Blockbuster takes the title of TOP DOG for online rentals
Written: Mar 28 '07
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Blockbuster, the top dog of the movie rental store industry takes a step on to the online DVD rental stage and a step ahead of the competition already there.
So what is the online movie rental business, you ask? This is a revolutionary advancement of both use of the internet and renting movies. Users log onto the blockbuster.com website, browse through the selection of over 65,000 DVDs, fill up your queue with as many movies as you wish and organize this list in the order that you would like to receive them, and then sit back and enjoy movies delivered to your mailbox. To top it all off DVDs are shipped with postage paid envelopes. There are no late fees associated with the videos, once you receive your discs you can hold them for as long as you want, so long as your membership is still in service.
Now sometimes the top movie in your queue will not be available, when this happens the movie will be marked with a ‘short wait’ or a ‘long wait’ tag and the next movie in your queue will be shipped. For this reason I recommend that you separate television seasons with a buffer of movies, because if part of a season is not available it will skip that entire series and go right into the next item in your queue, which for me in the past has been another television series. There is nothing more annoying in the online rental world than being on season three on one series and getting disk one and two of a different series entirely.
What if a DVD is lost in the mail? If a DVD is lost in transit, or it seems to be taking to long to be delivered to either you are to Blockbuster, then log onto the website and select shipping problems. Blockbuster will tag that rental as lost and either ship the same title to you again, or ship you the next movie in your queue. As long as there is not a lot of this activity, reporting a movie as lost will not cost you a penny. In general, if it takes more than 3 full business days to either receive or ship a movie, then I would report the movie as lost, it may still find its way, but in the meantime you are paying for the plan and the slow shipping is bumming you out, and blockbuster does not want that.
The plans are as follows:
3 DVDs out at a time with unlimited rentals for $17.99
2 DVDs out at a time with unlimited rentals for $14.99
1 DVDs out at a time with unlimited rentals for $9.99
All plans include free in store game coupons, and you have the option of returning your movies to a block buster store in there prepaid envelope, they will send notification that the movie has been returned and your next movie in queue will be shipped at that time PLUS you can have a free in store rental!
So what is the rate of return? In my experience blockbuster receives and ships mail at least twice a day at all there shipping centers, so the same day they get a movie in, they ship the next movie in your queue out. It generally takes one and a half days to get to the shipping center, and one and a half for my next movie to get to me. So if I returned a movie on Monday, generally they receive it by Wednesday morning and send me an email that they have it, then they ship out the next movie Wednesday afternoon and I have that movie in my mailbox on Thursday. Last week I had my quickest turnaround time ever; I shipped back on Monday, and by Wednesday the next movie was IN MY MAIL BOX.
How does Blockbuster.com compare to the competition?
I have used a few of these online rental businesses, and there are only two that are worth looking at; Blockbuster and Netflix, all the other services have WAY smaller selections, significantly longer turn around time, harder to navigate websites.
The plans are ALMOST identical between the two companies, both have VAST movie selections where Netflix has the lead in titles, Netflix also seems to have more movies in stock of each title as in my two years with Netflix I have never waited more than one skip of my top rated movie where I have had one movie skipping in my queue for over a month with blockbuster; it just says ‘short wait’. Neither of these companies offer adult rated movies nor do they offer videogame rentals, some other online rental groups offer these choices. But when the cookies are all laid out, Blockbuster offers the in store returns, and coupons for in store rentals. If you have a local Blockbuster this should be the deal breaker. Also, I noticed a significant slow down in my delivery rate with Netflix that ultimately only let me rent a total of 3 DVDs a week no matter how fast I returned my disks. I have not dealt directly with the Blockbuster customer service on phone or in email, but I have dealt with the horrible customer service at Netflix, which is why I ultimately left Netflix.
Blockbuster, for me, has been a wonderful experience. The things they need to work on is quantity of there selections, and adding at least videogame rentals to the batch of options.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Online rentas of DVDs
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Epinions.com ID:
akuji
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Reviews written: 29
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