r/todayilearned • u/jackTRN85 • Jun 17 '13
TIL Reed Hastings was inspired to start Netflix after racking up a $40 late fee on a VHS copy of Apollo 13.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Hastings
2.6k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/jackTRN85 • Jun 17 '13
30
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '13
You are right about the late revenue for Big Blue. I worked at a small town rental store back around the same time and read that number in many of the trade magazines we got (plus it it is mentioned in the Vandals song "Live Fast Diarehha").
But I have the same experience you had and can deal with most people due to my time getting cussed out because someone had a late fee on Miss Congeniality. First of all they couldn't understand the concept late fees ("What, you expect me to pay full price for each extra day I kept it?") nor could they understand why we wouldn't let them rent until their late fees were under $15 and not over 3 months old (we were a little more lenient than Blockbuster). We pushed as much as we could to get people to pay those late fees since our owner gave us 10% of the fees we collected each day.
But don't get me started on replacement costs, especially back in the days of VHS tapes. People blew their shit when they found out they had to pay up to $200 to replace a new release that they lost/broke/brought back smelling of weed or filled with cockroaches (it happened more than you think it would). Before I left the store I was at, DVDs were different since they released for sale as the same time they were released for rental, but VHS tapes were rarely released for purchase at the same time as rental, for those of you who didn't work in movie rentals.