[manasecret]

Finishing the story, I returned the scratched-to-hell copy of An Inconvenient Truth, and I was pacified because

Originally Posted by Dylflon

If by chance I do see a DVD that is scratched to ****, I put it in the bad film drawer.

This store also did the same. The lady who I told my woeful story to was very sympathetic because she said she had just taken home a movie that was also unplayable, and she worked there! So she took it over to the manager, and he said to mark it as a defective copy and put it away.

At least I'm happy to hear they do that.

I work there. Don't even get me started on people ****ing up DVDs. Seriously.

But we don't check every individual DVD when they get returned. That would take a lot more time than we have. What we do do though is take them off the shelf when they don't work anymore. ... But I'm not gonig to check every DVD in the store to make sure they are pristine.

There's nothing I hate more than customers that ruin our DVDs.

When I was ranting above I was thinking that you guys should check all of the DVDs as they come in. Perhaps hire another employee just to check them. And that way you would know which customer f'ed up the DVD and you could possibly charge him for it.

But now that I think more about it, it's probably not feasible with so many DVDs. And even if you catch the customer who did it, the proof would probably be too subjective to accuse a customer of wrongdoing. I mean, what if it's just a couple scratches, could you say anything about that? Or what if the customer tries to say it was already scratched when he first got it, or what if the customer is just a hostile dick. Too subjective.

To me this situation cries out for a technological solution. If someone could make a fairly simple, reliable, consistent, and -- most importantly -- objective scratch-measuring machine that wouldn't take too long so you could just pop the DVDs in and out and have it spit out some kind of measurement number -- I think that person could make some good money hawking that to all the rental stores out there.