Kingston customer returns rented movie nine years late and incurs $2,700 in late fees

KINGSTON, ONT. -

A video rental store says that they’ve gotten a return, a decade in the making.

What started as any other day for Tom Ivison would become one he would want to hit record on.

Ivison, the owner of Classic Video in downtown Kingston, says he was going through his weekly returns, when he saw something unusual.

“(I) had several piles, I’m working my way through them and I notice one case in rough condition,” he explains. “I typed in the number to return the movie, looked back a minute later and that's when I saw.”

There, amongst the piles of usual one or two day old returns, was one much older. Someone had taken out a Blu-ray and returned it nine years later.

“I looked it up and it was signed out November 2, 2012,” laughs Ivison. “I saw it; I took a photo of it. I sent the photo to my co-worker saying you won’t believe this, it’s 9 years late.”

And the late fees for that? Coming in at $2,757.

“We had a good chuckle on that,” says Ivison. “That’s quite a long time. I think that’s the latest I’ve seen anything come back here.”

Ivison says he also couldn’t help but notice the title on the movie as well.

Role Models. A 2008 film starring Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

It’s about two men who have to serve in a mentor program as community service. The comedy was a box office smash at the time, grossing over $90 million at the box office.

Ivison says he got a laugh out of the name of the film.

“It just seemed, we all want to be role models in life, and I just thought that this is quite ironic. A movie coming back nine years late called Role Models. So how you want to interpret that I have no idea,” he says.

Ivison says he’s owned Classic Video for more than 30 years, but this is a first for him. Still, if the man, only publicly known as "Eric", picked any time to return it, it’s now. During the pandemic, Classic Video is waiving all late fees and the returnee won’t have to pay a cent. 

CTV News Ottawa reached out to Eric but he declined to comment on the story.

“It caught me completely off guard,” said Ivison. “It’s not too often you see something come back (that old). Who knows the intentions, maybe they had moved, maybe the found it in a box.”

Ivison says he’s just happy the film was returned, no matter how long it took.

“We just like the movies to come back,” says Ivison.