When setting up new accounts, we still get a number of folks who ask us how much our membership fees are. In days of yore, some, well, most video stores used to charge customers a membership or "set-up" fee before they were able to begin paying even more money to rent videos. This was a store cash grab in the glory days of video rental, before the inception of legal and non-legal downloading, mass VOD and the wheelbarrow full of other ways people get their movies today. There wasn't a damn thing you could do other than grumble and pay because the movies you wanted and needed were being held hostage until you coughed up the ransom.
It always irked me that stores would engage in this membership funny business. Today, only the insane require you to pay them for the privilege of giving them more money. Even at a time when we could have charged for this (our first few years in the video game) we didn't. While we are certainly interested in making revenue, we are not into gouging people.
So, for however long we have left in this crazy business, we will never implement membership fees. Because we care. Deeply.
