Sic Semper Tyrannis

I am genuinely surprised to see the outpouring of grief for HMV and Blockbuster over the last few days.

Both are object lessons in corporate hubris and deserve no pity for their fall.

Both these shops priced their products as high as they thought they could sell them at (£4 for a 24-hour DVD rental? £17 for an “import” CD?) and only discounted what they couldn’t shift.

I don’t really have an axe to grind against HMV, but I have always hated Blockbuster.

• You always had to queue because there were never enough staff on – something I experienced in five or six different branches, and so which must be a deliberate matter of company policy.
• The fact that you had to (i) go to the shop, (ii) wait and pay and (iii) then come back to the shop was a huge pain the arse.
• They often didn’t have what you wanted, because (i) someone else had rented it or (ii) they just didn’t deal with a particular distributor.

We were early joiners or LoveFilm, which just blew Blockbuster out of the water – and like many others I am amazed it has lasted this long. Neither shop made any serious effort to adapt to the existence of a little thing that has transformed every aspect of life in this country...the internet...

E-commerce sites at least try to make you feel like a valued customer, not a nuisance who can be ignored, talked down to and kept waiting to part with his money. 

Will the high streets be poorer for the demise of these “institutions”?

Only if you think that town centres have to play the same role in the future that they have done for the last 50 years – that is, as dreary monotonous temples of retail.

I’m afraid to say that everything these shops did, internet providers do better and cheaper. If shops want to survive, they need to discover something they can do that the efficiency of the internet can’t.

And if companies expect any kind of affection from their customers, they need to not try and screw every penny out of them for as little effort as possible while the going is good – because it won’t last forever.