We're ready to call Netflix the winner of this battle of the video war, based on Blockbusters remarkably sad third quarter numbers and the flood of pissed off emails we've been getting from Blockbuster's (former) customers.

Blockbuster managed to lose $35 million in the third quarter, and its customers have been writing in to complain about benefits being cut from their "Total Access" packages.

Not good.

From Forbes:
Chairman Jim Keyes announced that Blockbuster will reduce the number of people currently employed by the company in an effort to reduce annualized overhead costs by approximately $45 million.

As if any more proof was need that Blockbuster Total Access program essentially failed to compete effectively against Netflix (nasdaq: NFLX - news - people ), Keyes noted that "the company will no longer be narrowly focused on its online subscriber count but instead will concentrate on the growth of, and report on, its total membership." Netflix wins. We wonder if Blockbuster will continue. Anyone have some tokens they could borrow?
According to CNNMoney, Apple may be plotting an iTunes movie rental service that would allow iPod users to rent and watch a movie for 30 days without purchasing the entire film. Rumors place the rental fee at about $2.99.

"Rights management" software would allow the movie to be played on either an iPod or iPhone for the duration of the rental period. CNNMoney points out that Video On Demand has proved lucrative for cable and satellite providers—and none of them have as many customers as Apple.

That being said, we've never really understood the desire to watch a whole movie on an iPod. To each his own, we guess.

Reader Jonathan's iPhone just keeps breaking. The second time, rather than replacing it, they decided it would need to be repaired—and tried to charge him $30 for a rental phone.

He writes:
I went to the apple store today because a large portion of the touchscreen on my phone decided to stop working in the middle of writing an email. As a backstory, this is my second iphone. My first iphone had bad RAM or something and was replaced in 1 week after it would repeatedly freeze up and require a software restore.

The Apple "Genius" confirmed that it was a hardware issue, but that it would have to fixed at a depot which would take a few days. he then offered me two options: 1_ take the SIM card home and put it in another phone 2_ pay $30 plus a $500 deposit to rent an iphone while mine is being repaired.

I just sat there for a moment, then quietly replied "You're fucking kidding me." I told him that I flat-out refused to pay for their faulty hardware, and that I paid $500 for a phone that was expected to work for a year , not be fixed or replaced every few weeks. I wasn't getting a battery replaced, I wasn't dealing with user damage, I was dealing with faulty hardware which he had just confirmed.

I asked him to get the manager to waive the loaner fee. He refused as well.

So I immediately called Apple Care (in the apple store) , escalated it up a level, and went over four points:
1_ This is a hardware problem that is emblematic of poor quality control . This is the second defective phone I've been given. And I'm still way within the first 90 days of purchase !
2_ Apple did not announce a defect policy that customers would have to wait several days or pay $30 for a loaner until after I had purchased the phone. there's no way in hell I'd have bought an Iphone if i knew that I'd have to rent one for $30 whenever an issue comes up.
3_ There are multiple class action suits against Apple concerning this issue, and apple tends to lose class actions.

With that in mind, the Apple Care agent finally agreed that it was only fair that they waive the loaner fee and try to keep me as a customer. They made a note in the file to waive the fee, and then I went back to the Genius Bar to get it swapped out.

People can say how bad AT&T is non-stop, but since switching to the iPhone from Sprint I've only averaged 2 dropped calls a week. I don't think I've ever had a conversation on Sprint that didn't drop out.

On the other hand, the Apple customer service has been nothing but awful. The phones have an obscenely high defect rate-- just go to an apple store count at how many exchanges they do in a 30 minute period. These aren't phones that are cracked or broken - they're ones where the hardware is just screwed up and makes the phone half- work and be unstable. Some friends in SF said that so many people bring defective iphones to the apple store there, that they don't even bother trying to charge people for a loaner.

I couldn't find anything in the consumerist covering this yet. I think people should remember that if you can't resolve something to your satisfaction in the Apple Store, you can turn to Apple Care, and eventually Apple Corporate.

Jonathan We took a look at Apple's site and sure enough In a project born out of "boredom" and an experience with a landlord that was facing foreclosure due to gambling on an ARM, grad student Ethan Garner created CraigStatsSF, a site that visualizes craiglist San Francisco rental listings. He writes: As I started looking for places, I noticed everything that used to be for rent was now for sale due to the same foreclosure effect that happened to my landlord.

It also appeared that the rents were going up..... but... were the really? or am I just paranoid and bitter?

Since I was waiting to get my research published, I figured I could waste ample amounts of time coding perl scripts and learning google maps.

This project was born out of boredom. This is cool, Ethan! Do more cities!

Why is Hertz charging Kathy $499.48 for a flat tire? Kathy writes:
For a pre-paid one month economy car rental for $632.03, on January 16th Hertz rented me a 2007 Blue Chevrolet , Lic#5981AVB in good condition at the Los Cabos airport. I declined to purchase insurance. Late on the night of January 20th, during a rainstorm, a tire blew out on the vehicle; so, after exchanging the tire with the spare the following morning, on January 21st, I returned the vehicle to the agency at their suggestion and wrote a full report. The agency assured me there would be no problem of any charges.

Upon returning to the airport three weeks later, the manager, Eleazar G. Leyva informed me that Hertz was demanding payment of $60.00US for damage to the tire. Anxiously on my way to a plane, I agreed to the charges, more for the sake of expediency rather t