I’ve had Netflix for quite a while now. They put me in their “too frequent renter” category so they now throttle my shipments. Pissed me off, so I thought I’d try Blockbuster.
I put movies in my queue, and they’re supposed to ship based on the order of priority in the queue. They don’t. As far as I can tell, it’s totally random. They’ll send number 1, or number 7, or number 13. Whatever they decide to send, is what they’ll send.
Right now, I have no discs from them even though I sent everything back several days ago. When I call up my queue, there is a blurb there telling me if I want them to send me movies, I have to select movies that have a status of “available now.”
Yeah, dumbasses. Half my moves are “available now.” Why aren’t you sending them?
So much for Blockbuster. Netflix is still better, even if they are trying to slow me down. They’re still faster than Blockbuster, and I get what’s in my queue, in the order it’s in my queue, according to its availability.
My shipping facility for both Blockbuster & Netflix is San Jose. Same zip code. When Netflix says it’s shipping something today, it gets here tomorrow. When Blockbuster says it shipped something today, it’s scheduled to get here two or three days from now, and it’s anyone’s guess as to when it actually will. Sometimes the next day. Sometimes the day after. Sometimes three days from now.
Well, I hated Blockbuster back when I rented from their stores. I shoulda known their online business wouldn’t treat me any better.
I’ve used both Netflix and Blockbuster. Netflix *will *move to the second movie in your queue if the first one has a long wait. For ones with a short wait, they’ve just taken a long time to ship out.
I found the movies that had waits on them at Netflix were available right away from Blockbuster, so I’ve never had the problem you speak of.
In my experience, once Netflix starts getting slower with sending movies, I’ve found that taking a break for a month or two will get them to ship your movies faster again.
Try that.
Eh, but then you still have to pay for the month. You’re probably still going to get more movies overall if you just keep renting.
(I got hit by the Netflix Slow-it-Down, Partner policy too, but it seems like even though I still watch and return most movies the same day I get them, my turnaround time has improved somewhat on its own)
Even though Netflix is throttling my shipments, I still get more than Blockbuster. And with BB, what I get, and when I get it, is all over the place.
LunaV, when you say take a break for a month or two are you talking closing your account, or continuing to pay, and just not ordering anything for a month or two?
Like Rigamarole says, even if they’re slowing you down, Netflix is still faster.
Have you joined the Frank Chavez v. Netflix class action settlement? I noticed, as soon as I signed that form, the throttling on my shipments went down dramatically.
Everything you say about BBO is true. I cancelled my account last month, because it got too damn annoying – especially those phantom “Available Now” discs. One time I had 25 “Available Now” discs in my queue, and nothing shipped for a week, until I added a disc at #26 and that’s the one that shipped! Oh, and “Slow Wait” generally takes 1-2 months, “Long Wait” could be anywhere between 3 months and, well, never.
The only reason at all to use BBO is for the handful of titles Netflix doesn’t carry (i.e. Carl Sagan’s Cosoms, though I think NFX carries that now.) Oh, and for the $1/mo. offer they give you the first time you try to cancel. (They only offer that once, though.)
Have you joined the Frank Chavez v. Netflix class action settlement? I noticed, as soon as I signed that form, the throttling on my shipments went down dramatically.
Everything you say about BBO is true. I cancelled my account last month, because it got too damn annoying – especially those phantom “Available Now” discs. One time I had 25 “Available Now” discs in my queue, and nothing shipped for a week, until I added a disc at #26 and that’s the one that shipped! Oh, and “Slow Wait” generally takes 1-2 months, “Long Wait” could be anywhere between 3 months and, well, never.
The only reason at all to use BBO is for the handful of titles Netflix doesn’t carry (i.e. Carl Sagan’s Cosoms, though I think NFX carries that now.) Oh, and for the $1/mo. offer they give you the first time you try to cancel. (They only offer that once, though.)
I should volunteer to be someone’s Netflix beard. I rarely watch movies, and never rent them (particularly since the unfortunate Blockbuster incident when I misunderstood their “no more late fees” policy and, well, let’s just say a certain Doper is persona non grata at a certain Blockbuster).
Heh. I’m persona non grata at a couple local BB’s. So’s the roommate. I think we’ve made “most hated” status. Screw them though. I’ve paid those fuckers so much in late fees. There was one video game that ended up costing me something like $50 in late fees and I could have just bought that damn thing for $19.
It kills me. In the old days they’d reward you for bringing back your DVD early by giving you a bag of microwave popcorn, and charging you up the ass for bringing it back five minutes late. Now they’re online and you return a DVD as soon as you can, they ignore your ass.
No, you don’t have to pay. In the past, I’ve cancelled my account entirely, but they kept my queue and sent me an email after a couple of months asking if I wanted to restart again. I believe I clicked yes to their option to send me this reminder email. I would say yes, start paying again and my queue would still be solvent (all my movies were still there, in order).
Now, they’ve added a feature where you can place a hold on your account for up to (I think) 3 months. I did this in March, held my account until June. You don’t have to pay. The difference between this and cancelling altogether is that you still have access to your queue, can still rate movies, add movies and see what’s offered. When you cancel, you can’t do that. With the hold, you see a banner at the top of the screen that says, “Your account is currently on hold until… If you’d like to reactivate your account, click here. To cancel, click here”
I think it’s a great feature. This way I wait a couple of months, then get all the good movies at once, then take a break again, and so on.
(They only offer that once, though.)