Blaming Blockbuster for Everything

Have you seen Soylent Green yet? 1973. Charlton Heston. Women are furniture. Sort of a Mad Max meets I Sing The Body Electric. Anyway, my friend and I are an hour and twenty minutes into this, one of my final rentals from Blockbuster Online. I've cancelled my membership and I have two movies left to view and return. We've got seventeen minutes left to go. Charlton Heston is running through a Mad Human Disease factory, a shot and bloodied leg that produced a limp in previous scenes does not stop him from traversing catwalks and laddders while evading bad guys in these scenes. He's on the verge of discovering one of mankind's ugliest inventions, proof required to save the world from the evil Soylent Corporation. Alarms blare while dead-body dump trucks squeal around town in search of the Man Who Will Expose Their Dirty Deeds, thanks to a last minute death bed confession from Edward G Robinson in his 101st and final movie appearance, when all of a sudden - POOF!!!!

My TV screen goes black with a single horizontal line of video running across the middle. We can still hear the sirens and excitement, but can't see it!

If I were paranoid, I could blame Blockbuster for this, as I am clearly cursed. (I have yet to mention that of the two movies that I rented with the TWO FREE IN-STORE COUPONS, one stopped playing after 44 minutes on my computer - just reverted to permanent pause - and the other arrived from Netflix the next day.) Between Blockbuster and Netflix...if the answer were a snake, it would have bitten me. Many times. And I would have died a slow torturous death. And then the Soylent Corporation would have picked me up and chopped me up into tiny flat green squares.

Who Shares Your Taste In Music?

Well apparently, me & Tommy Lee could hang out on a long road trip with only one CD player in the car. If you wanna take a quiz to see who shares your taste in music click on the link below

Tommy Lee Shares Your Taste in Music

See his whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Which Musician (or Group) Shares Your Taste in Music?

Netflix 1400, Blockbuster 20

One of these days I shall shut up about Blockbuster, but my FREE online membership has not yet ended.

Last Thursday I received an email from them telling me that my next movie was on its way. Today (4 days later) I get a clear plastic bag from the United States Postal Service containing what remained of the envelope that once contained said next movie. My initial thoughts were "F(*&K;!, I'm trying to get a FREE month here and now I'm gonna have to buy a lost movie! And somehow this is going to get all tied up in the canceling of my membership (which must occur very soon as my FREE month ends this week) and while trying to resolve this issue, I will end up paying for a 2nd month."
So $24.99 for the movie and $17.99 for the 2nd month equals $42.98 for 1 free month of movies, which would be about what it would cost to go into the damn store and rent them in person.

Well, oddly enough Blockbuster is very forgiving when this occurs and with a couple of clicks, they are allegedly going to send it to me again at no charge. However, if I make a habit of it, they say, they will be forced to cancel my membership.

Which I may be forced to do if they decide to charge me for a 2nd month after I've tried to cancel it on my own.

Netflix 1200, Blockbuster 14, Me 1001

After pressing some button on Blockbuster's website to "expedite" my DVD turnaround from 13 days to something reasonable (because apparently, they won't serve you unless you Please Ring The Bell), they send me another DVD so that I have THREE out at a time as per their agreement. Idiots. But the reason they have made it onto the scoreboard is because I mailed back 2 DVDs on Monday and they claimed to receive them on Tuesday. Of course they are back to the TWO out at a time policy, but the mere fact that they admit receiving their mail when they actually receive it garnered a few crumbs.

And I have allegedly broken 1000 hits on my Nanny Goats blog, so points for me too!

Netflix 902, Blockbuster 0

VS.

So one day after I sent my little note to Blockbuster (see yesterday's post), I get the following response:

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for contacting BLOCKBUSTER Online Customer Service.

Rental History
Title Shipped Date Received
Boys on the Side (1995) 09/29/2005 10/14/2005

Your Friends at BLOCKBUSTER Online

Want an answer faster? You can always visit the FAQ section on the website located under the "Customer Service" link.

I'm not sure what they are trying to tell me, unless they actually expect me to believe it took 11 days for them to receive the DVD. Let's see... It's going from Los Angeles to a city about 30 miles away (Arcadia), so...yeah....that would be Hurricane Katrina's fault.

Anyway about 11 minutes after that, I get another email from them:

Re: Slow DVD turnaround
Reference Number: 000013-009410
Hello: Margaret

Recently you submitted an e-mail and received a response from a BLOCKBUSTER Online Customer Service Representative. We hope you'll take a minute and complete this short survey, which will help us continue to improve our customer service.

Click Here
--------------------
Your Friends at BLOCKBUSTER Online

The survey asked me 5 questions all of which wanted to know how the employee who handled my inquiry performed.

What employee?!

I rated the "employee" a POOR on everything except his grammar, which I rated excellent. Because the form letter slash canned response that the employee chose to send me by clicking a button was written in grammatically correct English.

About two hours after that, I received another email from them saying that the 3rd DVD was on its way.

{SIGH!!!!}

Netflix 621, Blockbuster 0

I decided to try Blockbuster Online, partly to compare it to Netflix and partly to get free extra movies for a month. I assumed I'd be inundated with far too many DVD to keep up with. Well, I've been a member for 15 days and today I received DVDs 5 and 6. That may seem reasonable to you at first, but when I say that no DVD from them remained in my possession for more than 24 hours, one should "Tsk" at their abysmal performance. In light of my own humble opinion on the matter, I sent the following comment/question/whatever using their "Contact Us" online form.

QUESTION SUBMITTED:


I returned Boys On The Side over 10 days ago, yet it still appears on my queue as if you have not received it. Why the slow turnaround and why should I have to go to your "Problem with a DVD" section that addresses this very issue and click on a button to "expedite" my receiving the next DVD? This is the 2nd time I've submitted an issue like this and YES I have put over 30 movies in the queue and YES they are listed as "Available Now" and if a company's best behavior occurs during their promotional period, why would I continue as a permanent member knowing this is the best it gets? You are so not wooing me away from Netflix with this kind of service.


If a real human being even reads this, which judging by their last response, one doesn't, but if one does, he or she may laugh or else drop my free membership like a hot handful of stuff that is suddenly recognized as a pile of intestines.

The Best TV Show That's Not On TV

Wonder Falls. Have you seen it? Have you even heard of it? I didn't and I don't even know how it got onto my Netflix Queue. But it did! And how refreshing! This is Arrested Development meets Joan of Arc meets Dead Like Me. It's just plain awesome and it was just on TV last year and only lasted one season, undoubtedly because they only issue the Nielson boxes to the morons in this country. It's the same reason Arrested Development has to beg and fight to stay on the air. These shows are too smart and/or complex for the likes of fans of shows such as Who Wants to Marry Their Big Brother? and Billy Joe Bob's Funny Fart Half Hour.

We could protest and cry and write letters (grammatically correct, probably) to those satanic hedonistic TV execs whose blithe response would be somewhere around: "Dark humor? Sardonic wit? Irony? Not interested. But if you could dumb it down and replace that fancy humor with a lot of jokes everybody has heard before hundreds of times, well, that's what our audience likes. Gives a sense of familiarity. People like predictability. They know what they are getting. They know what to expect. No surprises. In fact, just copy something you saw from the latest popular movie, they'll love that. If they get it. But if you give 'em something new, they don't know what to do with it. They don't know how they feel about it. Oh sure, they think they get tired of a show, so we give 'em a new one. Just like the old one, but a different name, different cast. But the same stories, same siutations. And they like it because they know this story. They've seen it before. They liked it before, so they figure they'll like it again. And it's okay to like it because it's not the same old show they were watching before. This is a brand new show. And they didn't have to think too much about whether or not they liked it. People don't want to think. They want to be entertained. You get the idea? Oh, and get some hot chicks in inappropriately tight skirts and high heels to wear around their sitcom apartment. And throw in a bumbling husband, you gotcherself a pilot, my friend."

Another Published Story

This time, it's personal. No, really. It's a non-fiction essay. And it's in the new issue of Wild Violet Magazine. Go here to read it.