Video City aka Front Row Seat
So I was looking for movie to (re)watch in my collection. I ran across one that made me angry. Not because of the content of the movie, it is a childrens’ film, but because I bought it from Video City.
We have to go back a few years – but I can keep a grudge so a few years is nothing. I recall standing at the checkout counter at my locally owned… well it used to be locally owned before it was bought by some company out of state… video store. I was standing there wondering why they were telling me that a movie that I don’t remember renting was overdue. It wasn’t that the clerk was telling me the movie was overdue, it was the collection notice that I received for the price of the movie that caught my attention. That’s right, the video rental place I had been going to since it opened its doors was telling me that I owed them for a movie.
It’s not that I wasn’t late returning movies from time to time – this was an out and out “pay us for the movie”.
As I questioned the “manager” about the movie I was told that I had rented it five months before. Five months and countless trips to the video store in between. Countless trips where no one asked, “do you still have this movie? Our records show it is still out.” Well maybe not countless, but we rented movies at least once a month. So somewhere around five opportunities to remind me that we had a tape out. And five months for that tape to find its way out of my house – we searched high and low for the movie, did find out that we had indeed rented it (we had forgotten), but could not find the movie.
They sent me another collection notice and placed a “bad mark” on my credit report (big deal). So I sent them a check along with my membership card cut in half. If they couldn’t bother to tell me when I was there – on multiple occasions – that I had an outstanding movie then I was done using them as a movie rental establishment.
Yes we found the movie later – no I didn’t take it back and no I haven’t been back to rent any more movies from them.
We are quite happy with Netflix now thank you.
