I have noticed my Netflix turnaround time increasing. I’ll mail back on Monday, get an email Wednesday and then have new DVDs on Friday. I’ve only been with them for a few months. I live in Columbus, OH and the DVDs come from Dayton 99% of the time. I live right next to a Blockbuster and refuse to use them. Fortunately, the public library allows me to keep 5 DVDs from them as well.
Since I am moving to Dallas next month, I guess I’ll see how it works there.
Here in the hills of West Virginnie I have a steady 3 to 4 day turnaround - never had a bad disk.
And I’d watch Michael Moore do Abe Vigoda at the All-Male Cinema before I’d deal with Blockbuster again.
In my 4+ years of Netflix, I have NEVER gotten anything but the original version of a DVD. Methinks you got screwed by an unscrupulous customer who returned the wrong disk, NOT Netflix itself.
It says it’s perfectly fine, it doesn’t say it’s just as fast.
I agree that TeaElle was probably screwed by another Netflix member, not the Netflix service itself.
Nah, you can put whatever movie you want in whatever Netflix envelope you can find (it would be a drag if I had to match the movie with the envelope it came in!). I’m pretty sure that the code on the DVD sleeve is what tells them which movie has been returned. I can’t imagine why putting two in the same envelope would slow them down any.
I took a look at the terms of service (available via the link that WhyNot provided), and it seems that they do offer an online queue. The service described does, indeed, sound just like Netflix – and possibly explains why Netflix recently lowered the price of their “3 at a time” program to $17.99/mo (only $0.50 more than the Blockbuster program). As far as I can tell, the only “bonus” to Blockbuster is that you get 2 free in-store movie or game rentals every month, but I’m renting movies through the mail because I don’t want to go to the store. It’s an easy bennie for them to offer because many people probably won’t take advantage of it.
I have no desire to abandon Netflix, I don’t care how many wannabes spring up: I’ve already gone through their sign-up process, I have a nice big queue, and their service and quality are proven. Plus, there’s always the hope of that Netflix-TiVo hookup that you mentioned… 
Status Report: I got Shogun part 2 today, and the disc was snapped in half. I’m jinxed, I tell ya. 
I’m going to report the other 3 movies missing if they don’t show up by Monday. How many movies can you report missing before they cancel your account? I hear they’re pretty strict about that.
Not sure if I trust Blockbuster Online. They do seem to offer some movies that Netflix doesn’t, especially “special editions” of reissued movies and several concert discs. On the other hand, Netflix beats them in obscure foreign movies. Blockbuster also lists a bunch of DVDs which are severely out of print (Aeon Flux, anyone?) but God knows if they really have them. Their “Check My Store” feature is a joke, more often than not it’s wrong.
I’ve rarely gotten defective movies from Netflix, aside from a few which got smashed in the mail. Blockbuster’s a different story, though. I swear, some customer at my local store has a defective DVD player that puts gigantic circular gouges on the edge of every disc he plays! (He likes quirky science fiction, too – all three copies of Gattaca were bad!!) I complained to BB about it, but they just smile and put the box back on the shelf…and I know it’s the same box, because I mark the bad ones before returning them. 
FWIW, Blockbuster was recently involved in a major lawsuit for not giving employees their federally mandated breaks and for making them work off the clock. They had to shell out untold millions (I got a hundred buck check) and are understandably very nervous about getting in that situation again. Breaks are scheduled very rigourously, and working on your break is almost a fireable offense.
-Sven, BBV employee, college graduate, actual human being that resents being painted with a broad brush just because she got stuck with a crappy job
We are thinking of going with NetFlix, so this thread is giving me some important food for thought.
Yesterday morning brought the news that Blockbuster has offered Hollywood Video, its main competitor in these parts, a takeover bid which the HV folks are apparently happy to hear about.
HV has a slightly better selection than BB, but the differences have been growing awful thin of late. If they merge, NetFlix may be my only viable option for quality rentals.
This looks like it’s turning into a Pit thread - and there’s already a Netflix Pit thread.
This is one of the reasons I’d never use Netflix. I live out in the middle of nowhere, so turnover would likely be horrible, but if I go to Move Scene (formerly Video Update) the next town over on Tuesday, I can rent up to 6 DVDs for $1 each. The new releases are due back by 9pm Wednesday and the older ones by Friday 10am. (plus non-new release VHS tapes are 2/$1 and due back 7 days later) They’ve just cut their late fees and began prorating them too, so a movie I returned 6 hours late only cost me 60 cents extra. Between them and the library, I have no interest in renting from anyone else - at least I can watch the people at the video store clean the disks before checking them out, and neither they nor the library would give me one snapped in half.
But some post offices have technology installed so that they can tell Netflix when a disk passes through them…Netflix counts that as “returned”, so then they send you your next disk as soon as the one you returned pass the post office scanners.
My best guess is that the Post Office could only detect the one DVD, so Netflix sent you one then. Then, when the envelope actually arrived at Netflix, they noticed the second one and sent the replacement for it.
Netflix started this relationship with the post office sometime the summer before last, methinks.
-lv
Sorry, for some reason I thought you were doing this regularly, not just when you have to. Still, you can’t expect Plan B to work as well as Plan A.
I see on preview that LordVor has a much better explanation. I had wondered how Netflix could receive a disk at 7:00 am when it was picked up at 3:00 pm the previous day.
I didn’t exactly get screwed, inasmuch as the content of the DVD was what it claimed to be. But I did get screwed by Netflix’s poor system of checking what comes back to them. If an employee had taken two seconds to pull the disc just a half inch out of the envelope before putting it back into the “ready to send” queue or before putting it into the “send to TeaElle” queue or even into the envelope for me, they would’ve seen that there was an issue. Had it been done early enough in the process, they could’ve known which member was pirating their discs.
Similarly, taking that moment to check, really check, the envelopes would reveal the 2 discs in 1 envelope issue much earlier, would heighten the chances that discs marked as damaged would be taken out of circulation much sooner and generally enhance the service for all subscribers. And that’s the main issue for me.
No one should have a delay in a second disc from one envelope being checked in. No one should receive a disc that has already been reported as damaged. No one should receive a DVD-R sent back in error by a pirate. Obviously there will always be some problems, any process will have a certain rate of error. But just a little more attention paid in just that one area of their process would help make marked improvements in the area in which customers have the majority of negative experiences. The sad fact is that they seem to not really care.
Each person has to make their individual movie rental decision.
I would not be happy if what happened to TeaElle happened to me.
And I especially agree that nobody should receive a disc which has already been reported as damaged.
OTOH, I lost count of the annoying things that happened to me with Blockbuster.
And while I did have a few employee-based annoyances, it was more the way BB was set up for its convenience rather than the customer’s which drove me away. (On top of the lack of choice.)
I quit BB a long time ago. I then began going to a mom-and-pop video store and was relatively happy with them except for the fact that rentals have to be returned the Very Next Day.
NetFlix is certainly not perfect and is perhaps experiencing growing pains.
But man, I sure do love not leaving my house and not dealing with late fees, either real ones or those fake Blockbuster ones.
As I noted in the above linked Pit thread, due to the fact Blockbuster has 4 times in 6 months tried to charge me huge late fees/missing movie charges when I personally returned the movies myself, on time (and in two cases actually HANDED said movies to employees), they can suck it. Netflix all the way.
dalej42, I live in between Dallas and Ft. Worth, our distribution center is, I believe, Colleyville, TX, and we have an average 3 day turn around. I’ve had one bad disc in 6 months of membership, sent it back, had a spankin-new disc in my hot little hands 3 days later.
In fact, due to my disgruntlement with Blockbuster (the last of the above incidents I mention just took place last week), this past week I’ve bumped up my membership from 3-at-a-time to 5-at-a-time. They sent out movies 4&5 the next day I changed my membership, and my billing period doesn’t even come due till next week. I adore Netflix.
As to the OP, I have noticed no slowdown myself, but I tend to rent obscure movies, documentaries, foreign films, and sitcom/weekly TV dramas.
I joined Netflix in May and basically starting in Sept, every batch of 3 I got had a broken or scratched disc. They shaped up last month but now my shipping times are messed up - even though I live near a distribution center.
My marketing class is going to discuss Netflix tomorrow night because we’re covering game theory. Netflix dropped their monthly fee and the theory is that they’re trying to deter Amazon from getting into the market. Man, they are going to lose big time. Price wars are never worth it and dropping the price might temporarily increase market share but once Amazon enters, they’ll be forced to raise their monthly fee (at least that’s what I understand from my class readings 
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the turn-around problem was never an issue - the Flushing distribution center is literally 2 miles from me and everything would always be sent/received the next day. However, I did run into a 3 month slump of my own. At that point, Netflix would just start sending me random titles on my queue list, rather than starting from the top. Now I realize that they give priority to new members, but I find it hard to believe that the first 55 items on my queue aren’t available when the first 3 items were almost ALWAYS sent previously. That’s when I quit. Their lower price is sort of tempting me to come back, but I really don’t have much time for watching movies anymore…
Well, guess what…I got to report 3 DVDs missing today. Yep, the three I never wanted in the first place. :smack: I put Live Aid at the top of my queue…wanna take bets on whether it will actually ship tomorrow??