Wednesday, May 23, 2007 Pirated movies giving rental stores a beating By Joy Romares-Sevilla
VIDEO rental stores are suffering from the unfair competition posed by the proliferation of pirated digital video discs, a manager of one of the video rental stores here said.
The pirated Digital Video Disc (dvd) vendors are even beating the legitimate ones in their promotional drives in government offices.
"We do saturation drives in offices like the City Council, but the vendors of the pirated dvds were also there saturating those pirated dvds, we are discouraged by the fact that outside and even inside government offices merong mga nagbebenta ng mga illegal discs na yan," Video City Ponciano Reyes Branch manager Ma. Esperanza Regis said.
Regis said among the eight branches of Viva-Video City in Davao City, it is the Ponciano Reyes branch that has suffered the most because of the pirated digital video discs that are readily available along San Pedro, Bonifacio, Bolton, and Ilustre Streets, the immediate vicinity of Ponciano Reyes Street.
"Video City Ponciano Branch may cease its operation because of this fact," Regis said.
Regis said the store's sales significantly decrease from P15,000 to P5,000 during weekends.
She also said that during weekdays, the store's target sales could not be attained.
Regis said they are waiting for the decision of the Viva Management Company since the latter already studied the situation of the store for the past several months.
"We have a lot of members here, but there are only a few active members," Regis said.
She added that people preferred to buy pirated digital video discs because of its features and affordability.
"Those who do not consider quality will definitely go buying those pirated discs especially when there are movies they really wanted to see which are still not available in our store," she said.
"There are things why people keep on buying pirated dvds, they are not entitled to return it or worry about penalties for not returning it on time, they can have eight or 12 movies in one disc, and they can see the movie even if its still showing in the movie houses, mapanood lang nila ang movie once, okay na, yun ang katwiran nila," added Regis.
