Movie Store (Mis)adventures II

Originally published here.

The incident at my local video rental store was actually the second irksome experience I had with DVDs last week.

About six weeks ago I found a British crime show had been released on DVD in Australia. It's a brilliant series and the quality of the acting is a tribute to British television so I decided to fork out $59.90 for two DVDs (For the mathematically challenged, that's $29.95 each DVD).

I went into Big CD & DVD Chain Store this week to pick up the second two DVDs in the series. I walked up to the stand and saw a big "NOW $9.95!" sign. Damn!

I took the now discounted DVDs up to the counter and asked the sales girl what the story was.

"These where $29.95 just over a month ago. What happened? Is there a clearance sale on or something?"

"No, but they're pretty popular at the new price. You're, like, the tenth person today whose bought one those titles", she told me.

"So are you guys still making a profit on them, or just trying to get your costs back?"

"No, I think we still make four or five bucks on them".

I did the math. Apparently the good little shoppers had balked at being asked to pay an extra $20, perhaps because the extra 400% profit for the store was a bit too high.

I also felt pretty angry that I could have bought the whole series for less than $60 instead of just a third of it if I had only waited a couple of months.

Instead of charging a low price to begin with and getting lots of sales, the Big CD & DVD Chain Store decided to charge as much as possible until their profit margin could drop to a (standard industrialised world) 40-50%.

Apart from hiring sales staff who give out confidential pricing information, there are two other possible candidates for stupidity in this situation: either I'm a idiot for paying such a high price as soon as the titles became available, or the Big CD & DVD Chain Store management are idiots for thinking I won't notice the price drop and feel ripped-off.

The first one is probably true - I should be used to this type of behaviour by media retail outlets by now.

The second one is also probably true - I did notice the price drop and I do feel ripped-off, even though I admit the stupidity on my part.

The important question here is: do I feel stupid and ripped-off? Yes, I feel pretty ripped-off after paying the extra $40.

And, yes, I also feel stupid at the expense of Big CD & DVD Chain Store.

Nobody enjoys feeling like someone has made a fool of them and in years gone by, all a customer could do was fume in silence at the retailer. Nowadays, the customer can completely circumvent the retailer and obtain the product online. This (former) customer also feels pretty happy about being able to screw the retailer for a change. As they say: once bitten, twice shy.

So I feel "bitten" and quite stupid. As a result I'm also shy and unlikely to go back to Big CD & DVD Chain Store for fear that they drop the price even further (by up to $5 without making a loss according to the sales girl).

I've since found my British TV series on BitTorrent in .ratDVD format, so I certainly won't feel stupid about over paying for it when it's sitting on my hard drive. I expect I'll feel quite pleased with myself. Unlike the trouble at the DVD rental store, in this case I have stopped being a good customer simply because there is no incentive for me to be.

Perhaps when the people in the media supply chain make a nice gesture to me, I'll think about using them again. Unfortunately, for this to happen they need to realise that I'm the one in the position of power now - I've got a choice. I like choice and I think I'll give the entertainment industry one too:

Woo me or loose me.