Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by artemis on May 30, 2002 at 10:06:59

In Reply to: Netflix - Lost DVDs posted by TA on April 05, 2002 at 08:48:34:

I used to be netflix's biggest fan. I evangelized them all over the place. I encouraged numerous friends to use them. I signed up with them in Jan of 2000. Shipping times were good, and I usually got what I was interested in without having to wait too long. At the time, I lived in Chicago, and we frequently had discs lost in the mail, in both directions. Sometimes multiple times with the same title. Back then they weren't in serious loss-prevention mode. We moved to California 9 months later, and had less problems with things getting lost in the mail, but it still happened around 5% of the time. By then, the price had gone up a lot, and the availability of new titles was dismal. We were going to blockbuster sometimes if we really wanted to see something. A few times, other cutomer's DVD's were "stuck" to mine, I would unstick them, put them in the mail, and think "poor joe in NY must be wondering where his movie is". Then, all of a sudden, the DVD's stopped coming, but we were still being charged our monthly fee. We were eventually sent a form e-mail, saying that our account had been suspended because we clearly lived in a "high-risk" area. But if we paid X amount of $$, they would be happy to reinstate us. We were pissed, we explained the situation, that we had moved so it couldn't be our location, and in any event, it isn't legal to discriminate like that. (my husband was fairly certain that you couldn't refuse to provide mail order service to customers in select areas like that). We said that if their problematic mailing practices were going to result in our being accused of stealing, we would have no choice but to leave. They said fine, but we couldn't leave unless we paid the money. We said we didn't steal anything, if we had, we would have stolen Fight Club and Sex and the City (which were rented and returned) and not the Red Violin (twice) or the other movies that had gotten lost. And we would leave but we wouldn't pay, because we hadn't done anything wrong, the member agreement when we signed up did not include any provisions of this nature, and it couldn't be changed without us getting a chance to leave. Finally, we were allowed to leave and they refunded our fee from the month htat we had been unknowingly suspended. The whole thing left a bad taste in our mouths. Sometimes I miss the value, the convenience, the lack of late fees. I hate Blockbuster, but Blockbuster never accused me of being a thief. And I remember how annoying it got that nothing I wanted to see ever seemed to be available. And how annoying it was that everything always got lost in the mail. It really made me lose confidence in the post office.