Blockbuster Movie + Games New Rental Policy

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filanime03

CAGiversary!
Blockbuster has finally done something right. Now if you have a monthly plan on their movies you can now rent games with it. Here is the breakdown

By Mail 1 Disc 2 Disc 3 Disc
Movie + Games 8.99 13.99 16.99

Total Access 11.99 16.99 19.99
Movies + Games
5 + instore exchanges

Here are the links:
50% off first month
2 week free trial

This deal is a lot better than what Gamefly is offering in which
1 game for 15.99
2 game for 22.95
 
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I don't get why it takes some companies so long with games. Netflix has a 1 day turn around, usually, with movies. Blockbuster and Gamefly have up to a 5 day turn around? wtf?

If Netflix started carrying games.. the competition would be completely destroyed.
 
[quote name='Scorch']I don't get why it takes some companies so long with games. Netflix has a 1 day turn around, usually, with movies. Blockbuster and Gamefly have up to a 5 day turn around? wtf?

If Netflix started carrying games.. the competition would be completely destroyed.[/QUOTE]

For sure. I really wish they would.

So I'm already noticing the problem Blockbuster online had when I first tried it 2 years ago is still a problem. 4 games at the top of my que are all listed as "available" but they go and ship me items 8 and 11 on my que. Whats the point of having a top of the que when they do that?

Also, just a heads up, even though some are saying they are having problems with shipping already; when I did a free trial before, I found that my dvds were arriving rather quick, soon as I became a paid subscriber the shipping time more than doubled over night. I mean in a 2 week trial I got like 6 or 7 dvds, then I only managed to get 3 dvds the whole next month when I was paying for it. (this was back when netflix didn't even have streaming) Canceled before a 2nd payment.
 
Anyone know how much Blockbuster charges for an in-store game rental? I want to play a game with a friend online that he already owns but I don't want to buy it, but if they're charging like $8 for five days, that's already like 20% of the cost of the game we're looking at.
 
[quote name='Scorch']I don't get why it takes some companies so long with games. Netflix has a 1 day turn around, usually, with movies. Blockbuster and Gamefly have up to a 5 day turn around? wtf?[/quote]

Well, I'm too certain about Blockbuster's situation, but the difference between Netflix and GameFly is distribution centers. Netflix has dozens of them...GameFly has four. Netflix has more centers in certain states than GF has all together.
 
let's not forget that games will naturally have a slower turnaround than movies, too. a dvd takes at most 3 or 4 hours to get through, whereas people could theoretically be holding onto games for weeks to play them to completion
 
[quote name='smoger']let's not forget that games will naturally have a slower turnaround than movies, too. a dvd takes at most 3 or 4 hours to get through, whereas people could theoretically be holding onto games for weeks to play them to completion[/QUOTE]

That accounts for availability, not shipping turnaround. Shipping turn around is more closely related to the above poster - lack of distribution centers. There's a Netflix center in my city, the closest BB distro center is 400+ miles away.
 
nice move by blockbuster. was about to cancel my sub for netflix or w/e, but the games thing definitely persuaded me to keep it going for a bit longer at least.

local BB is just up the block and is an active/up-to date branch, so if anything i can always swap a blu-ray/dvd/game if i need it right away w/ unlimited in-store exchange.

if they somehow add a decent streaming service... or went back to the 3 in-store/3 mail (6 at a time) out policy a long time back, BB would be pimp in my book.
 
Has anyone had any problems with the games disappearing or the mail man stealing them? I had an issue where I used to live with Gamefly where I think either someone working for the PO or someone walking by would steal a game every once in a while. Gamefly didn't hold me accountable for it but they told me they had to cancel my account. It sucked but is understandable. I don't want the same thing to happen with Blockbuster and have them charge me 60 bucks a game.

Also does anyone know why Blockbuster wouldn't have a game available to add to queue? My girlfriend wants to play the newest Final Fantasy game but it isn't even available to rent, only to purchase. I can add new releases from last week but that game just doesn't show up as being available at all.
 
[quote name='prence']Has anyone had any problems with the games disappearing or the mail man stealing them? I had an issue where I used to live with Gamefly where I think either someone working for the PO or someone walking by would steal a game every once in a while. Gamefly didn't hold me accountable for it but they told me they had to cancel my account. It sucked but is understandable. I don't want the same thing to happen with Blockbuster and have them charge me 60 bucks a game.

Also does anyone know why Blockbuster wouldn't have a game available to add to queue? My girlfriend wants to play the newest Final Fantasy game but it isn't even available to rent, only to purchase. I can add new releases from last week but that game just doesn't show up as being available at all.[/QUOTE]

It's only older releases, I don't think you are adding a game that came out last week. Only "saving" it to your queue.
 
[quote name='Jimbo Slice']It's only older releases, I don't think you are adding a game that came out last week. Only "saving" it to your queue.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that is what I meant, sorry for the poor phrasing. Final Fantasy XIII came out for 360 in March of this year so I can't think of why they wouldn't have it other than poor stocking/planning.
 
[quote name='Indiana Jones']Anyone know how much Blockbuster charges for an in-store game rental? I want to play a game with a friend online that he already owns but I don't want to buy it, but if they're charging like $8 for five days, that's already like 20% of the cost of the game we're looking at.[/QUOTE]

Yes, it is something like $8 for 5 days.
 
[quote name='munkyballz']nice move by blockbuster. was about to cancel my sub for netflix or w/e, but the games thing definitely persuaded me to keep it going for a bit longer at least.

local BB is just up the block and is an active/up-to date branch, so if anything i can always swap a blu-ray/dvd/game if i need it right away w/ unlimited in-store exchange.

if they somehow add a decent streaming service... or went back to the 3 in-store/3 mail (6 at a time) out policy a long time back, BB would be pimp in my book.[/QUOTE]

I think blockbuster messed this one up. You cannot go to a store and exchange your movie or game for a game rental. Because stores have their own game rental subscription called GAMEPASS.

This is where they screwed up. Total access members should be able to exchange any disc they have for any movie or game that the stores have. If you exchange for a game in store you only get a discount from $9 to $5. This blows a big hard one. They should at least consider if someone is exchanging a game for a game, then it should be possible. This should be a compromise at least.

It does not make sense that they dont allow games to be exchanged in store. This will not do. A warning to all those who is even considering blockbuster. We all know why we subscribe to blockbuster, its the in store exchange, plus no extra charge for blu ray and just a little cheaper than netflix.

But if you cant do in store exchanges for games might as well go with gamefly. I am sure they are more equipped to handle gamers instead of inept blockbuster mail service. MY TWO CENTS
 
Signed up for the month trial...cannot believe how terrible their game selection is. New release means it should be available in the present, I shouldn't have to wait until october to rent the last transformers game which came out in june or july....
 
[quote name='FlyingMonkey9']Signed up for the month trial...cannot believe how terrible their game selection is. New release means it should be available in the present, I shouldn't have to wait until october to rent the last transformers game which came out in june or july....[/QUOTE]

Then don't rent from them. This thread has covered that very concept many, many times.
 
[quote name='risktakr']I think blockbuster messed this one up. You cannot go to a store and exchange your movie or game for a game rental. Because stores have their own game rental subscription called GAMEPASS.[/QUOTE]

You need to go back and re-read about Total Access on blockbuster's site. You CAN exchange movies in stores with TOTAL ACCESS. I'm talking about movies with your post, not games.
 
[quote name='DKYang']You need to go back and re-read about Total Access on blockbuster's site. You CAN exchange movies in stores with TOTAL ACCESS. I'm talking about movies with your post, not games.[/QUOTE]

Total Access only allows you to trade in an online rental for a free movie rental regardless if you are exchanging a movie or game. Even with total access you only get a discount on game rentals ($5 rental give or take), and unless you have the higher end version that rental will count against your online queue as well. This is what he was saying and it is 100% accurate. It is his opinion Blockbuster is missing a major opportunity by limiting it to only exchanging for movie rentals and not games. That is a matter of opinion, but I will agree that if they allowed for even 1 or 2 game exchanges a month it would help to encourage gamers to use Blockbuster instead of Gamefly.

So I'm confused what you are correcting... The only part that was worded weird is when he said something about exchanging games but I think it's obvious from the rest of his post he meant to say exchanging for games.
 
[quote name='Dark Lord Greg']thats annoying BB skipped over Army of Two 40th Day which was available all the way to my #8 movie[/QUOTE]

I had the same problem and ended up changing my queue setting to order instead of speed. They initially skipped over all the available games I had at the top of my queue to send me another movie much further down, so I made sure I switched it to order before returning that movie, and then they shipped a game to me. It took one extra day to arrive, but it was worth it since I really wanted to play Heavy Rain. I left the extra wait at the default of 24 hours as well in case that helps. If you already switched your queue to order over speed, then I have no idea why they didn't try shipping the game.
 
OMG all games are short wait to very long wait... I think CAG broke another system with just a few weeks in. Hopefully they see the huge demand and will fill more stock/more games?
 
[quote name='Velo214']OMG all games are short wait to very long wait... I think CAG broke another system with just a few weeks in. Hopefully they see the huge demand and will fill more stock/more games?[/QUOTE]
Don't know if it even matters anymore, Blockbuster is declaring bankruptcy next month.
 
[quote name='Velo214']OMG all games are short wait to very long wait... [/QUOTE]

This is suddenly my experience as well. When I signed up for the 2 week trial (2 out, no store exchange afterwards), almost all games were available. Today, only the more obscure games are available, with a lot of short to long waits. I will also say that I'm not too impressed with the time it takes them to ship out a disc when you have an available slot. Here's how it worked out:

8/16: Signup (deliberately on a Monday to avoid Sunday shipping delays)
8/17: Sent a disc (fair enough, Netflix gives you overnight to set your queue too)
8/19: Sent a second disc (i.e. available slot in my queue sat vacant for 48 additional hours, during the work week)
8/26: Brought a disc to store to return it, immediately received confirmation email
9 AM, 8/29: Vacant slot in my queue is still sitting, unused, even though there are games that are listed as available in my queue (and I have speed, not order, selected)

Overall, I'm guessing that games may be running a different distribution infrastructure, and that this infrastructure may be overwhelmed. (I.e. CAG's may have killed it.) I'm not going to cancel yet - if I can get 3-4 extended rentals per month, that's worth the $14. However, if turnaround is going to be this bad, I'm going to really need to remove all but the top priorities from my queue to make sure that I don't have a slot occupied for a week by a game I'm not that excited about.

Question for the more experienced: If you select "queue order" and the top item ends up as a "long wait", will your subscription bottleneck on that item indefinitely?
 
[quote name='BinaryTB']Don't know if it even matters anymore, Blockbuster is declaring bankruptcy next month.[/QUOTE]

Linky or is that your Associate's degree from Devry doing the talking?

I know they are in terrible shape but I thought they had around 1 year left based on what the CEO said during an interview on CNBC.
 
[quote name='filanime03']But the thing is if you sign up on total access membership you can exchange your online rental in store. Based on my knowledge in store blockbuster gets new release games in their store Friday.[/QUOTE]

I started to do this deal (was going to cancel Gamefly). However, to the best of my understanding, even if you have the total access membership, you are not allowed to trade in a game rental (online) for another game (in store) for free. You are only allowed to get a discounted rate (4.99) on new game rentals.
 
I was at BB looking for B1G1 games, and a guy talked me into trying the new online service. I had been thinking about it, so I bit. Went home, added one movie (date night, since netflix doesn't have it yet) and went through all their 360 games, adding about 20. Their selection was ok considering no new releases. Then I looked at DS games, and the selection was horrible. Not a single Pokemon game, for one thing. When I reviewed my queue, almost everything was on long wait. Looks like I will be getting Rock Band Metal Track Pack. Oh, boy. BB has a good thing going here but if they want to push the gaming angle, they have some work to do. I will likely cancel before trial is up.
 
Okay, I've tried this for a few weeks now. I've been a BB online subscriber for a LONG time and so I get the discounted rate ($20/mo) on the unlimited 3-at-a-time plan. I was looking forward to this new games bonus but in the last 3 weeks, I've only gotten 1 game - and that was probably because I signed up and added the game as soon as it was announced. That game (Nier) shipped within a couple of days. I didn't like it and returned it almost as soon as I got it and did not receive another game over the last 2 weeks. I have some newer and some older titles on my list....I have all the games at the top of my queue, followed by movies. I set it so I would wait the maximum amount of days to wait for an item to ship (5 days). The game on the top of my list was not available for a while, then it did show up as available.... and the next day they shipped me some crap movie from the middle of my queue - not the game I'd been waiting for, and not even any of the other games that were on my list, as available, and were much higher in the queue.

So at this point, I would NOT recommend getting BB online if you want to rent games. If you already had BB online, then it's still a nice add-on, even if it is inconsistent. Or if you have a BB store near you (that won't be closing in the near future) than the trade-in system is still worth it for the movies. But it's definitely not worth signing up for game rentals at this point. I hope it will improve (the movie rental was really terrible in the beginning also) but time will tell.

9/2 Edit: For the second time, they have shipped me a movie that is far down on my queue, ignoring 5 games that were above it and were listed as "available" (and are still listed as available). argh!
 
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[quote name='paulwekiva']I started to do this deal (was going to cancel Gamefly). However, to the best of my understanding, even if you have the total access membership, you are not allowed to trade in a game rental (online) for another game (in store) for free. You are only allowed to get a discounted rate (4.99) on new game rentals.[/QUOTE]

correct.
 
[quote name='imacjenn']Okay, I've tried this for a few weeks now. I've been a BB online subscriber for a LONG time and so I get the discounted rate ($20/mo) on the unlimited 3-at-a-time plan. I was looking forward to this new games bonus but in the last 3 weeks, I've only gotten 1 game - and that was probably because I signed up and added the game as soon as it was announced. That game (Nier) shipped within a couple of days. I didn't like it and returned it almost as soon as I got it and did not receive another game over the last 2 weeks. I have some newer and some older titles on my list....I have all the games at the top of my queue, followed by movies. I set it so I would wait the maximum amount of days to wait for an item to ship (5 days). The game on the top of my list was not available for a while, then it did show up as available.... and the next day they shipped me some crap movie from the middle of my queue - not the game I'd been waiting for, and not even any of the other games that were on my list, as available, and were much higher in the queue.

So at this point, I would NOT recommend getting BB online if you want to rent games. If you already had BB online, then it's still a nice add-on, even if it is inconsistent. Or if you have a BB store near you (that won't be closing in the near future) than the trade-in system is still worth it for the movies. But it's definitely not worth signing up for game rentals at this point. I hope it will improve (the movie rental was really terrible in the beginning also) but time will tell.[/QUOTE]

my girlfriend has had a completely different experience with it. i wonder why they're so inconsistent. in the 2 weeks or so since they launched it she's gotten 2 movies and 2 games(2 at a time). the first game she kept for about 4 days and we've had the second game for at least 5 at this point
 
Question for those who get coupons on their accounts. If I were elibible for these, where exactly would I find them? Somewhere in the "My account" screen, I presume, but where exactly, what subheading? Thanks!
 
[quote name='imacjenn']The game on the top of my list was not available for a while, then it did show up as available.... and the next day they shipped me some crap movie from the middle of my queue - not the game I'd been waiting for, and not even any of the other games that were on my list, as available, and were much higher in the queue.[/QUOTE]

I've had a vacant disc slot sit on my queue from Thursday (in-store return) through the present (Wednesday noon, and counting), and it appears that they simply don't want to ship me more games. I have the "speed" option selected, and there has been at least one game on my queue listed as "available" each and every day, so there's really no excuse for them not to have shipped something by now.

I have since pruned some stuff out of the queue simply because I don't want to have a slot occupied for a week or more by a game I wasn't that interested in playing.
 
Yeah, this service blows. I just cacelled my trial and sent my game/blu-ray(s) back. The price was right, but their inventory sucks ass. I'll stick with Netflix
 
I signed up for the two out at a time and got my first game after 3 days. Looks brand new. Second game is in and out of processing despite being available
 
I signed up last Monday or so and it definitely isn't worth it. I had 3 games ship to me on Tuesday (all old titles) from a town that is literally 25 minutes away from me. I got 1 of them on Friday and 1 of them on Saturday. Usually when a friend of mine sends me stuff from that town it arrives the next day (yes, I realize this is stamped mail versus 5th class delivery or whatever absurd method Blockbuster uses but this is still ridiculous.)

Then of course the 1 game I really wanted to check out of the 3 I ordered disappears. I write them an e-mail asking if they can track it or send out another one and I get a sweet broken English response:

Thank you for contacting Blockbuster Customer Care. I am sorry that you have not received the "BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams [Xbox 360]". Currently, we do not have enough information to check where is exactly this rental.
Click to expand...

Oh well. I guess this is what free trials are really for. I'm not even going to try and get anything in the final 3 weeks of my deal since it isn't worth getting psyched up to play a game and then having it disappear or arrive a week later.
 
[quote name='Lyricsborn']Sea of Dreams?[/QUOTE]

"Initially, media reports suggested that the subtitle, "Sea Of Dreams", would accompany the second entry in the series. However, this subtitle was supposedly dropped,[12] before 2K withdrew the statement, stating that the "Sea Of Dreams" subtitle would still be part of the full title.[13] However, a later statement from 2K spokesman Charlie Sinhaseni clarified that the "Sea Of Dreams" title was for the trailer, and not for the game itself."

*shrug* In any case it was the only game I wanted to play without buying. Now I'm stuck with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and Watchmen: The End is Nigh. I think I waited too long to return either of them and now I won't get Gears of War 2 for the Labor Day 25XP weekend. h8 u blockbuster.
 
Not to jinx myself here, but so far I've had games arrive a day earlier than expected (and the town I'm in seems to have a seriously over stretched mail service which adds a day onto most shipping) and ship within a day of my returning them to a store. (which for all of a 7 minute drive to the store is well worth it)
 
Err, guys and gals, all of my games in the queue are dropped out! What the hell happened? This is so not cool! Also, if you got to the game section, none of the games are available...
 
[quote name='Serpentor']Err, guys and gals, all of my games in the queue are dropped out! What the hell happened? This is so not cool! Also, if you got to the game section, none of the games are available...[/QUOTE]

It was good while it lasted! Well.........yeah.........
 
It's possible that they are...........restocking.......or something. But my account renews on sept 12th, if they don't have games back up before them, CANCELED.
 
crazy. this happened to me too obviously. i got an email from blockbuster.com that just said "to me." what a short lived experiment thats lame. mine ends the 12th too, i was going to switch to the 2 a month at $5, but the service has been so terrible theres no way.
 
You'd think that they would have a message on their website kind of...EXPLAINING....why all games are taken out of your queue and no longer able to be added. " Hey we are ______ " Something.
 
my single at home game doesnt show up either, just says i have 1 at home. is everyone else showing this? are accounts being cancelled?
 
I emailed customer service. I'm not amused, if they are going to take all the games out of your queue, they should at least give you a message on then website explaining why instead of just doing it.
 
[quote name='bajingo']my single at home game doesnt show up either, just says i have 1 at home. is everyone else showing this? are accounts being cancelled?[/QUOTE]

same here it says I have 1 Store DVD at home.
I was starting to like this service too, I was getting games really fast but they did file for bankruptcy so I had a feeling something like this was going to happen :bomb:
 
Blockbuster's service is absolute garbage. I just canceled it because every single game in my queue was a 2-8 week wait. What a waste of money. I'm so happy I went back to Gamefly and Netflix. It may cost more but at least I get what I want.
 
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