Blockbuster Wants Your Netflix Flaps
By Shane C. Buettner February 23, 2007 — Blockbuster has a promotion that it apparently thinks is so good that it's worth doing twice. Last Sunday through Wednesday current Netflix subscribers that brought in the tear away flaps from a Netlfix movie rental envelope were given a free movie rental at Blockbuster. According the AP story on the promo, this is the second time Blockbuster has run this offer, the first being a two week stint in the Dallas area last December.

Sounds good, except that Netflix works on a user-friendly subscriber based service, and it's hard to imagine a Netflix customer defecting on the spot, even with the allure of a free rental. So, other than giving away its product for free, what does Blockbuster hope to accomplish? Apparently the opportunity for its employee to indoctrinate the Netflix subscribers on Blockbuster's cool new service that combines online rentals with in-store rentals to avoid those nagging wait times for movies by mail.

If this method of making a sales pitch sounds familiar, you must have attended a time-share presentation at least once. A free weekend at a swanky place in exchange for hours of suffering through a pitch for a horrible investment opportunity. But I'm sure Blockbuster's employees are more concise.

Of course, Netflix revealed last month that it's going into the movie download business, which will elminate both the mail delay and the trip to the store altogether.