Netflix stole my girlfriend and fucked my dog.

Yeah, I actually heard about all this before I signed up, and I was vaguely considering going with the competition (greencine.com, for example). And I will definitely say that I regularly have movies ship the day after they receive my earlier one, and sometimes take up to 3 or 4 days to arrive after that (predicted by Netflix, I will say). They claim this is because they have to ship it in from another location where they actually have the movie. Maybe, I dunno. It seems suspicious. But here's the thing: even at the slower rate they beat out local rental stores in price, and they're so far ahead on selection for the movies I actually want to see (and they're almost always in for me) that it's not even funny. No rental store in my area even *has* more than one or two series of anime on DVD and perhaps a movie or two. Most of them (Blockbuster, say) have none at all. Sure, everybody has, say, the Sopranos. Very few have things like Carnivale or Penn & Teller's Bullshit!.

And greencine.com isn't really an option for me. Netflix has warehouses everywhere, including one right here in town. Greencine is a strictly CA operation at the moment and given the choice between usually one day each way, with occasional one day delays and three day shippings, and consistent 3 day each way shipping (if not 4), I will pick the former. Those of you who actually live nearby might consider it, however.

Incidentally, that's been my issue with Gamefly. It's not like I need games as quickly and often as I do movies, but I'm getting a consistent week and a half or more turnaround time, which is outrageous.
It can't be any sort of Netflix-style discrimination, 'cause I've been known to keep games from Gamefly for 3 or 4 months straight. That's hardly the kind of high turnover customer that'd cause profitability problems.

well, the do lose money on folks like me, I can't blame them for wanting to keep me from screwing them.

I would be curious to see how the algorithm works in practice. We get our movies really quickly and are pretty steady customers and couldn't be happier. But it's easy to imagine people who genuinely are abusing the service and so this kind of throttling may serve to slow them down. You know there have to be people out there who rent 3 movies, copy them as soon as them come out the door and get them back into the mail immediately - some even dropping them in a post office box the very same day the get them. In that case, I can see why Netflix would want to give preference to people who are using the service in an expected manner.

Strange, never heard of this. I'm on their 5-at-a-time plan and though I don't rotate through them all that fast, it rarely ever takes more than 2 days from sending on in to receiving its replacement. No complaints from me.

wll blah! that explaina whole lot!

i think "how netflix fucks you over" is a bit absurd.

While it makes "logical" sense that they would slow down people's renting by slowing the delivery it's a poor business practice. This sort of supposed abuse where people copy movies and send them back the same day should have been built into their business plan. They should have expected to lose money on X percent of customers and priced their service accordingly.

Honestly, this is just the foregrounding of a shoddy pricing scheme, and, instead of being morons, they should adjust prices, not screw over loyal customers on the service end just in order to keep new customers happy and costs down.

Again, the devil is in the details. Depending how the system works in practice instead of in speculation, as is being stated here it may be that legitimate users are not effect. That the people who are engaging in abusive practices are the only ones that get hurt. Personally, our movies get back to their distros and out back to use in 24 hours each way. I would imagine that for a vast majority of users this policy doesn't effect quality of service at all.

Thank god for good independent video stores.

I make a point of trying to watch my Netflix movies the day they come in and shipping them back the next day. I'd hardly consider that abusive, and I guarantee you I don't consistently get 1-1 shipping, even though the warehouse is only a couple dozen miles away at the most.

Agreed that it may not affect all subscribers. But (as I'm lazy and won't check) I doubt there is a policy against returning the movies the same day. And, furthermore, to prove a customer has a quick turn-around is not a way to prove a customer's abuse. Also, NetFlix, if it engages in this practice of slowing down users, has an obligation to publicly announce on their site or in the terms of service that it will be "throttling" certain subscribers based on high rental frequency.

The company is engaging in deceptive business practices if this is actually going on. To draw a parallel, wouldn't you be pretty pissed if you went for "all you can eat" and after your second plate the restaurant said, "I'm sorry, you're filling up your plate to frequently. You'll have to wait 20 minutes until we let you get more food." How is this NetFlix situation any different?

Damn straight! I remember getting a free digital watch when my family was the 56th customer to sign up at our local place. The owner's know the whole family and our membership number. I've been going there since 1990-1.

I might add the only reason they keep their heads above water now is making the store twice as big and using the new 1/2 strictly for renting porno. It's just ridiculous when Blockbuster is GIVEN shelves upon shelves of new releases and every one of the indie shops can only justify buying 1-2 copies as new to rental videos are upwards of 100 a piece. (Think about how many thousands of dollars a place like Blockbuster isn't spending.)

At the risk of over-dramatizing this thing, doesn't this type of business practice remind you of something the Bush Administration would do? It's sneaky, dishonest, and yet they justify it with all kinds of business-speak and don't seem to give a shit whether it's wrong.

I'm actually gonna cancel my subscription. 'Cause when I get home from work on a night when when I'm planning to do nothing but drink beer and watch a movie that was supposed to be there the day before, and it's still not there, what the fuck am I paying them for?

If there's one thing more obnoxious as a consumer than getting bad service, it's getting bad service on purpose.