Just received 1/2 of Lawrence of Arabia from Netflix. Yes, 1/2. I received Disc 1 of LOA yesterday. (They did the same thing with Dune.)

I thought that might have been a mistake, but here's the email they send in reply to my inquiry.

Thanks for your message. We've recently decided that we will no longer be shipping multiple-volume titles in the same mailer. Each disc in a multiple-volume set will now be a separate shipment and take a separate spot in your Queue. We have been doing this for most new multi-volume
sets and have now applied this to all of the sets we carry.

We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

This has got to be one of the most lame-brained schemes. They actually expected me to sit through half a movie!

The following is my email response to NetFlix.

This makes no sense at all. So far, I've seen 2 halves of 2 different movies.

How can you split one movie in half? Do you really expect people to view 1/2 a movie?

You're new policy is hair-brained and half baked. Two-disc titles cannot be split. It was sold as a whole and should be rented as a whole. Blockbuster Video certainly does not rent out 2-disc titles one at a time. It's ridiculous, stupid really.

This is just one more half-brained scheme that does not bode well for NetFlix. Already, I've had titles sitting in my queue for months--described previously as out-of-stock, then more recently as long-wait.

To add, injury to insult, you're now sending me half movies. Do you really expect me to pay twice (rent out twice) to see the full versions of Dune and Lawrence of Arabia?

If you review my account, you will see that I've downgraded my membership--no surprise there, considering what's been happening at NetFlix. If you insist on this asinine, half-brained, split 2-disc titles policy, I'll be gone.

By the way, I cannot wait to post this new twist in NetFlix policy on the various DVD forums on the internet. People should know.

Anyone who is still with Netflix can not complain about what they are doing. The warning signs started in September, and there seems like there is something new every week. Get out while you still can.

That is definitely crazy. Call their CS line and complain. Then demand a free month or discount. They'll give you 25% of your next month.

Yeah, not that great, but it is something. I wonder what else Netflix is going to pull?

I got an email informing me of this new policy a couple of months ago. It said that all 2-disc sets in my queue would be split into two separate entries. This never happened, so I didn't know if I'd be getting both discs or not.

When I got my Criterion Carnival of Souls rental, it did turn out to be just Disc 1. And, of course, then, I had no idea how to get Disc 2 in my queue. The next day I removed all double-sets like Fight Club from my list. Not worth it. I'll get those elsewhere.

After 2 days of email, NetFlix agreed to ship Disc 2 of Lawrence of Arabia, but not before first claiming that
"at this time we are not renting either disc of
'Lawrence of Arabia'".

They managed to split Dune into Parts 1 & 2 which must be rented separately.

I've the rest of this month's subscription. Then, it's time to say good riddance.

I thought that Rent My DVD had the same policy from the start?

This is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard...do they think there is anyone in the world who would only want to rent half of a movie?

This is a ridiculous policy. I had to sit on Disc 1 of Dune until Disc 2 shipped. I'm not about to watch half of something and wait who knows how long to watch the second half. It's pretty bad having to eat up two rentals to see one film, too.

I'm still getting my money's worth out of Netflix, but the minute I don't, I'll cancel my membership.

Same thing here - I actualy rented COS for the 2nd disk and I only got 1. I e-mailed them a long time ago and got the "we ship disks seperately." But I don't even think they have the 2nd disk for this movie.

I think they did this so someone dosen't rent the whole 4 disk set of the Sopranos and the X-Files. but movies that actualy span 2 disks should be counted a one movie.

I've always liked Net Flix - I was grandfathered in (they even sent me a nifty 4 movie holder ). But now I wait 4-ever to get a movie.

So guys where should I go to rent movies. I don't want to give my $$ to Bloodsucker - and further thier cause to get studios to price DVDs at the rental price

help

This is just going to get worse, too. New/upcoming releases that are 2-disc editions:

Bounce
Unbreakable
Thirteen Days
Dogma SE (oh wait, they don't stock re-releases)

Has anyone received a response from them about this new policy (which, BTW, I couldn't find the details of anywhere on their site)?

Yeah, I was going to put Bounce in my queue until I saw it was divided into 2 shipments. Got it at Blockbuster instead.

I could have sworn I got an e-mail from them saying that they were stopping this policy. I agree that it is a bad policy.

It isn't enough to convince me to drop membership, though - just enough to convince me to go elsewhere for double disk rentals. I still have found no rental store with as huge a selection for as reasonable a price ($22 for the 8-10 disks a month I rent).

But I have rented from both Cafedvd.com and dvdovernight.com, and have been satisfied. They seem to do a better job than Netflix of keeping new releases in stock. The main drawbacks are that they are more expensive per disk than Netflix (on par with Blockbuster), that you have just one week to watch the films, and that their selections (for the most) aren't as good. I use them to supplement films that Netflix never seems to have in stock.