I was a Netflix member for several months before switching to Blockbuster back in January. Blockbuster offered really sweet deal. It solved my major problem with Netflix, and gave me more movies, more often. All for the same price.
My major problem with Netflix is that my apartment building doesn’t have an outgoing mail box. To send mail, we leave it on top of our inbox, for everyone to see. I had a neighbor that liked to open my Netflix envelopes to see if he wanted what I had rented. I would find empty envelopes, torn apart. Driving to the post office, or the nearest drop box was inconvenient.
Blockbuster lets me return videos to the store. And I can get new movies instantly. When they scan my envelopes, the cost of the movie rental is deducted from my receipt, and I walk out of the store with 3 new videos, free of charge. And the best part is that they mail me 3 new ones the next day (even before my envelopes reach the warehouse). So I end up with 6 videos to watch that week. I make it a point to go to the local Blockbuster every weekend.
So everything is great, right? Well, no. Blockbuster, it seems, introduced the basically unlimited store rentals at the same price as Netflix as a teaser, to get people to switch. Recently, some changes have been made.
First, their pricing schema now reflects how many videos you can get from the store. The purely-by-mail option is actually a $1 cheaper than Netflix, I assume because they do not offer instant movie downloads, like Netflix does. But the in-store exchanges have raised the price significantly. For $1 more than Netflix, you can get 5 in-store exchanges per month. For $7 more than Netflix, you can get unlimited in-store rentals, like they started offering from the beginning for the same price as Netflix.
I still wanted the unlimited store rentals, so I started paying $24.99 each month for that privilege. So basically, they raise the price 39% , and I get nothing. Same service as always.
Except it’s not the same. Recently, I’ve noticed that the warehouse has been waiting to receive my envelopes before they send me the next movie in my queue. This was NOT advertised at all. The main advantage to returning the movies to the store was that the store told blockbuster.com to mail me my new movies instantly. Not 2 days later!
So, the 39% price hike was for a service that, in fact, was less than what I signed up for.
I think I might switch back. Instant downloads are starting to sound pretty cool.
