I wondered that myself. I wanted to report the bad customer service but was kind of suprised when it showed up on the main page. Must have been a slow news day. I did get them to admit it was a change in policy and they claimed I should have received an email. I double-checked my junk email just to make sure I didn't get a notice.
No notice. I checked my account and my junk mail folder. They claimed I should have received an email and a notice when I logged into the site. Neither happened. I was even able to dig around their site and find an FAQ which showed the old policy. The first email to support got me a statement about the new policy. It took a second email to confirm that there had been any change at all. After I posted the article I did coax them out of two free in-store rentals.
It is not an unreasonable change. My beef is that it was an unannounced change. I am sitting at home waiting for movies and they tell me I won't get any until I take the ones back from the store.
NuclearCodeMonkey writes: Blockbuster Total Access has changed the terms of each user agreement without notice to users. Previously users could return mailed rentals in-store for free rentals. The next set of online rentals was immediately mailed out. Now without notice they have changed their policy so that the in-store free exchanges count against you and no more online rentals are mailed out until the in-store rentals are returned. No wonder they are closing stores and losing to Netflix! Needless to say I am canceling my account out of protest.