Surprise Visitors in the At Home Section of Your Queue

Hey, remember that DVD you returned to the Blockbuster store two weeks ago? You almost forgot you watched it, but guess what. It just popped up in the At Home section of your queue.

Surprisingly, DVDs returned days or weeks ago are mysteriously appearing in Blockbuster subscriber's queues, sometimes as multiple copies of the same title. This is most likely due to massive system problems at Blockbuster. If this happens to you, you will probably have to call Blockbuster at (866) 692-2789, sit on hold for half an hour listening to awful music while getting excited every couple of minutes when hear a pause and mistakenly think someone is about to help you.

If you have an abundance of time to wait for someone to speak with you, you may eventually get to ask a customer service representative to remove the surprise DVDs from your queue. Note: If you try to fix this problem via email, you may have to wait for a few days or maybe more than a week.

Bad Blockbuster Service in July

According to a Blockbuster employee whose name will not be published here, the current problems with Blockbuster's systems are so bad the service issues could potentially extend into mid- to late-July. It is simply baffling that Blockbuster is not getting out in front of this and communicating with subscribers. It is almost like Blockbuster wants all of its online subscribers to cancel in anger.

What Blockbuster May Not Be Telling You About Account Problems

According to a verified Blockbuster employee, whose name will not be published for his/her protection, the problems you have been experiencing on your Blockbuster account are likely due to Blockbuster changing offices from McKinney, Texas to the Denver-area Dish campus in Douglas County, Colorado. This move has resulted in massive system problems, and Blockbuster is struggling to get these issues fixed.  From the looks of things, it seems like Blockbuster is doing more struggling than fixing.

You may have been able to get this information out of a Blockbuster employee yourself, but the fact that Blockbuster is not being proactive and up front about these problems is a sign they do not care much about their subscribers. All Blockbuster needs to do is send out an email to subscribers or post a simple notice about the system problems on the Blockbuster Web site. The message needs to appear only to account holders who have logged in and the unfortunate new customers who are in the process of activating new accounts. Just a little bit of information could be saving a lot of subscribers from a lot of aggravation and wasted time resulting from DVDs not being cleared, DVDs not shipping, delays of several days on responses from customer service, etc.

This current fiasco is a shameful moment for Blockbuster and reveals some serious management problems. Who knows how long Blockbuster will take to get these problems fixed? Even if Blockbuster gets these problems fixed tomorrow, the very least they should do is give every subscriber a free month of service as compensation for the company's poor performance in June and a second free month for all of the frustration and lack of communication with subscribers. If Blockbuster does anything less than give subscribers two free months of service after this debacle, Blockbuster's lack of action and poor performance will be unforgivable.

Blockbuster Contact Information

If you need to contact Blockbuster there is very little use in contacting them via email. You will have to wait hours or days for answers, and the answers you get will often be copied and pasted nonsense that will rarely be helpful. It is not unusual to have to send emails back and forth two, three, or four times to get an issue resolved. The only way to get real action from Blockbuster is to call them directly on the phone.

Blockbuster Online (Blockbuster By Mail or Online Purchases)
(866) 692-2789

Blockbuster Store Issues
(800) 406-6843

Account Cancellation Hotline
(866) 574-3888

Blockbuster's Toll-Free Cancellation Hotline

Contacting Customer Care by Phone from the Blockbuster.com Call Us Page

If you visit the Call Us page on Blockbuster's Web site, you might be surprised to see the following message toward the bottom of the page:

Considering canceling your online account? Please call us at 1-866-574-3888.

How bad must a company be when they have a special toll-free number for subscribers who want to cancel? Does Blockbuster have so many customers canceling their subscriptions that a special phone number is warranted?

Also, why is it that subscribers who want to cancel get to call a different number than the regular subscribers who are just having trouble but do not want to cancel. No doubt, if you call that cancellation number, you will be handled with a great deal of care and get special treatment. There might even be an offering of extra incentives to keep you from canceling. Maybe Blockbuster should just concentrate on servicing all of their customers instead of the ones who have become so incensed they want to quit.

Well, if you are thinking about canceling your Blockbuster subscription, you might want to give Blockbuster a call at (866) 574-3888 and see if they will kiss your butt and make a lot of promises to keep you as a customer. Maybe you can talk Blockbuster into giving you some free months or a reduced monthly fee. It can't hurt to ask.

If you do not want to cancel, and you just want to ask someone why your DVDs are shipping from hundreds of miles away, why your DVD was in processing for two days, why DVDs you returned to the store days ago have not cleared your queue, or why half of the titles in your queue have wait statuses, just call the regular old number, (866) 692-2789, so you can be treated like all of the other schlubs.