What is it with Americans and late fees?

We've lived here for five years and there's still things I just don't about the Americans (like why they think B*sh is such a fantastic person). Late fees is one of those things.
Ric Romero posted another consumer report today (look him up on wikipedia if you want to know who he is) about video rentals by mail:

"There are several services, including the well-known Netflix that ship movies right to your door and you return them whenever you want. And, you never pay a late fee. Shawn Roberto and her daughter, Elizabeth, rent plenty of movies, but they haven't paid a late fee in a very long time. That's because they use Netflix, the online DVD movie delivery service."

Great. So Mr Roberto doesn't pay late fees any more, but instead has to wait two days for each movie to be delivered, instead of just going to the rental place, and on top of that he now pays $20 a month instead of late fees.

I'll let you in on a little secret : we've never paid any late fees either and we don't use NetFlix. We use a method known as "taking the movie back on time" instead. It's an amazing concept. We rent the movie, and we take it back the next day, and they give us a dollar back in credit. It's genius in its simplicity!

Better still, we've discovered how to get Hollywood Video to pay us to watch the movie. How? Simple. We wait for a new release to come out, which they normally do on wednesdays. I go in at 10am on the following saturday morning when I know they won't have any copies left because of the friday night rush. Most places do a guarantee-or-next-time-its-free service on the new films. I get the raincheck and go back on sunday, pick up the movie free with the raincheck, watch it and take it back monday morning. They credit $1 to my account. OK so I have the same 2 day wait as Mr Roberto, but I don't pay $20 a month, and Hollywood Video are slowly filling up my account with credits. It's been a long time since we actually paid for a movie rental.

I just don't get it. All the movie rental places give you five days to take stuff back now. What is it about Americans and movie rentals? Why can't they figure it out?

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