i have the 1 at a time, UNLIMITED monthly plan from blockbuster....i have rented 7 blu-ray movies so far this month. they received my last move "speed blu-ray" and even email me back saying they got it today...yet i dont see any movie is being shiped out on my queue today 2/12/07. i return "speed blu-ray" to a blockbuster store on thurs. 2/8/07. usually when i return a movie...the next business day i would get an email saying a new movie has shipped out.

today is monday and yet i dont see any new email or when i log into my bb account...nothing being ship.

so my question is...is UNLIMITED rental really UNLIMITED? or do they put some type of quotas once u reach a certain limit and u have to wait till next month to start receiving ur new movies in the queue?

Netflix definitely do quotas, but weren't upfront about and, and I think they're actually getting sued. I wouldn't be surprised if Blockbuster does it as well.

i have the 1 at a time, UNLIMITED monthly plan from blockbuster....i have rented 7 blu-ray movies so far this month. they received my last move "speed blu-ray" and even email me back saying they got it today...yet i dont see any movie is being shiped out on my queue today 2/12/07. i return "speed blu-ray" to a blockbuster store on thurs. 2/8/07. usually when i return a movie...the next business day i would get an email saying a new movie has shipped out.

today is monday and yet i dont see any new email or when i log into my bb account...nothing being ship.

so my question is...is UNLIMITED rental really UNLIMITED? or do they put some type of quotas once u reach a certain limit and u have to wait till next month to start receiving ur new movies in the queue?

the store return queue is retardly slow.

i returned pearl harbor on thursday. i just got the confirmation today. (hum same as you).

but when i send it back via mail it actually arrives quicker. Go figure?

i mailed out my last bluray on wed, and i received the next disc on friday

It's called THROTTLING and I guess Blockbuster online is doing it too. In fact, my friend has the blockbuster online service, and already it's PATHETICALLY worse than netflix. Netflix is amazing when you first sign up and they don't throttle the shipments. What a joke.

If the movie has not cleared your queue, you can manually clear it by clicking "Report a problem with this movie -> I have returned this movie and it has not cleared my queue". It will immediately be cleared from your queue, and they will ship out your next movie. I have done this a few times without a problem.

i have the 1 at a time, UNLIMITED monthly plan from blockbuster....i have rented 7 blu-ray movies so far this month. they received my last move "speed blu-ray" and even email me back saying they got it today...yet i dont see any movie is being shiped out on my queue today 2/12/07. i return "speed blu-ray" to a blockbuster store on thurs. 2/8/07. usually when i return a movie...the next business day i would get an email saying a new movie has shipped out.

today is monday and yet i dont see any new email or when i log into my bb account...nothing being ship.

so my question is...is UNLIMITED rental really UNLIMITED? or do they put some type of quotas once u reach a certain limit and u have to wait till next month to start receiving ur new movies in the queue?

Blockbuster is not doing a good job. I cut Netflix because of this return to the store and get free in store rental thing but their level of service stinks compared to Netflix. My recommendation to you is to go into your account online as soon as you get home and report the disc you just turned in as a problem. Put down that you already turned it in but its not registering. They then ask what you want to do and you can just put a mark in the Send Next Movie spot.

My problem with BBO is worse than this. I have the 3 at a time option and I can't get them to send me movies. I keep 20+ movies in my queue, most of which show as available. Many times when I send movies back to them they will register as having been returned, but they just won't ship out any new ones! It's ridiculous and I've complained about it 4 times now, but all I ever get is "for best service, you should keep 30 titles in your queue at all times". I don't WANT 30 titles that they have. I rely on new movies to populate my list, and can NEVER find more than 20 or so that I want. The worst part of it is, there are certain movies they will literally NEVER send me. For instance, I've had "The Omen 2" at the #1 spot in my queue for all of 8 MONTHS now, its shown up as "available" the entire time, and it will not ship. I've complained about this, referencing this very title to the CS reps, and they do NOTHING. Worse yet, any title actually showing up as "Short Delay" or worse will never change status. I've not had this happen yet. Eventually I simply remove them from my list because they just sit there for months (except The Omen 2, that one I'm keeping in there for comic purposes).

I'm so fed up with them. I'm probably going to get my money's worth out of this month and switch back to Netflix. Hopefully they've fixed the throttling issue that hit me bad about 2 years ago.

Just wanted to share my terrible experience with BBO.

I haven't had problems yet. I switch from Netflix to BBO because of the instore trade in.

I sure hope there is no throttling, they should see what's happening to Netflix from doing that.

I'll throw in my 2 cents... Even if you don't get the confirmation e-mail right away of a movie being returned or a movie being sent, there is still stuff going on behind the scenes.

I've had the BBO pretty much since it started. And when I started returning movies to the store, I was thinking "Man, Are they ever gonna say that I returned that movie?" But as I have constantly returned movies to the store I have come to realize they are just really slow in sending notifications.

I have received notification that my movie had been returned, recieved notification that a new movie has been sent, AND actually received that new movie in the mail all on the same day. I don't think I've gotten any less movies each month, and I don't believe they are throttling.

HOWEVER, Blu-ray and HD DVD movies have been harder and harder to get. They also seem to take longer to get to me, because some of them come from a different distribution center.

-Jason

I just signed up with BB and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. I had Netflix before I moved and it was very fast in shipping and sending out new movies. But I have movies waiting for me at home before they even said they shipped. I think their website needs major work. But they do have the in-store exchanges (but no blu-ray at the closest one to me) and I do like the free game rental a month, this way I won't waste $60 on a game.

I've gotten into the Taking-discs-back-on-Tuesday-for-in store-rentals-and-getting-new-movies-in-mail-for-the-weekend routine, BUT they never seem to send the movies I have high in my Q. They really need to add more copies of popular titles.

All 30 of my BD's in queue are available or short wait, and 2 long wait's, no more coming soon or very long waits. 17 of mine are available now. This just happened in the last week, so i think they're more available now.

On two different occasions BBO has sent me lower ranked DVD discs, even though I had an "available" Blu-ray disc listed higher.

I wonder why they sometimes skip over "available" selections.

I can second the experience of RAJay, I often receive the next disc in the mail on the same day they email me telling me the previous disc was received. Their email notifications are out of sync with the rest of their operation.

I've had BBO for about a year now and haven't had any problems with them whatsoever. I have observed that when they first rolled out their Total Access program in my area, that my local store would actually MAIL the disc back (so it wouldn't clear my queue for 2-3 days), but they at least let me immediately rent a new movie. They've since fixed this, so my next queued movie rolls out same-day or next-day.

My hope is that they'll sync their system up so that if I rent a movie from the store, it automagically removes it from my online queue... I've gotten a few duplicates because of that (over 100 movies in my queue).

I am planning to buy the new Panny BD player once it hits retail (this month?), so we'll see how they do with BD movie availability. I have a 4-discs Unlimited plan with 2 free in-store rentals (DVD or video game) on top of that each month for $18. My problem is that I am usually very busy and tend not to be able to watch movies as frequently as I'd like, so sometimes a month goes by w/o me watching a flick, so it's wasting $$$. If Amazon Unbox started offering HD movies, I'd use them instead.

You will be very, very disappointed with both their Blu-ray availability and the speed that they ship.

I return movies on a Friday, they don't ship until Tuesday, and they don't arrive until usually Saturday or later. It literally takes over a week for me to receive my movie from the time I return it to the store. Horrible, horrible response time.

But I have to admit, with the ability to rent a movie on the spot with the returned movie, it's still worth it to me. I am disappointed with the speed of getting the Blu-ray disks, but I just accept that I get about two BD movies per week or so, and my daughter gets 2 DVD's to watch.

If they had any real competition, I'd leave. But since Netflix can't offer the on the spot rental, it's not worth switching.

I don't think they actually email you when it ships out. I got an email at 12am saying my disc shipped, unless there's some post office far far away opened that late

They don't process/send movies over the weekend, so any movie returned in store on Friday will result in waiting until Monday to get a new movie sent.

My problem lately is that they will claim to have shipped a title on Monday, but I won't get the movie for over a week. The first 3 months or so, I was getting all my movies in 2 days. Now out of the 3 movies each week, 2 will take 3 or 4 days, and 1 will take 10-14 days. After 1 week I mark the disc as lost and they do ship another movie, but I eventually get the "lost" movie a few days later. Once, I kind of understand, but 3 weeks in a row now?

Whenever I return anything to the store. I just report on the website that I already returned the disc.

They go ahead and send me something else from the queue.

I just hate that they never go exactly by the queue. It's hard to have a film sent before its sequel.

Alot easier with Netflix.

I stay with BB because I just can't get enough of the in store rentals.

They don't process/send movies over the weekend, so any movie returned in store on Friday will result in waiting until Monday to get a new movie sent.

Yep, its best to return the movie instore on Monday and then you'll likely get the next movie by Thursday. Returning movies on Friday or Saturday won't get you your next movie any earlier than Thursday so you might as well hold them until Sunday night or Monday.

My experience has been the opposite....

For instance last week:

Tuesday:
receive movie 1, movie 2, movie 3
watch movie 1
return movie 1 to store around 10pm

Wednesday
movie 4 ships
watch movie 2
return movie 2 to store around 10pm

Thursday
movie 5 ships
receive movie 4
watch movie 3
return movie 3 to store around 10pm

Friday
movie 6 ships
recieve movie 5
watch movie 4
return movie 4 to store around 10pm

Saturday & Sunday
recieve movie 6
watch movie 5 and 6
return movies 5 and 6 to store

and repeat.... yesterday I received three more movies.


So 12 rentals a week works for me assuming I'm able to watch that many. I live very close to a distribution center however which probably has alot to do with it. I agree the email is not an accurate representation of when the item ships. I've actually received the shipping email after receiving the movie in the mail a couple of times.

I use total access instead of cable so one of my three titles is usually a tv series. I've learned to only put the tv series disc I need next in my queue otherwise they have a tendency to send you three discs from a tv series which is a little overkill for me. The other two are blu-ray titles most of the time.

I found out why even though the top movie in your queue says "Available" that that's not necessarily the title that BB will ship.

Apparently what they do is take the first few titles (I don't remember how many) marked "Available" and search for the titles from multiple different distribution centers. More often than not, they're going to send you the first "available" title that is at the CLOSEST distribution center.

They're more interested (haha, I know) in speed than they are in your queue. At least that was the correspondence I received.

Appreciate the response, but if they are truly that interested in speed, why does it sometimes take two or even three business days to ship after a movie is turned in? Something seems inconsistent.

Not a rant, just trying to understand their motivation.

Appreciate the response, but if they are truly that interested in speed, why does it sometimes take two or even three business days to ship after a movie is turned in? Something seems inconsistent.

Not a rant, just trying to understand their motivation.
Hey, I didn't say I BOUGHT what they're shoveling, I'm just repeating what I was told. :p :)

I've also gotten the same response as JasonAB and it really drives me nuts. If a movie is available, just send it to me. I'm not going to cry about it taking an extra few days because it's coming from further away... the movies in the queue are ordered like that by me for a reason.

I wish I could opt into a "ship first available even if it takes longer" plan.