Fun for a while, but not really worth it for me.
Written: Sep 23 '05
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If you've been to a Blockbuster store lately, you may have noticed that the employees tried hard to get you set up with a $9.99 trial month with Blockbuster Online.
Why, oh why, one may ask, do those working in the stores want to get people out of their stores and on-line? Trust me, the employees don't know, either, but the upper crust of Blockbuster sent out the word: do or die. It sure is an odd feeling when your bosses tell you to sell yourself out of your job, but so far, I don't see many takers anyway.
Well, to make things more palatable, the company offered a free one-month trial to all employees. Always on the lookout for foreign films, I signed up and immediately jumped to the section: Foreign - German
And what did I find? Pages of movies such as Chico with Eduardo Rozsa Flores ... huh? Well, there's also Divine Intervention in Arabic. Hm.
Okay, there are plenty of German films listed as well but it seems that overall, every film that had as much as a German parking attendant, is listed in the same category and I had to read synopsis after synopsis to make sure I get what I'm looking for.
The display is good enough; you can pick between 5, 10, 20 or 50 films displayed per page. If you want to read the synopsis, however, you will be taken to another page from where you have to go back to the main page if you want to continue looking. (Netflix, which I also signed up for on a one-month free trial just to compare, shows the synopsis on the same page, when you put the cursor on the film).
You add whatever number of films you want to your Queue and Blockbuster then picks the first three from that line-up and sends them to you. (you can always change the line-up, putting whatever you want to the top of the list to receive it first).
Here's a beef: sure, you got 40 films lined up and you'll eventually get what you want, but there are films that show a "long wait"; there's no telling when you'll get said film, even if it is at the top of your queue.
Mailing
Well, well, well ... of course, I wasn't the only person who took the free month and for others, the films arrived just fine within 2 days. In my case, the first two films took 4 days, the third film took 5 days. Not particularly impressive and if I hadn't had other films at home already, I'd have been annoyed.
I'm not particularly fond of the method of getting just a disk in a flimsy paper envelope. I'm worried about the disc getting lost or broken. Now, it apparently is not a big problem when you lose or break one of the DVDs: you simply go to the "report a problem" page, click the appropriate box pertaining to your problem and voila ... well, there's a problem.
Netflix has a thorough tutorial on what happens when you lose or damage a disc; it gets billed to you. I did not find a tutorial on Blockbuster, simply a list of problems which one can click on.
When trying to figure out what happens if I lose a disc, I clicked on the "I lost the disc" option at Netflix. The next page stated that the disc would be billed to me at $20.- and asked if I wanted to continue. Since I hadn't really lost anything, I didn't and went back to the last page.
On Blockbuster's site, I did the same thing: I clicked "lost disc" to see what the charge would be. The next page simply stated "problem has been reported". Oops! Now my disc is reported as lost and I can not undo it. There was no statement about being charged for anything, only a little note that "things happen". Thanks, but in this case, it didn't happen, and if they'd had a tutorial about what to do, my disc wouldn't have been reported lost.
In comparison: Blockbuster will allow for a few "lost" DVDs at no charge, giving the member the benefit of the doubt while Netflix will charge automatically. (I assume that is, unless you write and complain.)
The upside: Blockbuster's service costs the same as Netflix, $17.99 per month for 3 movies out at a time; however, it also adds two in-store coupons which you can print from the site, for those times when you want to go for a spur-of-the-moment rental.
There are also occasional extra coupons such as "Get a Free Previously Viewed DVD" or "Buy one Previously Viewed DVD, Get One Free." Definitely an advantage over Netflix, who does not have any brick and mortar stores. However, if you do not have an in-store account already, you will have to open one because the on-line membership does not connect to the in-store memberships.
The e-mail traffic is the same between Blockbuster and Netflix: an e-mail each time one of your selected films has been sent to you, and one each time they receive one back from you. Annoying with both services. I'd rather just look online instead of cluttering up the mail box some more.
However: two or three days after receiving my first films from Blockbuster, I received an e-mail stating that there had been some problems the week prior, which caused delays in mailing. So apparently, the 5-day mailing time was due to some problems and not common. To make up for it, they stated that they were giving me an additional two coupons for free in-store rentals, which showed up in my account about 2 days later. I didn't even mention that delay and they offered their apology and coupons on their own.
One piece of advice: know your mailman's habits. I put four envelopes into the mailbox 2 days ago; being small, they sat inside the mailbox without sticking out and so the mailman never picked them up, only piled the new mail on top. I had to clamp the mailbox lid down on them to make them stick out which, if your mailbox is openly visible, may invite someone to grab them.
Mailing time for Netflix so far has been freakishly fast: two films I put into the mailbox yesterday apparently arrived already this morning and the next two are being sent out. Blockbuster, after the initial trouble, levelled out at about 2 days mailing time. With 3 films out at a time, even a 2-day mailing time is fine, unless you spend most of the day watching movies.
Is it worthwhile? It depends how many films you rent. There are other Blockbuster instore programs like the movie pass which costs about 27 dollars a month and also allows for 3 movies out at a time. Advantage: you can swap those 3 films out ten times a day if you feel like it. So if you watch a lot of movies, the instore one is better, even if 10 dollars more.
If you don't watch a whole lot of films, a Rewards membership will do you fine, which costs 10 bucks a year. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday you get a free old film with every film you rent, and after five paid ones, you get one free. Depending on the price within a store, about 20 bucks a month will get you 11 films; if you do the online service at 17 (plus tax), and only get a total of maybe six films a month, you're definitely better off with the Rewards program, particularly since you're not being charged at all if you don't rent anything for a while.
The biggest advantage, of course, is that there are fourty thousand titles available online. (Netflix advertises fifty thousand titles). If you're looking for odd titles, in-store definitely loses out to on-line.
One other advantage with in-store, though, is the new policy that allows you to keep any film you rent and pay for it, which means if you find your favorite movie in a store and you've not been able to find it for sale anywhere (or don't feel like looking), you simply rent it, keep it and own it. If you keep any film from the online service, you pay more and don't get the cover for the film, which you can pick up in a store after the film has been charged to you.
In comparing Netflix and Blockbuster, I found that even with these high numbers of films available, each site has some titles that the other one does not, so if you're really hell-bent on finding particular rare films, you may end up with a subscription to both anyway, to find what you're looking for.
Overall, I find the online thing fun for a month, but after the free trial on both sites, I'll cancel it. By that time, I will have gotten all the odd German films that I wanted to see and really can't think of much else I absolutely have to see.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Rentals - rare foreign films
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About the Author
Location: California
Reviews written: 327
Trusted by: 303 members
About Me: If life gives you lemons ... there's always someone deserving of being pelted with fruit
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