Renting dvds..

Burnt Toast

I walked into my local dvd shop a few months ago to bring back a dvd that was rented by someone in my family. A friend of mine had just started working there and he asked me if i knew how much had been paid off in late rental fee's since we opened the account years and years ago.. i hadn't a clue. He told me it was nearly 6 thousand euro..

It got me thinking.. I work for a company that hires out equipment worth thousands of euro for 30 or 40 euro a week, if you're a day over, it's usually let slide. When you rent a dvd, you're paying nearly a quarter of what you can buy the same DVD for.. just to keep it for one night.

Do these shops pay extra for movies, to be allowed rent them? Anyone else think its a bit ridiculous?

bill_ashmount

Burnt Toast wrote: »

A friend of mine had just started working there and he asked me if i knew how much had been paid off in late rental fee's since we opened the account years and years ago.. i hadn't a clue. He told me it was nearly 6 thousand euro..

I assume that's the whole shops late rental fees and not just yours?

Burnt Toast

No, that's the thing.. its the late fee's paid by my family since we opened the account, a long long time ago.

He say's that wasn't the worst either, some people were as high as 8 grand in late fee's.

I'll admit, my family are a bit crap when it comes to bringing dvds back

bill_ashmount

Burnt Toast wrote: »

No, that's the thing.. its the late fee's paid by my family since we opened the account, a long long time ago.

He say's that wasn't the worst either, some people were as high as 8 grand in late fee's.

I'll admit, my family are a bit crap when it comes to bringing dvds back

Wow :eek:

eve

DVD rental shops pay a premium on the disks they get to rent to people. That's why many disks will have 'Rental Copy' or 'Not for Rental' printed on them. Some even have a short advert saying 'If you rented this disk please call such a number'. The idea being that they shouldn't be able to recoup the cost of the disk after renting it to just 4 or 5 customers and the studio/distributor will earn more money from a rental disk than a home use disk because of the number of people who could potentially rent the disk.

And 6k is high. Think of all the dvd's you could have bought with that. Or even the huge TV you could be watching them on

MisterAnarchy

I have rented about 1000 DVD's over the last 3-4 years.
Havent rented one in a shop,all online.
I vowed never to step foot inside Xtravision again after they fleeced me for years.
No late fees and with all the free trials around it has cost me practically nothing.

Tusky

Burnt Toast wrote: »

I walked into my local dvd shop a few months ago to bring back a dvd that was rented by someone in my family. A friend of mine had just started working there and he asked me if i knew how much had been paid off in late rental fee's since we opened the account years and years ago.. i hadn't a clue. He told me it was nearly 6 thousand euro..

It got me thinking.. I work for a company that hires out equipment worth thousands of euro for 30 or 40 euro a week, if you're a day over, it's usually let slide. When you rent a dvd, you're paying nearly a quarter of what you can buy the same DVD for.. just to keep it for one night.

Do these shops pay extra for movies, to be allowed rent them? Anyone else think its a bit ridiculous?

Average price per night is around 5 euro. If your bill was 6000 euro that means there was roughly 1200 dvds not brought back on time...! Only yourself to blame.

PullMyFinger!

6 thousand euros?!

Im going to go out on a limb here and say you're a troll

Nolanger

Why bother renting when you can buy?
Either new in the shops or ex-rental from the libraries.
Even the game shops sell DVDs now - buy 2 get the cheaper free.
Then you can either trade in for more DVDs or build up a collection.
Either way it sure beats renting.

joe316

i assume it is xtravision that the op is talking about and if it is, the system wouldnt show how much you've paid in late fees, just your total amount you've paid in rentals so far, including initial fee and late fines.

Now that was a few years but there was no capacity to record late fines specifically, it wasnt needed. Maybe its changed now but considering the company i've mentioned i doubt.

And its not unusual for some people to pay that much, in my old place. It was only open about 4 years and one guy had paid over 7 grand just in rentals to the place.

L31mr0d

wait a minute? Are you saying people still rent movies in this day and age? I thought chartbusters only stayed open because of its tanning beds and internet access.

You learn something new every day. I can't even remember the last time I even set foot inside a movie rental place.

mikemac

I remember Xtravision offered an amnesty to people with fines outstanding on their account.
All they had to do was to start renting and using the account again and the debt would be written off.
It made sense as a lot of people would not bother using xtravision again as they didn't want to pay the fines.

OP, seriously 6k in fines for your family? Have ye money to burn? :eek:

Vic Vinegar

Yeah, fcuk renting! i have nearly 150 dvds in my collection but haven't payed more that €10 for any of them (i have new releases as well like 300 and Die Hard 4.0 to name a few) for the price of renting a movie twice you can own it instead. Makes sense in my book!

kaimera

renting dvds?

thats so quaint

Burnt Toast

To the person who said Xtravision doesn't record just late fee's, just what you've paid overall.. that could very well be the case, im only going on what my mate told me, he made it sound like it was late fee's alone.

To anyone asking "who rents dvds?", well that's half the point i made.. why are people renting a dvd for aprox a quarter of the price they could buy the dvd for?

How do they get off charging so much? Do they really pay THAT much for rental copies?

Ps, my family's Xtravision account is about 12 or 13 years old.

Jay P

moviestar.ie. Need I say more? Only no late fees. Pure and simple.

TerrorFirmer

I used to occasionally rent a movie from the cheap section - but now they've only gone and jacked up the price of old movies to 4 euro - for a week! Wow, I'm paying about twice as much, but I get to watch it 7 times, great trade off! :rolleyes:

No more.

Garda_boss

Yeah, fcuk renting! i have nearly 150 dvds in my collection but haven't payed more that €10 for any of them (i have new releases as well like 300 and Die Hard 4.0 to name a few) for the price of renting a movie twice you can own it instead. Makes sense in my book!

If you rented you would have saved yourself a fortune. Why do you need to own the film? How many times can you watch the same films over?

Garda_boss

Why did you pay the fees. Maybe 1 in 7 times I might be fined for a film being late but I never paid it. Just say you aren't paying it today and they will leave it. If they stop your account just tell them you will go elsewhere and they usually clear the slate.

Vic Vinegar

Garda_boss wrote: »

If you rented you would have saved yourself a fortune. Why do you need to own the film? How many times can you watch the same films over?

I buy films that I really like and therefore will watch a few times.... Durr! it's not rocket science man

(It's what film fans generally do!)

projectmayhem

Jay P wrote: »

moviestar.ie. Need I say more? Only no late fees. Pure and simple.

how much did you get for that?

frank bauer

On a customers account all the rental and fines are counted as one. And here's an interesting fact-they don't give a damn about fines anymore. Have you noticed that if you take 2 or more rentals that they tend to be more lenient about fines. I've worked for 'em for a while and apparently there's no more money in fines. Which sucks, 'cos if you ask any staff member they'd rather get a fine off you than sell you a phone 'cos that's what head office wants!