DVD Rental
I signed up with BLOCKBUSTER Online this last June. The service is great! You can rent all the DVDs you want (3 at a time) and they are delivered right to your door with a postage-paid envelope for returning them after you watch the movie. There’s a special introductory price of $9.99 for the first month, then you pay $14.99 per month until you cancel the service.
They have over 40,000 titles in stock [many times more than a video rental store] and the selections include modern favorites, classic cinema, television shows, children’s programming, music concerts, health and fitness workouts, and the hottest new releases.
When you sign-up for BlockBuster Online DVD rental, you add as many selections as you want to a rental "queue" and the selections are sent out in the order you’ve chosen. If a particular selection isn’t available immediately, the next available selection is sent.
NetFlix was the first online dvd rental service and still the most popular, but BlockBuster Online is agressively chasing after them. In particular, BlockBuster Online is offering lower pricing, special in-store monthly offers, and coupons for free in-store dvd or game rentals [see a sample of the BlockBuster Coupons here].
I encourage all movie fans to Try BLOCKBUSTER Online DVD Rental at $9.99 for the first month (the lowest price in the industry!) or check out this Comparison of DVD Rental Services I put together after signing up with Blockbuster. And don’t forget the Internet Movie Database web site for the most detailed information on movies, actors, directors and movie production.
July 7th, 2005 at 10:47 am
After three weeks renting DVDs with BlockBuster Online, I’m amazed at how fast they register my returned videos. I’m starting to pay closer attention because it almost appears as though they’re connected up with the United States Postal Service such that when the return envelope gets scanned at a sorting facility, they can retrieve that information and then treat the movie as though it’s already returned.
My distribution facility is one state away; I’m in the Hudston Valley of New York, and the DVDs I rent come from Stamford, CT, so mail is likely to move quickly between those locations, but last night I dropped off two films around 4pm, and by 9am this morning they were recorded as returned when I checked the BlockBuster Queue.
Anyone else have some experiences to contribute? This is sure faster than the service I was getting with NetFlix last year, and their distribution center was just a town away from the BlockBuster facility I’m serviced by.
July 11th, 2005 at 10:19 am
This weekend was a bad one for my DVD renting. BlockBuster sent me two movies towards the end of last week, one was the wrong movie for the envelope (envelope was correct, movie was wrong), the other — Motocycle Diaries about Che Guevera’s diaries — was unwatchable. In the latter case, I got about three chapters in, then after attempts to fast forward past the bad spot, ended up having to jump forward by chapter, and after three chapters just gave up. Looking at the business side of the DVD, it looked as though it had spent some time on somone’s driveway.
So I’ll be writing to BlockBuster Online’s customer service to request some kind of compensation. I recognize that mistakes happen (though how hard is it to slide a disk from the envelope and compare the title to the sleeve before restocking it??) so no biggie, but this diminishes the value of my subscription when 3+ days of movie rentals are lost due to faulty product. I’ll post their responses here when I receive them.
July 12th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Follow-up to the previous comment. So I got a bad batch of movies last week but I didn’t get around to bitching and demanding compensation as I had planned. Nonetheless, I’m quite happy with the outcome.
I used BlockBuster Online’s facility for reporting problems (lost DVDs, unplayable movies, wrong envelope, etc.), I reported the problems with both DVDs, and was provided an option to either resend the faulty movie or have them send the next item in my queue. I chose to have both movies resent which immediately took the two bad ones out of my checked-out list, and today (the next day!) I received two new DVDs.
So far I still think it beats NetFlix’s service. Go give BLOCKBUSTER a try. It don’t cost much…
July 18th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
I just found some confirmation that in some cases, BlockBuster Online knows about your DVD movie return before physically receiving the DVD. In a Boston Globe article from June 26, 2005, was this excerpt:
More BlockBuster Online Pricing and Features can be found at that link.