flagrantdisregard

When I heard that Blockbuster was getting into the online video rental business, my first thought was “it’s about time.” Now that I’ve tried it, I think they should have waited a little longer to build up their warehouse network. With online rentals, one of the most important factors, possibly even more important than selection or availability of titles, is delivery time. When you order a video online, you don’t want to wait too long to get it. I think two days is the limit. Slow delivery severely limits the maximum number of videos you can rent in a month, reducing the value of the monthly subscription. Blockbuster has a decent selection and the web site functions well — no worse than its competitors — but their delivery time to my home was terrible.

I signed up for their free trial and ordered three videos Sunday night (Hellboy, My Neighbor Totoro, and The Company). The very next day, Monday, I received an email stating that all three of my videos had shipped. Then I received my first selection on Wednesday, my second DVD on Thursday, and I didn’t receive the third one until Friday! How could that have happened? I’m guessing that they came from three different warehouses and none of them were very close to my house. I suppose if you are closer to one of their warehouses you might get better service. But if I’m right and these DVDs came from different warehouses then you might have the same problem since you can’t be close to all of them.

With Netflix, on the other hand, I always had my rentals by the second day and sometimes the very next day after I ordered them. Wal-Mart’s delivery time for me was also better than Blockbuster’s but not as consistently good as Netflix. You’d think that Blockbuster would put their best effort forward for free trial users to convince them to become paying members. Even with the offer of two free in-store rentals a month in addition to online rental for $20, the slow delivery time makes this a bad deal.

All three services are virtually identical and they each offer a free trial. I recommend you try all of them to find out which one has the best delivery time to your area before you become a paying member.

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