[Gaffer]

Good riddance to what I would definitely call a greedy company. They cornered the market,drove all the mom and pop stores out of existence, and then proceeded down a couple of decade path of screwing their customers in a virtual monopoly which ultimately became woefully inept at adapting to new technology and consumer preferences......Glad to see this.....

[Moonman62]

They cornered the market,drove all the mom and pop stores out of existence, and then proceeded down a couple of decade path of screwing their customers in a virtual monopoly which ultimately became woefully inept at adapting to new technology and consumer preferences......Glad to see this.....

The inspiration for Netflix's founder was Blockbuster's outrageous late fees.

[Fundamentally Fair]

Yeah, successful businesses piss me off too. I sit in my hovel just praying for the day that I can dance on their grave. /s

[Alberta's Child]

Good riddance to what I would definitely call a greedy company. They cornered the market,drove all the mom and pop stores out of existence, and then proceeded down a couple of decade path of screwing their customers in a virtual monopoly which ultimately became woefully inept at adapting to new technology and consumer preferences......Glad to see this.....

This is a very good point worth noting, for it illustrates how meaningless a "monopoly" is in most industries.

When a company has a monopoly for a product or service, they still have to keep doing business in a competitive manner even if they have no competitors to speak of -- because there's always the "unseen competitor" out there who will simply take advantage of low start-up costs and begin competing on short notice, or even (in the case of Netflix, Red Box, etc.) change the business completely.

[Charles Martel]

They cornered the market,drove all the mom and pop stores out of existence...

Yes, that is the "big picture". Amazingly enough, though, there there are some small independent video rental stores that will outlast Blockbuster.

[Brookhaven]

Be nice to people on the way up, because you never know who you’ll met on the way down.

Blockbuster violated this basic rule, and now they are paying the price. The main things they had going for them in the day was selection and conveience. When competitors came along with more selection and conveience customers jumped ship as quickly as they could. When Blockbuster tried to match Netflix with an online system or deployed kiosks like Red Box, their former customers refused to even consider them.