$5 for a Movie Rental?!
February 9, 2009 by Karen Weideman
Filed under entertainment, financial matters
I’ve been wanting to see Fireproof for quite some time now. I frugally resisted going to the theaters to see it and decided to wait until it was released to buy or rent the movie. From the reviews I’ve read, I figured it was a movie worth buying, just like Facing the Giants. I haven’t had a chance to look in the stores for the flick; after all I live 30 minutes from Wal-Mart!
Sunday I decided to stop by the local Movie Gallery to rent it for my husband and me. There was only one video left on the shelves. I took it up to the front and almost croaked when she told me $5.11!!!!!!!
Five dollars and eleven cents to rent a movie???? Are they insane? The lady probably thought I was crazy because I thought $5.11 to rent a movie was an outrageous price. She said, “Well, we’re cheaper than Blockbuster and you get to keep it until Friday.” For $5, I should get to keep it for a month!
If I didn’t live 30 minutes from any decent stores, I would have bought it instead of renting it. I just can’t get over how much movies cost to rent. Apparently it has been a while since I’ve rented a movie.
Do you rent movies often? Do you have a membership such as Netflix?
How about your library? We get free rentals at ours and what they don’t have I can request through inner library service.
netflix is totally the way to go. especially now that they have movies you can watch instantly on your computer; not new releases, but still good ones. I think it starts at $5/month to get one at a time + the instant online.
Blockbuster is about the same price. It’s ridiculous. It is actually 4.99 for any video in their store…not just new releases. I remember when old family movies used to be $.99 for 5 days. We’ve since converted to netflix. We get 2 movies at a time, unlimited number per month and unlimited streaming movies for around $13 a month.
That is ridiculous. We rent movies on the tv through the On Demand service (we have ATT so i think it’s called something else but i can’t think of it right now) but the movies range from $2-3 and there are options of week long rentals on the tv for $4-5 but you also don’t have to pay for gas to go pick a movie up and then drop it off!
We usually don’t rent movies at all, my husband goes to blockbuster and gets the 3 for $20 or 3 for $15 used movies for sale.
We usually do Redbox or Moviecube. They are just $1 per night and often they have fee codes. Our Redbox is in Walmart and the Moviecube is in Kroger, so it is convenient if we are shopping.
We do the blockbuster monthly subscription. It is $9.99, but you can take the movies that were mailed to you back to the store and check out a new movie there. We don’t watch a lot of movies, but for us it was much cheaper to do that.
How did you like Fireproof? I loved that movie and hope every married couple around gets to watch it!
We have been using Redbox because I love the fact that I can get a free night’s rental with a code. My husband just two nights ago started up our netflix subscription again because I loved having that before we moved! I’ll see if I like it more than Redbox…right now, though, that’s my fave!
Netflix! It’s the cheapest way for us.
Unless you count the library. The library is free!
I had NO idea it was that expensive to rent from a store these days! I use Blockbuster’s online rental service and LOVE it. I do watch a lot of movies and get three at a time for $16.99 a month. The service is very fast. I don’t love how their Web site is organzed, but I usually know what I want to add to my queue. I probably get at least 10-12 movies delivered a month, so it’s way more cost-efficient than even RedBox for me (they only have new releases and I typically forget to return them the next day as it means taking an unneeded trip to the grocery store). They do have cheaper packages for fewer movies at once, but I TOTALLY reccommend the by-mail service. I also like that you can get almost any TV show via the mail service too — it’s hard to even get those DVDs even at the stores. It seems like a big cost each month, but if you have kids who like to watch movies or certain TV shows it’s a VERY good deal!
Netflix is great for us. You know how a kid wants to watch a movie over and over? Yep that works here. We use the movies as “date night” for my hubby and I. I like that flexibility of if it doesn’t work on Wed night then lets try a different night.
Ditto on the library though…
I use Netflix and pay $8.99 a month. I get 1 movie at a time with unlimited movies a month. My son watches movies through his Xbox (sometimes 2 a day on weekends) and we can watch them online also.
When the movie gets delivered to my home I watch it that night and put it back in the mail the next day. I can get about 6 movies a month delivered to my home by sending it back the next day. No gas $ spent. No dragging kids through a store looking for what we can watch, while browsing through a limited selection (even if it is a big store, it doesn’t have the selection that Netflix does).
I have the same type of thing from Blockbuster as Kate. 3 movies and 1 free game rental for 19.99. I like this because I live right behind a Blockbuster so once I watch one of the movies from the mail then I go to the store and it acts as a free movie rental coupon. We dont have cable so we watch a lot of movies and I like getting the TV series in the mail.. I’m expecting classic looney tunes soon
(side note: game rentals are a lot more so we like the free one a month as well)
We finally watched the movie last night. Wow! It was great!
Do you have redbox in your area? At almost every grocery store in my area we have a redbox that is in the front of the store. You can go in swipe your credit card and pay $1 a night for any new movie. They only have movies that are 6 months or less out, but you can reserve them on line and pick it up at the box and they are open whenever the store is open. They send you receipts through email and confirm rental and pick up. If you keep it longer than 25 days you have bought it and do not need to return it. We do this all the time, especially with kid movies and find it the best way to go.
See, if I am going to waste my money to buy a movie, I want it to be a family based movie like Facing the Giants or Fireproof. I actually have been saving my money to buy Fireproof so that Hollywood will see that there is a huge market for family oriented, Christian movies.