Sat, December 30, 2006
Netflix—11:27 AM
I'm hosting a weekly movie night at my house, mostly as a way to get more out of my Netflix account and also to watch more titles from my own collection (a good 10% of which are still shrink-wrapped).
A few things have happened. One is that I finally ran into the shipping delays that Netflix was sued over a while back. They have a formula that sends your new movies slower if you return too many movies too quickly. They say they want to maximize the experience for the lowest-volume customers, but they also want to save a bit on shipping costs, and that's totally okay. I wish they wouldn't – or I wish the threshold were a bit higher, so people like me who are only high-volume for a month every year or so weren't included – but I understand they're running a business.
Another issue is that sometimes I don't send movies back fast enough to get the next movie I need in time for movie night. Since I'm drowning in Coke Rewards (just not enough to buy a Bravia – don't think I wasn't tempted to Punch Drunk Love it), I cash out a free rental at Blockbuster and pick up the movie there.
I hate Blockbuster. Originally for the reason some people hate Starbucks, which is not a good reason, but it's kind of like Wal-Mart: early on, we were all trained to reject the big chains that muscled our little mom-and-pops out. (RIP, Video Magic.) Mainly, I hate Blockbuster today because I'm a long-standing Netflix subscriber and small-time Netflix stockholder. However, when I go there, there are signs everywhere about their online service which competes with Netflix (I hate them so much!) but actually sounds like a much better option. Every month you get a coupon for a free in-store rental, and apparently you can return your online movies in the store and take a free rental for those, too. So you're not movieless during the time your movie is making its way back through the mail – certainly a bonus. Also, it's my understanding that if you get a scratched or unplayable DVD in the mail, you can go to the store and swap it out. This won't work for everything, of course – they won't have every movie in stock – but considering how infuriating it has been to get Netflix DVDs that just won't play a certain scene, it's a wildly tantalizing offer.
I went a few rounds with Netflix customer service a year ago when they sent me a copy of Bottle Rocket that looked like it had been strapped to an actual bottle rocket and fired into a diamond mine. Strap a DVD to the bottom of each shoe and figure skate down the sidewalk, you'd have a hard time telling the difference between your DVDs and this copy of Bottle Rocket. They ended up giving me a bonus free rental (which I later wasted on Crash) but I'd have been much happier if they just listened to my pleas to strengthen their inspection of incoming discs (and punish those who send them back like that – honestly, it sits on the shelf and it sits in the DVD player, how do you have time to dig deep gouges into it?). It happened again this week, right at a pivotal moment in Dear Frankie and I had to watch that scene in my laptop, which is apparently more tolerant of these things than my DVD player (who knew?).
I've been a vocal Netflix supporter for a long time; in fact, I've brought at least four friends into the Netflix fold. I'm sticking with Netflix out of loyalty and respect. For now. I really wish they'd give me some awesome reason that would nullify all the perfectly reasonable arguments for switching to Blockbuster Online. (I've never had any trouble with new releases, thankfully. But I'm willing to believe if I were a high-volume guy, I might.)
Bee Boy — Wed, 8/29/07 5:21pm
Off-and-on, I've still wondered if I'd be smarter to switch to Blockbuster Online. I still hate them (so much!), but are the benefits compelling enough to outweigh that hate? Returning DVDs to the store means your next disc ships faster (I still mourn the Netflix "I Shipped It" button) – plus you get to take a free rental while you're there. That's gotta add up.
But Blockbuster's selection is smaller, and some customers have reported huge shipping delays. Still – am I just being stubborn? Well, worry no further! They're hiking up their prices and pissing off their customers. At the same time, Netflix is dropping theirs – I saved $1.06 over last month!
Yay, Netflix! Keep on ignoring those idiotic death knells from pundits – just like TiVo, you're on the right track!
AC — Thu, 9/6/07 5:12pm
I recently interviewed the dude who came up with the ad campaign to go after Netflix customers for a marketing position at my new gig. He let me know that he is and will continue to be a satisfied Netflix customer even with his free Blockbuster account.
Brandon — Thu, 9/13/07 11:00am
I have to say, I'm quite pleased with the way Netflix handles damage returns. Twice this month, I've received discs that arrived cracked (I've gotten in the habit of immediately opening and inspecting any DVDs I receive, for this very reason). I'm assuming this happened in this shipping process (or maybe they slipped through cracks in the inspection process, or maybe my mailman just hates Netflix); frankly, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often given the lack of padding.
Anyway, I love that you can go to their site, give a damage report online–which is totally quick and easy–and they will ship you a replacement disc the next day, on faith. "Just send us back that broken one as soon as you can, 'kay?" So I'll have my replacement copy by Friday, which is perfect, because weren't going to watch it until Saturday anyway - no harm done, no time lost. (I realize this is a different story had we been planning on watching it last night, but hey, this is one of the few instances where it's a plus to be a busy parent only able to watch a movie once a week.)