An observation: Until now I’d been on the 2-at-a-time plan for my Netflix subscription. I’d found that returning movies to Netflix was snappy; they’d email me confirmation of receiving a movie from me the day after I placed it in my mailbox (and I get my mail at about 5pm on weekdays). However getting movies from Netflix usually took much longer – after confirmation of my return, it would be another full day before I got the outbound notice email, and then it took another two days typically for the movie to actually get here.
I just upgraded to the 3-at-a-time plan however and just noticed that I am now getting movies much faster – they reach me the day after I get the outbound notice. It’s only a few dollars more a month but it’s a tremendously faster service. OK, I’m paying more, they are happier, I understand. But my puzzlement about this is that wouldn’t this actually serve to increase my cost to them as a customer? Why make any change at all to my movie priority? I didn’t upgrade for speed, I upgraded because we as a family needed more than just 2 discs at a time (we basically have three people in the house who watch TV).
Watch, now that I’ve pointed this out my movies will take twice as long to arrive 😛
I do highly recommend Netflix as an easy way to stay abreast of both anime and regular movies. They offer a free trial (affiliate link) and the basic, one disc at a time/two rentals a month service is only $5 a month (though I’m paying $17 for three, with unlimited returns and rentals).
I’ve been on the 3 movies at a time plan since I’ve started, and they’ve always been pretty prompt. I put it in the mail one day, get a recieved notice the next day, and usually I also get a sent notice that same day, with the next movie arriving the following day (2 days after I sent it). It’s always worked pretty well. I watch anywhere between 10 and 15 movies a month, with more probably possible… (Plus, I occassionally use the watch online feature…)
FYI, the anti-spam math answer image isn’t showing up for me. I’m putting in an answer in the hopes that it’s the same answer every time:)
Ok, now it’s showing up. Go figure. But it looks like I got it right anyway…
it’s a problem with the cache – Peter (the plugin author) sent me some instructions on fixing it, I’ll hopefully get around to it soon. But yeah, it’s always the same number 🙂
I havent yet used the watch online thing. Is it effective? I assume the selection is highly limited?
They were prompt more or less for me, but since we divide the stream it’s a mess of accounting and in the end I still wait forver for each next DVD. We hold them enough to escape throttling.