"Have been long-time Netflix member but decided to try Blockbuster's online DVD service because of the 2 free in-store rentals per month. Service has been awful from the beginning when I joined in November. I live in the Atlanta area and I can barely get 1 movie averaged per week. Most times it is about 8-10 days from the time I sent movie back till I received the next one. A few I received in 4 days. Tried doing a spreadsheet to track send dates, receive dates, etc but it was getting to be too much and the pattern was the same - very slow turnaround times. Started with 2 out at a time, then downgraded it to 1 out at a time just to keep the 2 in-store rentals. Also, have many multiple DVD sets in my queue and they keep sending them out of sequence even though they are 'Available Now'. How can I watch disk 3 before disks 1 or 2? Called customer no-service, when finally got them (sometimes you can get a live person thru phone menu, sometimes not) was told that only series added to queue as a block set will ship in sequence. Well, guess what, many of their series you CANNOT add to your queue as a block set, you have to add each individually. Customer no-service offered no solution when I pointed this out. It is a database problem, THEIRS! Last straw was e-mail I received today notifying me that I will receive disk 3 of 'Berkeley Square', before disk 2, which is at the top of my queue. I've already watched disk 1, and this is my 4th attempt at getting disk 2 (last two times I had to ship back disk 3, eating up about 10 days before I received another disk). Of course, I can't get a live person today on their toll-free number to VENT. Final decision - the 2 in-store rentals are not worth the frustration dealing with Blockbuster. I'm firing them and sticking to Netflix. Thank God I can at least cancel Blockbuster over the Internet!!! "
"I used Blockbuster's mail movie rental service. I had this service for 2 months before I cancelled. Every movie I got from them was scratched and barely watchable. I canceled and a few weeks later I sent the movies back to them. I guess while the movies were in the mail, Blockbuster decided to charge me $60 for those movies. It took me 3 months of email and phone tag for me to get my $60 back from them. Each time I called them, they said the money would be posted back in my account the following business day. After 2 or so weeks of waiting, I had to call them back to find out they had some sort of problem (instead of them calling me back, I had to call them). This went on for 3 months. I finally got my money back in October. I will never do business with them again (and that includes their actual movie rental stores)."
"Quite possibly the worst ever in terms of DVD Rentals..they cant touch Netflix with a flagpole. Blockbuster's DVD rental reeks of incompetence - shoddy response in terms of customer service, cheeky practices to stall regular 'unlimited' service and abysmal handling of rentals in terms of availablity and wait time.
I signed on for this service on Sep 15th, 2005 with a free one month trial to their 3 out at a time unlimited rentals plan. The first two orders of 3 at a time were dispatched and returned on time. And then started the 'throttling'. ALthough I received notice of shipment for 3 dvds, I received only two..the third one arrived two days after the forst two. And in a month, this finally turned out to be a 1 DVD out a time rental because of the erratic shipment and receipt of the DVDs. I understand they try to minimize the 'send out' in order to cut losses or to deal with aggressive customers. But what I describe below amounts to the worst in terms of handling.
On 9/29, I received shipment notice for a DVD titled 'Bulworth'. Two days later I received a movie titled 'High Fidelity' instead of Bulworth. I reported this on their online customer service page and requested that 'Bulworth' be re-sent. But that never happened. I received notice that Bulworth was received and my next DVD from the queue was sent. It took me another email to force them to mail out 'Bulworth'.
Quite often, they do not have any of the movies you put in the queue. The 'short wait' turns to 'long waits' and thus the titles remain in the queue. This as opposed to Netflix where I rarely encounter long waits or delays. There is no point in waiting because the titles never ever make it to dispatch.
During the course of the rental period, I selected and added 'Quick and the dead - Superbit edition' to the queue which as usual had a 'long wait'. After a few days, I clicked on this title in my queue to see that the superbit edition had been replaced with the normal non-superbit version. I had to thus remove it from my queue.
But heres the worst of all. I had enough of their service and so canceled the service on 10/15/2005 at around 7pm (my next billing cycle was to start 10/16/05) I received an email confirming the cancellation. Three days later, I received notice of two more DVDs being shipped. I logged into my account to see that I had been billed on 10/16/05. I called up Customer Service (the number is hidden in their website and is never obvious) and the CSR told me that I had to cancel before 6pm otherwise I would be billed. I asked her where this information was mentioned on the website - she refused to listen to me and went about saying the same thing like a broken record. At one point I lost it and yelled at her only after which, she let me cancel my account.
On 10/18, even after cancelling the service, I received notice of shipment of the original Swedish version 'Insomnia - Criterion Collection' Three days later, I received the American remake of Insomnia and not the Swedish version I had requested.
And thus ended my Blockbuster experience. Netflix is years ahead of Blockbuster, believe me."
"So far so good, i've been with blockbuster for about 10months now and so far everything have been good. The turn around are faster than netflix."
" have been with Blockbuster about 3 months now. When it first started, it was pretty good, had an average movie turn around time of about 5 days. Watch a movie send it back and receive new one for one you sent back in 5 days. When getting 3 out at a time this provided a steady stream of movies.
That was then, and this is now.
Blockbuster over the last month and a half has slowed down, selection has become more limited, many new releases are out, and you get them 2 weeks later than when you wanted them. And forget about kids titles, they are just not in stock. Average turn around time in between 7 and 9 days. now I am lucky if I get to see one or two movies a week from them. The one that I do receive are scratched and dirty and a few have been unplayable.
Customer service just answers with a copy and paste answers from their FAQ page. No real help there. When asked about their turn around time they simply said the mail was slow. So I performed my own test and sent them back on my own dime with delivery confirmation from the US post office. They received the movies back in about a day, however took another 24 or 48 hours to acknowledge there return and reissue new ones. Once they said they sent them out it took 3 days from Pittsburgh Pa to receive. average delivery time from Pittsburgh via USPS is one day. So they are sent out later than they tell you they are sent.
The store coupons, so what they do not have the movies in the stores anyway, so what good are they?
I have just Started netflix, and currently they are sending about 1.5 movies to blockbusters 1. so they are able to deliver at the speed of which Blockbuster is no longer able to maintain.
All items posted here are personal experiences and experiments. your results may vary from mine. And God I hope they do because I am cancelling my membership.
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"I recently just join this online rental. And they suck. I have rent close to 50 DVD w/ this online company. And recently I have a problem w/ them. I rent an anime, Inu Yasha, Vol. 15: Broken Fang. The problem is, I never get the correct disc. I return the disc and request them to resent the correct DVD. They sent the disc out 7 times. 6 out of 7, i got the wrong disc. And the other time, i never receive the disc. This isn't the first time, i didn't receive the DVD i request.
And they don't even have a real customer service. I can't even call them??? I made another request to resend the DVD yesterday(6/4/2005), and instead they ship out the next movie inline. They are ignorance, and didn't want to solve the problem that they have and the frustration that they cause to the customer."
"blockbuster online rental sucks. They give you a priority list and then send you a movie on your list that is number 36 and all the movies are available."