(cue That Movie Trailer Guy to read blog post opening in his voice)
In a world with a writer’s strike poised to hit a big tipping point (Christmas season bound to bring new TVs but will there be anything to watch?) only ONE media company has the BALLS to step forward and say what every other company won’t even think:
WE HAVE TOO MANY CUSTOMERS.
That company?
BALLBUSTER
Oh wait, I mean,
Sure they recently raised their rates from $18/month to $25/month, but that only got rid of MOST of their customers.
Some refused to go.
Something had to be done.
:
[Blockbuster] hiked the prices for its Total Access mail order rental plan. The biggest change comes to the highest-tiered Total Access Premium plan, one which allows customers to have three movies out at a time and get unlimited in-store exchanges. That plan is going from $24.99 to a whopping $34.99 per month.
Ballsy move? You bet.
But is it ballsy enough?
Not for Blockbuster:
In addition, the Total Access Premium plan is no longer listed as an option on the company’s Total Access signup page.
If that doesn’t work, they’re going to move and get an unlisted number.
“People keep wanting us to send them movies, and then they want us to send them more” said Carl Icahn. “We keep trying to explain to them that we just want them to send their money and then take whatever the [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] we give them in return.”
Icahn also outlined some changes customers can expect to see in the coming months.
“It’s simple,” he said in an interview late Thursday, “VHS. I don’t know why no one else has thought of this before. We’ve got millions of these bloody tapes sitting in a warehouse and no one is using them. So starting in Q108 we’ll be sending out VHS tapes instead of DVDs.”
(Ok, sure, technically I just started making stuff up at the end there, but the two blockquotes are 100% accurate.)