1) On January 1st, Blockbuster entertainment ceased charging late fees for movies returned late. Customers are now able to return movies up to a week past the due date without having to pay any extra fees or charges.

2) It is also a fact that most Blockbuster stores are routinely out of the most recent movies.

However what many people fail to realize is that number one is not the primary reason for number two. While people can keep movies past the due date most people are not more than a day late. People are not keeping their movies and waiting till the last minute to return the movies before they get charged for them, as some people want to believe. Some people keep the movie as long as they can before they are charged for the movie; however, this group of people makes up a very small percentage of total movie renters.

The primary reason for the rental stores to be out of new movies more than they have been in the past is because with the policy more people have decided to rent movies and active members decided to rent more often. When they stopped charging late fees they hoped to make the lost revenue up by hoping customers would rent more often. Well, customers are renting more often however the stores are still adjusting for the higher demand on movie rentals.

The second reason which is causing movies to out of stock is how customers use their Movie Pass. The Movie Pass is a monthly membership introduced last year, which allows customers to have unlimited movie rentals, two movies are a time. Some people who have the movie pass rent several movies a week and they usually rent the newest ones. Other customers on the movie pass get a couple new movies on Tuesday when they come out and they do not return them till the following Tuesday when new movies come out again. With the second group of Movie Pass customers holding onto their movies it causes there to be fewer number of available new movies on Friday and Saturday, which are the two biggest days for renting movies. ...

That last issue with always keeping a large number of copies of every movie is after the demand for them decreases what you do with all of the used copies of the movie. For instance many stores received 200 or 300 copies of The Notebook which came out just before Valentines Day. Naturally they ran out of copies to rent. For the stores to have enough copies to rent they would have needed close to a thousand copies. If they did get a thousand copies what would they do with them after a couple of weeks when demand went do for them? They could try to sell some of them but it would be very hard to sell a thousand copies. Instead a large number of the movies would sit of shelves taking up space for months.

So lets get it straight once and for all, the no more late fees is not the direct reason for the movie rental stores to be out of movies, customers are returning their movies and most of the time they are still returned on time.

Tip: If you really must have a movie there is a chance the store does have a copy. When movies come back to the store, the returned movie does not make it back to the shelves right away. The best chance to get a new movie is to ask an employee if they have a copy behind their counter or in one of the return boxes.