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NetFlix

Hollywood: pay 4 bucks for the movie you want the day that you want it.
Netflix: pay 3 bucks for the movie you didn’t want and wait a week to get it.

I joined Netflix in Jauary 2001 and they were OK for the first couple months, although the selection was not that great. I played along and tried to dig into their limited catalog. Here is my rental volume for the 5 months I've been involved [jan:may] = {11,10,14,8,5}. My volume has tapered off noticeably. Reasons?

1) my queue emptied for a week to the 10 "Long Wait" movies that have been there for 1-3 months with no change in status.

2) 3 movies "lost" on the way to me (funny, never happens the other direction...) with associated delays. Another movie delayed for 9 days, another for a week. I have a locked mailbox and live in a good neighborhood anyway so theft is not on my end.

3) Netflix procedure is:
free up a movie slot
wait 1 day for netflix system to acknowledge and put movie in shipping process
wait 1-2 days in “release to ship”
wait 1-3 days for movie to arrive (I live in San Jose, the same city that Netflix ships from)
watch and send back
wait 2-4 days for receipt acknowledgement
lather, rinse, repeat.

Off the cuff calculations using 30 days/mo., 5-10 days to go through rent cycle, 3 movie plan. 30/(5 to10)*3 = 9 to 18 movies a month if you keep your queue filled at all times and never keep a movie and there are no “lost” movies. My average is $110/48 = $2.30 per movie and around 10 movies a month. Not bad, I guess, until you consider what I had to watch to keep things moving. If you look at the last 2 months, the average is $3.10 a movie at 6-7 movies a month. Not so great, and even at $3 the movies still suck.

I have called and written customer service: During a phone call to their 888 number to inquire about the ridiculously slow shipping and “lost” DVDs, I was told by a representative that some uptight customers watch their queue obsessively but she thought that was because they did not “have a life”, as she put it. An email to inquire about more “lost” DVDs was met with the suggestion to have my movies shipped somewhere else. It was also explained to me how all customers are different and some like the new mandatory 24 hour “release to ship” rule and others don’t and they have to try to make everyone happy.

Riiight.

Overall Rating: 3
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date: 05/30/2001 04:40:20 pm PST
By: Anonymous (xxx.xxx.91.200)
Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=21198

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