Tools for Fighting the War on (Video Store) Terror

Reader,

You may or may not believe this based on the descriptions of the clientele I've supplied previous to this post... but, some of the renters don't respect or take care of the materials they borrow from our place of business! Can you believe that?

While restocking items it is commonplace to find a DVD that is so scratched that it simply will not function in a DVD player. Even the most moderately scratched disks will freeze in certain areas or skip around, which varies the sound or picture quality.

Of course, as the movies stay in the store longer, the more prone they are to abuse and eventually not working. So all those classic movies you treasure? Guess what. They're not going to play when you get them home. But never fear... there is still hope...

We have a buffer. The buffer looks like a computer tower and sounds like a lawnmower engine. A small drawer slides from the bottom of the unit, and the DVD is placed upside-down on the spindle. As the drawer is pushed in, the cycle is set and the machine whirrs into action. 30 seconds later, all fingerprints and scratches are a thing of the past. Amazing, no? (The machine only costs a mere $4500.)

This thing is so good at cleaning movies that I feel obligated to clean all Lindsay Lohan films for the protection of all renters. So far, no disease outbreaks related to her movies. It's that good.

I'm reminded of an old adage whenever I clean a DVD for a customer. Something about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure... So, instead of the company spending $4500 for a disk cleaner, plus hundreds of dollars a month for cleaning solution, plus paying the labor for all those employees that have to stand there and monitor the machine... why not just cut it off at the source?

Family Video has a policy that doesn't fault the customer for damages to rented materials regardless of the state they are returned in. Just today, we received a "Transformers" DVD that was scratched beyond playing capabilities. (Transformers came out TUESDAY. 2 DAYS AGO!) But, we couldn't confront the soul renter of the disk. Instead, we had to clean the disk and hope that it plays the next time someone rents it. If it doesn't play, then we mark the DVD in the system as "damaged" and send it back to our corporate offices.

Wouldn't it be better to check the new disks as they come back, (since you have to open the case to insert the retaining pins anyways), and charge accordingly to those who blatantly damage a disk? This could help to alleviate the thousands of dollars that are lost in damaged merchandise and in giving refunds to customers for faulty movies. (They're VERY giving to people who have rented damaged goods.) By holding people accountable, perhaps people would get the message that they need to take care of other people's things.

I've seen some very extreme examples, and was shocked that no action was taken. We've had returned movies that were cracked in half, scratches that penetrated and peeled off the colored label, and some that have had chunks broken out of them. But apparently, that's acceptable. One guy returned a DVD that had his name scratched into the bottom of it. IT SAID HIS NAME ON THE BOTTOM OF THE CD WHEN HE CAME TO COMPLAIN THAT IT DIDN'T WORK! Yet, we didn't charge him. Even worse, we gave him another movie for free.

I understand that the customer comes first, but if this were a car rental company, all the cars would be junkers the second time they came off the lot. In the grand scheme of things, everyone wants to rent movies that work. If I wanted to see an error message on my TV, I'd put a toaster strudel in my DVD player. The cleanup would be horrible, but the effect would be the same. Is it really too much to ask to handle something with care for 5 days and return it in the same condition it was in?

Thank goodness we've got that buffer... To temporarily fix those problems one DVD at a time...