Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Netflix raises price of bluray rentals again

Chris,
We used to max our 4 disc rotation for long time. Then they slowed down from mail out one day, get new disc 2nd day. I learned it was called throttling, where they slow down delivery for us 'power users'. They got sued for it. Now that we have a Comcast DVR, we have movies laying around for several days or more. We used to feel like "we gotta watch a DVD and get out to the mail box! Chop, Chop! I should look at my next bill and se if I should drop down to 2 or 3 disks.

When did they do this?

I’ve only had Netflix for about a year and never noticed any slowing. I don‘t get Bluray yet only the standard definition 8 at a time plan and go through 16 to 24 disks a week depending on holidays and such. Turn around for disks they have here in their Phoenix distribution center is 2 business days and from elsewhere usually 3 business days. On the rare occasion they’ve indicated it would take 4 business days for a disk outside of Phoenix to arrive they ship a 9th disk from Phoenix to make up for the delay.

OTOH, when I used the Blockbuster in store trade-in I’m quite sure they would often hold the disks at the store and not drop them in the mail right away. I could never turn around Blockbuster disks in less that a week and sometimes It took longer. Now that I drop them in the post turn around is a little quicker but never under 4 business days.

Dean

Dean, Good to know of the Block buster's longer turnaround time. I won't bother checking that out. It was probably over a year ago that they got sued for throttling, so you may have missed it.

EIGHT disks at once, I thought I was bad at four! I won't be too concerned about cutting back now that I know I half as many as some, well one anyway.

Dean, I'm on the Blockbuster 2-at-a-time plan with 3 in-store trade-ins per month. I think the problem you had with trade-ins is store specific. There is a Blockbuster distribution center in my area. I know that when I trade-in a disc at my local store, often, by the time I get home, the disc I traded in is already gone from my account. When I do the trade-in, the disc's bar code is scanned and apparently deleted from my account electronically.

Also, in most cases, I get a mailed movie the day after I receive the notification that it has been sent. Occasionally, it will take an extra day (or maybe two) if the movie is coming from a distribution center other than my local one. Likewise, when I mail a movie back, I usually get the email notification that it has arrived the day after I drop the disc in the mail.

I see there is a distribution center in your area. There is no excuse for the turnaround taking 4 days to a week. Shame on 'em.

Jack, I’m glad you’re having better luck with blockbuster than I am . When I did in-store trade-ins (ditched the trade-in but kept the 3 at a time unlimited) my Queue would also show the turn-in at the store as soon as I got home. However, it would often take 3-4 days for the update saying the disk was received at the distribution center. And then up to 3-4 days to receive new disks.

Now that I mail them in, here is the typical situation. On Saturday morning I dropped 8 Netflix and 3 Blockbuster disks in the outgoing mailbox at the apartment (I usually drop them at the post office on the way to work but don’t make a special trip on weekends). Monday I received 16 emails from Netflix confirming receipt of 8 disks and shortly thereafter 8 emails indicating new disks arriving for Tuesday. On Tuesday I received 8 disks from Netflix. Also on Monday I received 3 emails from Blockbuster confirming they received 3 disks. It’s now Wednesday morning and I have yet to receive any shipping notice for the next 3 movies from blockbuster. My blockbuster “At Home:” queue is now indicating the following:


There are presently 58 disks in my blockbuster queue 29 of which are listed as “available” yet they are somehow claiming nothing in my queue is available to ship. Even when they do ship new disks within 1 to 2 days of receipt they always take a day or 2 longer to arrive than Netflix. I can only surmise that Netflix has more copies of the titles spread out among there distribution centers making it more like that what I want from Netflix is already here in Phoenix while Blockbuster has to ship from another state.

It is disheartening to now see that Blockbuster also has a distribution center here in Phoenix considering how poor their turn-around time is for me compared to Netflix.

The only reason I haven’t dumped them completely is because occasionally Netflix may have one disk of a series that’s unavailable (in the case of Farscape 2 whole seasons) or a very long wait, and Blockbuster has it available. So I‘m using Blockbuster to fill in some gaps in the Netflix availability. Though more and more I’m just using torrents to fill in the gap.

Cheer,
Dean

WOW! That is a bad job of getting movies to you quickly. With that many movies in your queue and so many of them listed as "available," there is no excuse for not getting them to you faster. I don't fault you for being disappointed in them.

I sometimes experience that same delay before they send new movies, but I rarely have more than 10 movies in my queue (I'm so old that I've seen most of the ones they carry ) and all of those are new releases which are probably in high demand. So I can understand a certain amount of reasonable delay before they get a movie to me. Right now I have 6 in my queue with only one marked "available." Of course, I have 3 sitting on my desk waiting to be watched, so I'm not bummed.

I get blockbuster right away...two days at most.