They’re Back . . . Blockbuster Brings Back $5.99 Pricing?

October 24th, 2006 Davis Posted in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix |

Only four days after announcing an end to Blockbuster’s $5.99 price point, it appears that Blockbuster may have had a change of heart after taking a look at Netflix’s recent earnings announcement. While I haven’t seen anything formally released by Blockbuster, Mr. Cheap Stuff is reporting that Blockbuster has reinitiated their $5.99 prices. If you actually check out their website, you can confirm that the $5.99 pricing has in fact reappeared.

It this is actually true, this is clearly a very bad sign for Blockbuster and makes the company look extremely schizophrenic. After already swallowing the bitter pill of telling consumers that the $5.99 prices were going away, the company has apparently folded under the pressure of a good earnings report by Netflix. While I welcome the continuation of the DVD price war as a positive thing for consumers, I have to wonder what Blockbuster corporate was thinking when they removed it in the first place, only to bring it back a few days later? While there are those who feel that Blockbuster can somehow lead the DVD market, I see this as yet another sign that the company has not only lost all control over pricing of online rentals, but that they don’t know how to innovate beyond copying the market leader.

Update - In retrospect, I want to file this one in the rumor category until we can find a better source then “Mr. Cheap Stuff” The blog itself is registered to an anonymous whois address and while I’m 80% certain that I looked at Blockbuster’s site this weekend and didn’t see the $5.99 pricing, I can’t say 100%, so it’s possible that the $5.99 pricing that is currently showing is really just pricing that was never taken down. Until I can get a confirmation one way or another I’ll be the schizophrenic one and take back what I wrote above, but if it does turn out to be true, then Blockbuster has some explaining to do.