Blockbuster vs Netflix

[magik]

The state of New Jersey is suing Blockbuster now over it's misleading "No Late Fees" policy. Regardless, I dig Netflix. They were the first, and I like the idea of supporting an internet entrepreneur rather than a large corporation.

Any info on this lawsuit?

[firebud]

NetFlix.

Close shipping facility, and only recieved two damaged discs. Great service. (Y)

[oldaccount1]

I hope he's made his decision by now; this thread was posted in February of 2005! :)

[h3xis]

on the topic of netflix/blockbuster, what are the financial options? i assume that you can pay through credit card, but what i really want is a bill sent to me every month. does atleast one of them have this option?

[kjordan2001]

on the topic of netflix/blockbuster, what are the financial options? i assume that you can pay through credit card, but what i really want is a bill sent to me every month. does atleast one of them have this option?

Here's what Netflix says on billing in the mail:

Q: Can I pay with a check or be billed in the mail?

A: At this time we are unable to accommodate traditional check-in-the-mail payments, money orders or purchase orders.

We do accept debit cards issued from Visa or MasterCard, and all major credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover).

You can also pay through a checking account.

I just looked through Blockbuster and looks like it's the same: Credit card or e-check.

[Twisted.Raven]

It seems netflix is getting slower, when I was on my free trial about 2 months ago It took a day to get the movies and two days for them to recieve them, now it takes them 2 to 3 days for me to recieve them and 4 to send them back. :rolleyes:

[Trev19]

Where do i find the closing Distribution Center from Grafton, OH 44044 West of Cleveland, OH.. for Both Companies?

[Nand]

Side Question: For Blockbuster can't you also just bring the DVD's back at a local location?

[digipoi]

Tried Blockbuster and received two DVDs in their 2 week period and majority of the original DVDs I placed in my queue were never available. They also didnt send me the ones that were available in order. It was really odd. I guess I felt the wrath of no distro center in Honolulu.

Netflix has been good to me. They have alot of music DVDs, much more than Blockbuster at the time I tried which was sometime last September. The animations seemed to be better at Netflix too. Ive only received two broken disks so far but they send replacements right away.

[quigley0]

I've never had a single issue with netflix, and, I dont want to support blockbuster at all. Just a personal thing I guess. :)

[Jeffbert]

i was thinking about signing up for either new Blockbuster online rental or Netflix.

with Blockbuster

its 14.99 a month

3 movies at a time

2 free monthly in store rentals

with Netflix

its 17.99 a month

3 movies at a time

is there anything else i should be aware of? which is better?

any one know where the distribution centers are?

I originally posted this in Blockbuster and Netflix settle patent battle thread, but it seems more appropriate here:

I use both Netflix and Blockbuster online, mainly for the greater variety that I enjoy with both. However, Netflix has proven itself superior in several ways:

1. Netflix has more distribution centers than Blockbuster. I had lived in Gaithersburg, MD, which had distribution centers for both. At that time, I could put both a NF & BB disc in the mail on Monday, & Tuesday, both discs were received by their respective companies. On Weds, I would very often have new discs from both. But, since moving to Hanover, PA, only Netflix has maintained that level of service. NF has a distribution center in Harrisburg PA, while BB's closest one is in Gaithersburg, which takes 2 days to mail to or from there to here. Thus, it takes a whole week to turn around one disc. That is, for BB to mail it to me, 2 days, I watch it, 1 day, I mail it back, 2 more days, total= 5 days=1 business week. BB Total Access helps little, if any, because I already have 100s of titles in my queues, why would I want to take time to find something in the store, whose selection is only a tiny fraction of the online service? If I merely return the disc in the store, but do not exchange it for an in-store rental, there is still no difference in the speed of service.
   
2. Netflix updates the availability of discs more often. Why, oh, why, does the BB Queue indicate that a certain disc at the very top is available, but never sends that disc?
   
3. Netflix lists all the discs it offers in a series, BB does not. I like anime, & most are series. If I search both NF & BB for the same series, both may indicate availability. But only NF will say how many & which discs it offers in that series. I have so often clicked [add series] on BB, only to learn that only disc 3 of a 5 disc series is even offered by BB.
   
4. Netflix lists separate titles that are in a series numerically. BB makes me look elsewhere to see which disc is 1st, 2nd, etc.
   
5. Netflix has customer reviews for nearly all titles, Blockbuster has very few.
   
6. Netflix also offers online viewing. 1 hour /month for every $1 I pay per month. With my broadband internet, I can watch full-screen movies. True, foreign films are only dubbed in English, there are neither subtitles, nor extras, as there might be if I actually had the disc, but there are trade-offs to everything. True, the selection is currently rather small, but give it time.
   

I do not doubt that Blockbuster will eventually overcome these problems. But because its main business is the store rentals, it is in no hurry to do so. BB even sent me a questionare about it service, & I named a few of these shortcomings. That was 6 months ago, and there is no sign of improvement. I expect that long before BB corrects these flaws, NF will have expanded its selection enough that I will simply drop BB.

BB was content to rent DVDs from its stores; stores that offered very small selections. Dozens of copies of the latest movies, a half-decent selection of classics, some action, Westerns, etc, but if I wanted Plan 9 from Outer Space, I had to buy it. Netflix came along, and offered those obscure titles and the popular ones also. True, you had to wait for the mail, but there was no rush to return before late fees. Once BB realized there was $ to be made online, it tried (feebly) to muscle-in on NF.

Thus, I have >400 titles in my Netflix queue, and only about 90 in my Blockbuster queue. If I make no more additions, I suspect the Netfix queue will reach zero not much later than the BB Q will. I much prefer Netflix, but as mentioned already, BB does offer a few titles that NF currently does not.

#7.1 Posted by Jeffbert on 05 Jul 2007 - 23:39

I must add that while NF has sent a few discs that stopped playing in the middle of the movies, I have received about 800 discs from NF, and this is a very small percentage of non-working discs. However, lately, I have been able to play most any disc on one or more of my 3 DVD drives. Some scratches are problems for one drive, but not the other. I rarely watch discs on a player, but rather, use a PC or laptop for over 99% of viewing.

I also own a few discs that are brand new, but still will not play on my JVC DVD player, they worked fine on the PC's DVD drive, though. I had contacted the disc manufacturers about these problems, and was told that they checked and found that those titles simply would not work on that player. Having been in Electronics, I know that they simply cannot fix all the bugs without making the products too expensive. However, with borrowed discs, I would think that problems are far more often caused by scratches, than by quirks in the encoding process that just happen to mesh with bugs in the players.

BB has not only sent discs that did not play all the way to the end, but has even send a few broken discs. Not only cracked, but broken clean through from the rim to the hub. Even 1 that was in two pieces. How can they handle these broken discs without realizing that they are broken? Moreover, BB is notorious for sending the wrong disc. Just today, I went to play one that I just received, only to notice that it was not the disc I wanted. Not even the sleeve to the disc I had ordered! This has happened more than a few times even since I reopened my account with BB. However, I must, in fairness add that these broken discs were shipped from BB's Gaithersburg Maryland distribution center.

Nevertheless, as NF makes all its $ in online rentals, it cannot afford and does not tollerate such things as cracked discs. BB only makes a fraction of its $ in online rentals, so it can afford to lose a few customers who are tired of this.

I need to add a few more things:

1st, my favorite genre is anime; this may account for the higher number of unplayable discs I receive, as children and teenagers seem to be the main consumers of this genre, and they apparently take very poor care of these discs. I have had very few, if any, problems with discs in other genres, whether borrowed from NF or BB, although, I still rate NF much higher in satisfaction in other and in fact, all genres I have borrowed. I just cannot recall any specific problems with non-anime borrowed from either NF or BB.

2nd, I tried AnimeForest.com! for a while. Although it claimed that it had the best selection of anime, I still found NF to have more titles (at that time, about early 2006). Moreover, AnimeForest.com! had only 1 distribution center, which was in California. So, it took 2 whole weeks to turn around just 1 disc. 4-5 days to ship it to me, 1 day to wath, and another 4-5 days to ship it back to CA (from MD). I had terminated BB during this time, having been lured by the claim of the biggest selection of anime. However, I found the service was not worth the money, so I went back to BB. I retained NF all along, and never even considered terminating it.

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Edited July 6, 2007 by Jeffbert

[I am Reid]

I had netflix, it was great for like the first two months. Then it turn to ****, after you would rent x amount of movies in a month, for some odd reason it would take 4-5 days for the movie to go from her(columbus, oh) to there(dayton, oh), this is about a 45 minute drive at the most, and the same coming back, hmmm. Sure enough though, next month they would come nice and quick, but then near the middle to the end of the month they start to get slow again. So obviously they were holding dvd's becuase they wernt making money on my subscrition anymore by the end of the month, which I found to be a pretty bad business practice. So now I switched to blockbuster, and now if somehow it takes nearly two weeks again to get movies I can just drive to the store and get one if I really wanted to.