can see this is a rather different approach :)

Can probably rustle up a free trial for you if you do decide you're interested.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

Presumably the magic card-replacement procedure works at any Blockbuster, therefore since they couldn't know which one Simon would use next, it's simpler to destroy+recreate than synchronise the "card collected" event between diverse branches.