I'm not going to lie. When the Blockbuster Video store around the corner from my house announced they were closing forever, I smiled. The same was true when I returned to my hometown of Dover, New Hampshire a few months back and saw that two of the major chain rental stores had shuttered their doors. Good riddance, I thought.

By my conservative estimates, I have spent roughly $3,000 renting videos in my lifetime and about $64,000 in late fees for said videos. I still have a VHS copy of Flashdance that I rented back in the mid- 90s and failed to return. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones. The store from which I rented the film went belly-up long before they could hunt me down, destroy my credit, block my home purchase and ruin my life. I mean come on, Jennifer Beals was amazing in the film, but even she isn't worth losing a house over.

It seems that among the video rental giants, Hollywood Video, which is now in bankruptcy and in the midst of liquidation, took late fee collection to the extreme. Last week, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that New York is part of a 46-state settlement with a bankruptcy trustee seeking to collect late fees and other charges allegedly owed by roughly 3.3. million former customers of Hollywood Video.

In the AG's release, Schneiderman had this to say about the Hollywood Videos business tactics.

"Imagine applying for a mortgage only to find your credit report is tarnished because of a video rental late fee you didn't even owe." Think that couldn't possibly happen? The AG offered a few examples of New Yorkers who had fallen victim to Hollywood's aggressive collection techniques. Among them:

• A Latham consumer applied for a mortgage and discovered that his credit report included a $350.18 debt stemming owed to Hollywood Video. The debt had lowered his credit rating. The man, nor his wife, had been to a Hollywood Video store in more than 10 years.

• A Delanson consumer received a letter from the debt collector saying he owed $100.96 stemming from an August 2009 transaction. However, the consumer was never contacted by Hollywood Video about any outstanding fees.

• A Little Falls consumer discovered that her credit report included a $99 unpaid debt. She contacted the debt collector and learned that the debt stemmed from a movie she rented from Hollywood Video in June 2009. The consumer, who says she returned the movie on time, was never contacted by the company regarding any late rental fee, unreturned rental fee or past due notice.

$350.18 for a movie that perhaps cost the store 10 bucks? Now do I seem like less of a jerk for taking pleasure in their demise?

It has long been understood that a video rental store makes its real money on late fees. We are a society of slackers and we pay dearly for it. It's similar to a car dealer making all of the cash on extended warranties and underbody rust proofing, or whatever it is they try to sell you at the end of the transaction. Stores sell extended product warranties that are cash cows, considering few are ever redeemed.

It's one thing to squeeze your customers legally. It's another to report people to credit bureaus who haven't shopped in your store for a decade.

As part of the settlement with Hollywood Video and its parent company, Movie Gallery, Schneiderman outlined three immediate benefits to New Yorkers (and customers nationwide of the stores:

• Reversal of all previously submitted negative credit reports and a prohibition against any future reporting of the alleged debts to any credit reporting bureaus.

• Prohibition against imposing any interest or collection fees in addition to the principal owed on the customer accounts.

• Where a customer account includes both late charges and a product charge for the same rental item, collection may be pursued only for the lesser of the two amounts.

The bottom line: stopping buy the local video store to grab the latest Tom Cruise flick isn't going to cost you a mortgage. Late fees are here to stay, though with the proliferation of Red Box, On Demand, Netflix, streaming movies and every other technological advance out there, I wonder who is even renting from a video store these days? More importantly, I hope they aren't coming in looking for Flashdance on VHS.