Blockbuster BD rental discussion thread - Page 107

I tried the principle thing for while but realized I was going to the store every week to get new releases, when they had them, and paying for the online service. About the only good thing going at BB is, since they were buying their BD disc retail, when you buy a used disc it is the full version. I now use Redbox more than any of them, it just requires more planing.

Well, I had originally planned to just sit out the BR by mail until after basketball season was over but got sucked into the 30 day free trial from netflix once they made it easier to set up the mail only accounts with no extra gyrations. I'm not quite two weeks into my first paid month and I bumped the plan up to 3 BR at a time as soon as the trial month ended. Here in PDX my turn around time has been three days on every disc I've received; one mail day return, one day processing, and one mail day sending the new disc out. For some reason our dist center is in a town 60 miles away that's a far smaller metropolitan area. If it were right here in town I suspect the turnaround might be one or two days max.

Up until yesterday they had always sent me the top disc in my queue. When I saw that they had skipped over one and shipped the second disc for the first time yesterday I went, "Hmmm, here we go...", but instead to my surprise I got a completely unprompted email this morning with this message:

Attachment 242788

After the ongoing frustration I had had with BB practice of not shipping any discs from non-local dist centers, I almost fell out of my chair!

While I had a local store nearby and BB was shipping titles out regularly they were a pretty decent option for me, since I was not a high volume user and I really liked the in-store exchanges. Once the stores all closed and their availability dropped off it just became kind of pointless for me. It's too bad it came to that but so far the NF option seems like it will fine, and results in a great deal less angst.


ron

I don't think there is any way NF could have less than a 3 day turnaround

1) Mail Disc Back .. Day 1
2 ) They get disc / send another .. Day 2
3) You get the disc .. Day 3

I live within 60 miles of a distr. center, that's how mine runs on non-holiday / non-weekend schedule .. my sister lives within 5 miles of a distr. center and gets exactly the same turnaround ..

That could be. I thought I had remembered a friend telling me that he got his discs in two days but I could easily be mistaken on that...


ron

That would be tough ..

My worry is with the postal issues / cutbacks / we'll start seeing longer delivery times in the future .. I do an average of 8 BD's a month on the one-out plan .... so it's a great value at about a buck a disc and no drive time / gas ..

Yeah, the logistics would seem prohibitive.. It does appear that the discs are "received" automatically when they are scanned at the receiving PO, since I've been getting most of my notification emails sent out in the wee hours of the morning. But I guess it would still be tough to make a delivery that same day even within the same city. I'll have to ask him about it. Maybe I misunderstood or he wasn't counting the first day when throwing it in the mail...


ron

Isn't that two days? I put the disc in the mail before the 5PM pickup. The next morning Netflix receives my disc and ships it later that day. I receive the next disc the next morning. Less than 48 hours after putting my return in the mailbox I already have the next disc in my queue. This is the pattern for me 95% of the time.

I call it 3 calendar days .. you get the next disc on the 3rd day ..

R11, thats pretty good what NF did for you. You didn't even have to contact them. You think BB would do this, but they don't. I get the sense that even BB's systems are not nearly as up to date as what NF uses.

It covers three calendar days but they aren't full days. Especially since I will have another disc in my hands less than 48 hours after putting one in the mailbox.

Honestly, you're both right.

The best description for their time frame for most customers would probably be "within 3 business days". Not three calender days and not the time on the clock that calculates to 3 days. It's the business idea of 3 days.

In other words, if you count sending out during normal business hours, them checking it in during normal business hours on the second day and you receiving it within normal business hours on the third day, it's occurring within 3 days, even though the total hours from you sending it back to you getting a new one in your box may only take 48 hours.

Lol. My "hang in there, baby" tee has been freshly laundered, and the Gremlin is gassed are ready to roll. I returned two movies to BB Saturday morning. We'll see if I'm ripping up the asphalt or stuck at a stop sign with vapor-lock.



I still have not used Redbox yet. Nice to have that option if my Gremlin continues to get vapor-lock.

I put my Blockbuster account on hold for a couple months, but I decided to rejoin three weeks ago. The first two weeks were great, I was turning around titles quickly, I would receive the movies one day after they ship, and they would receive my returns one day after I sent mine (on Saturday, it would clear the same day). Around 12 movies watched during the those two weeks.

Then suddenly this past week, the well went dry. The movie I mailed yesterday hasn't cleared today, not unusual, but disappointing. The movie I mailed on Saturday still hasn't cleared, that is annoying. The movie that I mailed on Thursday last week hasn't cleared my queue, now what in the heck is going on!? I tried to report the Thursday movie as not cleared so as to get something to ship, but the system won't let me yet, it looks like I have to wait another day. Good Friday perhaps has something to do with an added delay, but the movies should have arrived already, the return mailing address is all of maybe 3 miles from my home.

I'm getting the same senario .. and Good Friday / Easter weekend was regular Postal delivery .. really should have not effected the turn a round time ..

They have not checked in any of the 3 discs I mailed back over the weekend. They should've received all of them by now. I mailed some NF discs at the same time and those have been checked in.

This is odd, but all three movies just cleared my queue sometime this afternoon. Normally a returned movie will clear the queue between 6am and 7am.

Looks like I'm in vapor lock. Blockbuster received two movies yesterday (Monday) morning. Over 24 hours later and they still have not shipped anything out. This irks me a bit.

This has been the pattern with my Q in the last few weeks as well .. even though I have movies that show no wait ..

It's becoming absurd now. I decided to try Redbox tonight. The Redbox is in the grocery store. So the wife gives me a list. Wouldn't you know it, Redbox is out of the title I want and now I just spent $70 on groceries. Thanks Blockbuster. For not shipping my movie in a timely fashion, not only do I not have the movie, I'm out $70. Keep up the good work, guys (sarcasm).

Here's my queue. I pay for three movies out at a time. I might as well crumple up a $20 and throw it out my car window going down the highway.

I got an email for a free month offer if I reactivated my account but I'm sad to see here that the service is still bad(which is why I cancelled in the first place). I like renting videogame and movie discs from the same place but I won't be keeping my subscription past the free month if it still has bad service.

I just looked. I see I got the same offer. But they are still having the same issues that made me leave. They are going to have to do alot better than one free month if they want to entice me to return.

Free is great, especially when you actually get something .. .. BB is to the point where they should be paying the customer to come back ..

Hey Wabo,
Go to the Redbox website and search for the movie in your area, it will give you a list of locations with the movie you want. I got an email from BB wanting me back also, no thanks.

Waboman, I'm not sure how many movies you have in your queue, but I have over 100, and what was happening before I had suspended my account was that they were never shipping me new releases, I would have empty spots in my movies out queue on Monday, and the new releases (that used to ship on Monday) would go from Availability Date, to Unavailable, to Available, to Very Long Wait, in the span of maybe two days. Some would stay as Unavailable. I just wasn't able to get any new releases week after week, after having success for multiple years.

I was having some decent luck the first two weeks since reactivating my account, getting new releases from the past couple months that I had missed along with some fresh new releases.

But this past week, Blockbuster has reverted back to the old self. They held onto the three movies that I returned for several days so I didn't get any movies shipped to me for the past week. Finally this morning they are shipping three movies to me, 2 of which are below spot 30 in my queue, bypassing over a dozen available titles, and another dozen short waits. I arrange my queue to maximize the movies I will receive, I stack the top with available and short wait titles, so to reach the middle of my queue to send me movies, they skip a lot of available titles.

Up until putting my account on hold at the end of last month, I've had good luck with my BB account. I was arranging my queue with unavailable titles at the top, then very long wait, long wait, short wait and finally available titles.

I always returned my titles to the store and tried to return them before the store closed, rather than the next morning. As long as title gets checked in before the store closes, another title would be sent out the next (business) day.

Unfortunately, I very rarely got titles that were in wait status, but at least they would (mostly) send the available titles that were highest in my queue. There were a couple of titles that were available and continually passed over. Based on reports here, those may be titles that were not available at my local distribution center.

I'm beginning to think the wait status' are not accurate by any means or standards. Everyone here has been skipped over available titles and were sent something at the bottom of their queues. The status on the movies must be either some general estimation across all US distribution centers or their systems are out of whack and need to be upgraded. If I were to guess, I think its a mixture of both.

I think it's more likely that Blockbuster, like the honey badger, doesn't give a $hi+.

The Darkest Hour is sitting in my queue as Available as well since Tues. and I only have 1 at Home. BB can't ship any other movies in my queue cause its all future stuff. Don't know if this Bluray movie has any distr. problems but my store says they have 2 copies...The one I already have at home is one I purposely ordered just to do an exchange in the store in case crap like this happens (and it seems to happen every week). The store is the only thing keeping this acct open. Ordering another 'bogus' movie now in case I have to go to the store next week and pick up Mission Impossible ...

jidelite

I have been trying them out with three at a time. After a couple of weeks my queue had a half dozen or more available titles (dozen or so short/long wait) and I only had one title shipped for several days. I called up to question what was going on and their excuse was that available meant it was simply available somewhere in the country or for a moment in time. It wasn't related at all to my distribution center so in actuality it means nothing.

Since they have closed the three closest stores to me the in-store exchange is worthless. Which was pretty much the only thing they had going before. Also, quite a few of the titles I have been looking at are available only on DVD. TV series and features like the Bourne trilogy.

I vote for Q's actually meaning nothing and BB could care less ..