After being a member since opening their online doors I have decided to kick blockbuster online to the curb. The reasons have been building since I joined. I have summarized a few below. If you have your own thoughts about Blockbuster feel free to share them.

Abandoning Early Adopters

The initial pricing was simple and cheap, it got me in the door. After a year the prices went up, I was surprised to see they recognized me as an early adopter and gave a 30% discount plus without changing my current features. Then after the second year they forgot all about me, back to regular pricing and missing features got replaced with non-enticing features. Looks like no more benefits for us early birds.

Not Progressive Enough

Blockbuster still leverages its brick and mortar store by letting you exchange movies on the fly without the shipping. Which is great, don’t get me wrong but they don’t have to rely on it exclusively. A few people at work have Netflix and if they want to watch a movie at lunch it is just two clicks away. Blockbuster has not even mentioned a feature like this.

Clunky Web site

Recently they released a new version of their site. I tested it before they made it public and I commented on a few things, only one of which was fixed. I can now use the site in Safari. The other points have been addressed by their staff but never fixed. Really heavy pages, slow loading times, movies showing up multiple times on the listing pages. It has been almost a year without improvement.

Movies Go Unwatched

I use to check out movies and have plenty of time in the day to watch them, now a days my time has been slipping away. My major time killers are of course the wedding, my last class (graduation in May), Grad School coming up, buying a house, writing a book and my freelance work. Movies are the last think on my list.

Conclusion

I may start my movie renting adventure back up again in a few months but I will definitely be doing some shopping around before I decide to go back to Blockbuster. Their Web 1.0 thinking with a fake 2.0ish look is not fooling me anymore. Don’t take it personal Blockbuster, you should start listening to your customers.