Sunday, March 15, 2009

How's that Netflix?

Hey Netflix people,

How are you liking it? I need comments, concerns, positives and negatives. We're thinking of switching from Blockbuster dot com to Netflix. And here's why.

Blockbuster is around $22 or so a month for 3 movies in the mail. More than Netflix, BUT there was an added bonus. If you took the sleeves to Blockbuster rather than mailing them, they would scan them in and you would get a free rental AND they mailed you the next movie. You could do this up to 5 times a month. So while your mailed movie is on its way, you get a free one at the store. Sweet.

Yesterday, we went to return two in-sleeve-from-the-net movies at the local store. When we swapped them with in-store movies, the manager asked if I had heard their new policy. No, what is it? You can swap the mail movies at the store, BUT Blockbuster dot com will NOT mail you new movies until the in-store rentals are back. There is no incentive now to pay the $20-something dollars a month.

Why would I waste my gas to go to the store if I am not getting the free movies? For that, I'm just going to mail them back. And if I am mailing, why would I pay more than Netflix for the same thing?

I went on-line to BB dot com and told them just that, using their "contact us" link.
Good Morning,

We are very disappointed to learn about the new store-exchange policy, wherein movies from Blockbuster.com will not be mailed to us until we return in-store rented movies that we received when swapping out Blockbuster.com sleeves at the store.

The old policy of receiving some free in-store rentals, while getting new movies mailed from Blockbuster.com when turning in the sleeves at the store was a great incentive to not switch to Netflix, which is cheaper than your service. With that
incentive gone, we, and I am sure many other of your customers, will be looking
to other, less expensive options.

Sincerely,

Kaaren & David M.

When I hit send, it gave me a "wait!" message. One of these "Before we submit your message, if you're writing about this (lists a few things, including their new policy) send an e-mail instead to online.consumerrelations@blockbuster.com"

I did both. I hit send on-line AND sent a regular e-mail from our regular e-mail address to that e-mail address, per their request.

Today, we receive a reply to on e-mail:



We appreciate you taking the time to write us with your feedback and suggestions. Your comments are taken very seriously and we welcome them as a valuable tool needed to improve the quality of our service. We will make sure to compile your feedback with others, and provide it to our Executive Management team.

Please know that this mailbox is for inbound email only, and we are not able to respond to feedback directed here.

Kind Regards,
Executive Office

Um. What?

It's this level of stupidity that kills me.

So, Netflix. Tell me all about it. Please. Comment now.

4 comments:

Kristin aka Trekkie Gal said...

Netflix is awesome. I have been a member for *looking it up* four years this month. GAH! Has it been that long?? Anyway, I have never had any complaints about it. When I send a DVD back, they receive it the next day about 95% of the time now (that is a good improvement over when I first started). And they send out your next DVD that same day about 85% of the time. I have not had a cracked or otherwise unplayable DVD for well over a year. There are over 12,000 movies and TV episodes that you can watch on your computer or TV. The only thing I have to say against Netflix - and it's not really a big deal - is that the recommendations based on movies I like or dislike aren't great. Oh well. :)

Anonymous said...

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Netflix! I have been a member for like 5 years and have never had any problems. In that time I have had maybe 1 lost movie, and as soon I reported it lost, they shipped out a new one immediately (no questions asked). They have never raised the prices (but did lower them once!). Maybe it's due to my location but movies always have a turn around time of 1 day in transit. I have never had a movie in a wrong sleeve or had a disc that I could not play. I used to LOVE their "buy previously viewed" movies feature. I was sad when they discontinued that service. If you're interested, Netflix is a great service. Like Kristin said, they also have a large selection of "play it now" movies you can view on your computer. I don't really use that feature, but it's pretty awesome (almost as good as the in store free rental, I'd say!).

Anonymous said...

Me and my roommate have netflix and yes it's awesome I love it,

Coffee Beans said...

I'll add my two cents -- yep, Netflix is awesome. :) We've had it for just under 5 years, and we love it. We don't have cable, so other than a few select tv shows we watch "live", we use netflix for movies and tv shows all the time. On average (I just checked our netflix stats), we have 12 netflix discs a month for about $18. Never had a problem with their selection and they have really good with turn-around time. On the rare occasion that we wanted a more obscure title, it just shipped from a separate location and took a day extra, but we still got it. However, apparently others don't have as much trouble with this, but we probably get a cracked or otherwise unplayable disc every two or three months. But, as others said, you just report it and they send you another one right away -- no questions. One time just this month we sent back a broken disc and reported it so, but they sent us another broken disc -- don't know if it was the same disc or what, but we reported it broken again and got another one. :P So anyway, long story short, netflix is great. :)

Coffee Beans