You won’t be charged if you keep the movie a couple of extra days. That much is apparently true. However, if you still have the movie seven days after you rented it, you’ve essentially bought the thing:

…we will convert your rental to a sale. The movie or game will be sold to you at the selling price in effect at the time of the rental, which is either the retail price, or, when available, at the previously-rented price, less the initial rental fee you paid.

Keep a rented movie for a week, and you pay the full amount for it; the discount is availalbe, I suppose, if Blockbuster is feeling charitable. (New releases almost definitely won’t go for the previously-rented price.) The added fee is automatically charged to your membership account and, therefore, likely your credit card as well.

So now, when you rent Weekend at Bernies 2 and forget to bring it back on time, you’re not just stuck with a few added dollars in late charges — plus the embarrassment of having paid good money for the damn thing in the first place — you’re stuck with the film and the cost of it forever. And never mind the purely emotional cost of having watched Weekend at Bernies 2…)

But wait, you say (plucky little movie-watcher that you are), can’t I still bring the movie back? Pretty please? Well, yes, sort of:

We will gladly let you return the movie or game within 30 days of the sale. If the selling price has been charged to your credit card, we will credit the amount charged to your credit card when you instruct us to do so in person (otherwise we will place this amount on your BLOCKBUSTER membership account). If this amount has been charged to your membership account, we will remove the balance. However, in both instances, you will be charged a restocking fee plus applicable taxes. [emphasis mine]

The flyer doesn’t specify an amount, and I suspect it’s not exorbitant, but the restocking fee is probably at least as much as the late fee this whole damn system was set up to avoid. So, keep a movie for a week and you’re not necessarily stuck with it forever. You just have to pay to get rid of it.

Apparently, “Blockbuster incurs processing, administrative and other costs when…convert[ing] rental product to a sale” and vice versa, and they need a little walking-around money to help defray that cost.

It’s not that I think seven days is an inadequate rental period. With setups like Netflix, which I suspect is Blockbuster’s chief reason for instituting this new policy, not returning the films right away is sort of built into the system. Both they and the renter make allowances for it. But with an actual store-front location like Hollywood Video or Blockbuster, when I go in it’s because I want to watch a movie that night or the next. So a rental period of anywhere between three and five days is perfectly acceptable to me. Seven is a little beyond fair.

I’m not even upset over late fees, to be honest. I set up an account with Netflix primarily for their selection, not simply for the luxury of keeping a film out for a month without an added charge. The only time late fees have ever been an issue was at a local store in Pennsylvania — a chain, yes, but not a national one. There, new releases were usually due back the next day, and the fee for not returning a film was very high. But, if the policy’s reasonably fair and the rental period’s fairly adequate, I have no major complaints.

But what Blockbuter is doing here is trying to pass off new built-in (and higher) purchase charges as this wonderful and glorious end of late fees. That strikes me as more than a little disingenuous, and gives me an added reason not to rent my movies from them in the future.