What do you like and dislike about online DVD renting? Post it here as I am doing some research. What are the pluses and minuses of Netflix and the other rental sites? What do they do right and what do they do wrong?

[Edited by LARRY64 on 04-11-01 at 01:48 PM]

I only use Netflix so I can only comment on that. I think the problems people have been having w/ them are:

- They only offer the marquee program now I believe. So individual rentals or the Flixpak they used to sell are no longer an option

- Steadily increasing the price and lowering of the max. # out. When I started the marquee program it was ~$15 for 4. Now I'm paying ~$20 for 3

- Some people have had a problem w/ turn around times. You send a movie back and it sits forever as still being out or declared delayed. Thereby keeping the actual number of DVDs you have in your possesion even lower than the # you've signed up for.

- For awhile I was having a BIG problem of movies showing up broken or getting lost on the return trip. The latter has mostly gone away since using the marquee program. The former however is still a problem.

- They have now broken up multidisk DVD it to actual seperate rentals. For example I had Longitude in my queue and DVD1 shipped about a week ago. DVD2 was listed as "long wait" in the queue, but I just received a notice that it did in fact ship yesterday.

- Some people have complained about the vague terms used in the queue; "short wait", "long wait" etc. Personally this one doesn't bug me.

- While I like the new packaging I'm constantly forgetting to peel off the shipping label to expose the return address. This means easily 1/2 the movies I ship back to them end up coming back to me again I'm probably the only one w/ this problem


So now you are probably asking why I stick w/ them given all the problems.

- $20/mn for a constant stream of "new" movies is still worth it to me. Dealing w/ the queue really isn't that annoying IMHO. I'll fill it up occasionally and let things filter to me as the may. If you are looking for a specific movie at a specific time you probably won't like it. If you are looking for any of a selection of movies at any time it's helpful.

- It's easier to deal w/ DVDs in the mail than driving to the rental store and working that whole deal. Not to mention they have a much better selection than any of the local rental places.

The biggest issues I've had in the past have been turnaround times. They'll send me a DVD, and it takes 3 days to get to me. I send it back, and after a week of waiting I mark it as delayed. Then, 2 hours later I get confirmation that it has arrived. This has happened often. Once I did it on 2 titles that had shipped out on 2 different days. According to Netflix they both oddly arrived 45 minutes after marking both as being delayed.

I like being able to fill up a queue with movies I want to see and just having them sent. I haven't had any problems not getting new releases, just the opposite. They've got a much better selection than any rental store around and on average I get enough to work out to $2 or so each, so it's cheaper than renting, with no late fees!

I watch a lot more movies than I normally would. On a Wed night I generally don't consider going to BB or HV to rent a movie that may or may not be in. With Netflix, I don't have to worry about it, there's usually at least one waiting to be watched. I cancelled HBO & Cinemax because there movies were limited and nothing I wanted to watch was on at a convenient time. My Netflix account is a much better deal, I get the movies I want, and can watch them when I want.

Netflix sucks and heres why. I returned several DVDs and it took them a long time to check them back in so I assumed they hadn't gotten them yet. Well when they did get checked in, it was LATE on a monday which was in fact a holiday. So given that monday was a holiday and there was no mail on sunday, the DVDs were sitting around for at least 2 days before they got around to them. I emailed them about it and they didn't have anything to say about it..

They're always sending me broken DVDs now and refuse to send me a replacement until they get one back. Their check-in feature doesn't work alot. I had to bitch for a month before they got off their asses and fixed it (I can have 4 DVDs checked in at a time but their site only lets me check in 2 saying that I've already checked in the maximum). Most of the stuff I want to rent is out with a 'long wait'. Now it appears that you can't even put those in your queue anymore and they just mark it unavailable.

I'd rather buy DVDs I've never seen than give my money to them.

I've used DVD overnight several times. Very quick turnaround time (2 days max) - for example - orders I have placed late Thursday afternoons have arrived in the Saturday mail. Then I have 9 days (over 2 weekends) to keeps the movies. They are more expensive than Netflix (a little cheaper than Blockbuster though) but they are faster, much more reliable, and they rent adult titles.

So what you do is check them in right when you mail them. That gets replacements in the mail and to you faster. They haven't been in the mail for 4 days you say? Big deal.. If I'm allowed to check them in, they get checked in.

That's why they have the rule you can only check 2 in at a time now, from people abusing that rule. Since I have a 5 out account now, it's not big deal, really.

no.. I've heard that they know people don't usually wait 4 days before checking in a DVD and they don't care. And I get to have 4 checked in at a time. Eh.

Actually I think i heard thats its more like an unwritten rule that its OK to check the DVDs as long as they're in the mail. You don't have to wait 4 days.