For example, last two weeks ago (January 17th), my Queue was full of movies that are "Available Now". I sent back all 3 rentals the Saturday before and it arrived on January 17th (I, of course, received emails saying that they received it and it shows on my rental history). No movies were sent that Monday or Tuesday (January 17 and 18th). On Wednesday, they say they sent Alien Vs. Predator. No other rentals were sent out that week (I have the 3 at a time membership). I received AVP on Monday, the 24th and mailed it directly at the Post Office (which is 5 blocks away). They emailed me on Tuesday January 25th saying they received it and claimed to have sent Ready To Wear. I, of course, didn't receive it and filed a complaint to BB (on the 29th) and told them to send the next one on the list. No other rentals (except for the wrong version of Bride of Re-Animator I received today) was sent.

So to recap, out of the last two weeks, I only received TWO rental from Blockbuster. My Queue is all full of movies listed as "Available Now" and only TWO was sent during the past two weeks.

It's a shame because they were somewhat competant during the first two weeks of my paid membership. Anyways, I'm dropping it tomorrow because my next billing period starts February 03.

Maybe Blockbuster Online is doing the same thing Netflix is. Or maybe the people working in the Flushing, Queens Blockbuster distribution center is getting a bit lazy.

That's what I thought you were saying but couldn't believe it b/c I thought there was no way their service could be that bad. I guess netflix is starting to look better all the time.

Any coupons going on right now for BB online? Like free trials or a free DVD (Shrek 2, Bourne)?

I believe they have the two week free trial going on right now. No free dvd that I am aware of at this time.

If you have already signed up for the online service before, you won't get the free trial (unless you have a different address/credit card).

Also you get the two free dvd/game rentals next day after sign up.

Ive tried the 2 free week trial link but it keeps saying invalid.

Hmmm. Interesting. Is this through their homepage or something through DVDTalk? (i.e. "link").

So you haven't done the two week before, i'm guessing?

I just signed up for the online 2 week Blockbuster trial and have a quick question. How do you tell it to ship more than one at a time? Do they automatically ship 3 if you have them available? I have about 25 in my queue that are available now, but so far they have only emailed me that one has shipped. Is this normal? Or do you have to tell it to ship 3 at a time or something? Thanks.

http://www.blockbuster.com/acctmgmt/...n?planID=25027
This link should give you 2 weeks free, if you haven't used it yet.

Try code COOPER for 4 weeks free.

Danicus07--They will send you the next available disks on your queue, until you have 3 disks checked out. Sometimes it takes a day or so for them to find the disk [they come from different distro centers] and send it out, also, when I first signed up, it took them a day or two for them to 'activate' my account and send all three disks. The best way to run it is to probably to get on a cycle, so that you've got one at home, they're sending you one, and you just sent one back, that way you've always got something to watch and always got something processing/in transit.

Thanks! I just received emails for the other two. So now I have three on the way. I'll try and work the cycle after these three.

For about a week and a half, I had a problem with Blockbuster rentals not arriving. I was told by the customer service rep that if a film doesn't arrive within three days to report it lost. I would repor the discs, and another one was sent out. After about ten days, I received nine discs over two days. I don't know if the post office/worker was holding them, but I found it odd that they all came at the same time.

You must have been renting some stuff the postal people wanted to see :)

I'm just kidding, odds are they got stuck in a bin somewhere. Happens sometimes, usually not to that great an extent, but it does.

BlockBuster Online - NetFlix (I've had them both)
 

I was using NetFlix for about a year and then switched to BB Online about 3 months ago. NetFlix was expensive compared to BB Online when I switched, that's why I made the change. Well guess what? I just re-signed up for NetFlix because of what BB Online is doing.

I live in Cleveland. During my trial membership, BB Online shipped my DVDs from Lansing, MI and I received them in 1 day. When I shipped them back, they received them the next day, immediately shipped out the new ones, and I got the new ones the day after that.

Now I'm a paid member of BB Online. Their local shipping center is right here in Cleveland. I can literally see the post office from my house and the BB Online PO Box is right inside the front door. I ship back movies to them and they don't "receive" them for 4 days. Then they immediately mark my next 3 movies as "shipped", but it takes 4-5 days for me to receive them.

Their customer service is non-existant and their phone numbers are not able to be found. However, I did a WHOIS on blockbuster.com, received their legal department and they forwarded me to a customer support center somewhere in Dallas. Their support people (not specifically for BB Online) actually hung up on me after I told the one guy that he should do some work. I told him as follows:

"Hey, why don't you put me on hold, call up the Cleveland Distribution Center, look up my account, get me my DVDs, and then credit me for a month of service for all the lost DVD rentals that I could have gotten." He Said, "What can I do to make this better?" I told him, "Didn't I just tell you? Is your head hollow? Maybe you should NOT put me on hold, but instead pick up your cell phone and put it up to your left ear, keep me on your right ear and as I talk, the person on the other end of the cell phone will pick it up as it travels through your hollow head."

He didn't seem to like that and hung up on me.

Bottom line... BB Online is unreliable, only 30-40% of my movies are available now while at NetFlix I had 95% or more available. Read below for a cost comparison:

People rationalize keeping the BB Online account because they say, "Hey, I get 2 free rentals a month which is about $9.00. Well that's nice, but if I can get about 23-25 DVDs per month from NetFlix, but only get about 8-9 DVDs per month from BB Online, those 2 lousy in store rentals mean nothing. I'd rather have the additional 14 rentals that I'm paying for.

They're horrible, and anybody that is thinking of leaving NetFlix for some reason should jump on WalMart well before giving BB Online a chance.

Brian

:lol:

Now that you mention that, the copies of The Piano Teacher Unrated and Pink Flamingos NC-17 (horrible overrated movie, btw) that I received had the preferated (is that spelled right?) part already opened.

If the post office could actually see what movie you were getting, I wouldn't be skeptical that they are watching them. :) (but that preferated(?) part helps).

The customer service number for Blockbuster can be easily found on their webpage. Clock on Contact Us, and then click on Online rentals. It's near the bottom of the page.

WTF?
Okay..

125+ things in queue.
Items 1-3 are Short, Short, Long wait. Item 4 is Available, then items 5-10 are disks of a tv series, a couple Waits, a couple Availables.
They just shipped...something that wasn't even in my top 15 of the queue! And it's vol 2 of a tv series, where vol 1 is also in the queue. This doesn't even make any sense!

For the last month or so, when I click on the New Releases section of BB online, it brings up the list of new releases but is missing the releases from the current month(for instance, now in my list there is absolutely nothing from February) I do get the list from another website and can manually search and find the newest titles but this is annoying. Anyone else experiencing something like this?

So far this has been a terrible month for me at Blockbuster online with DVDs in my queue. Currently I'm on the fifth month with BBV and this is the first time that I had any problems finding available titles. Out of 16 DVDs currently in my queue only 3 are available. The remainder are either listed as short wait or long wait, and the status of most of them hasn't changed in several weeks. What's even more strange is that many of the DVDs are older releases that were released years ago. You wouldn't think there would be that much of a demand for older titles, and in the past months from my experience there wasn't. If this is what I can expect with BBV in the future it will be my last month using their service.

BB has been OK for me for the past 2 months, but in the past week or two has really stunk. I used to get DVDs about two days after BB said they shipped (Houston to San Antonio), and now it's taking about 4, yet they still get them from me in 2. So instead of averaging 3-4 movies/week, I think I've been averaging 2-3.

Still, it's only about a buck/rental, so I can't complain too much.

Don't know if anyone else was looking for this, but I couldn't find it on this site:

BLOCKBUSTER DISTRIBUTION CENTERS (courtesy of a site called ?hackingnetflix.com?)

Original 10
---------------
Charlotte, NC, Dallas, TX, Denver, CO, Lansing, MI, Miami, FL, Minneapolis, MN, Flushing, NY, Sacramento, CA, Santa Ana, CA, Seattle, WA

13 New locations
-----------------
TX, Houston
MA, Worcester
MD, Gaithersburg
PA, Philadelphia
GA, Atlanta
NJ, Edison
IL, Chicago
MO, St. Louis
CT, Stamford
CA, San Jose
FL, Tampa
OH, Cleveland
AZ, Phoenix

Current status:
126 in queue.
10 Long Waits.
10 Very Long Wait
42 Short Wait
three or four Coming Soons
the rest Avail Now.
Virtually half the titles are in Wait status. That is by far worse than Netflix ever was in four years of membership.
And they waited to send out a new title until they checked in the last on [today] rather than sending it out when the PO tracked it or whatever.
And like LASERMOVIES, a lot of mine aren't big blockbuster new releases; couple-year old titles, tv series [some new, some not new releases], and cult/foreign/anime.
Assuming their wait statuses are representative of their inventory levels, they are shall we say lacking.
Not that it'll do anything, but I'm 'Contacting Us' now to complain.
One other thing, I wish you could 'View in Tab' or "View in New Window" on a title in your queue.

Thought I would post what is actually in my queue and the status. I really don't know what the difference is between a short wait and long wait since it doesn't seem to matter. I just had one title listed as a long wait become available, and some with short waits stuck in that status for 3 weeks. I still have another week remaining on my month but will not renew for another after that. I haven't used Netflix in several years but think I will use them again even though it costs more. I'm sick of BBV slow service, titles not available, and poor selection.

American Experience: Fidel Castro NR Available Now
Something the Lord Made NR Available Now
Alice Adams NR Short Wait
Door to Door NR Available Now
Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip NR Long Wait
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery NR Short Wait
Getaway PG Short Wait
Thomas Crown Affair R Short Wait
Junior Bonner NR Very Long Wait
After Hours R Short Wait
Big Easy R Short Wait
Radio Flyer PG13 Short Wait
Joy Luck Club R Short Wait
Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War [Special Edition] R Very Long Wait

I just gave Netflix the boot after 5 years. I was also on the legacy plan 2 out no max. But the BB wait times were less obscene, and BB had way more new releases avaiable right now. We all know with Netflix, if you did not get a movie back to them by Tuesday AM, you were screwed with a new release that week, and maybe for a couple of months to see it. That was just unacceptable. BB gives you 1 more out at a time, and two instore, couple that with there better que times, and the USPS thing, and it makes them a lot more attractive. So After a 6 week test drive of BB, I booted Netflix.

Not to mention, the netflix new release links, and upcoming release links are horrendous. They never ever put the #1 movie coming up over the next few weeks on those links, they do not want people flooding there ques with new release requests, really bush leaguue. BB gives you a straighforward upcoming releases, 3 page worth for the next 5/6 weeks all the stuff you want to see, and boom in it goes into your que. With Netflix, you have to search dvdtalks list of upcoming releases and then put that in your que. Really Bogus.

After I ancelled, netflix sent me a survey to complete, I did, and I blasted them. I said they would need to go to 4 out at a time for $15 to get my business back. Let alone 3 out at a time. They are in huge trouble if they do not step up and match BB's business model right now.

It's a critical time for Netflix, they could be facing the beginning of the end.

I currently have 2 BBO accounts, 5 and 8 at a time. I monitor my accounts daily and have noticed over the past month that both accounts have been 1-2 movies short of the max allowed out. During my first several months with BBO my accounts were always going over my max allowed out due to the USPS arrival scan thing, however I have not noitced this for about the past month. This poses a couple questions:

1) Has anyone else seen this problem?

2) Is BBO still using the USPS arrival scan setup?

3) Can anyone find a customer service telephone number for BBO? so I may contact them about this.

Great thread all!!

Email I wrote yesterday, and their response [I'll give them this--they respond quickly.]

"Hello,
I have been with Blockbuster Online for about two months now, having left the major competitor. I was quite pleased at first, but now the service is rather disappointing.
My queue currently consists of 126 titles. A few of those are 'Coming Soon'; of the rest, they break down as follows:
10 Long Waits.
10 Very Long Wait
42 Short Wait
the remainder, Available Now.

Fully half of my queue [not counting Coming Soons] is on various Wait Statuses. This is worse than my Netflix queue at any time in the four-plus years I was with them, maybe even cumulative. And the majority of these titles aren't even big new releases.
Can anything be done about these inventory levels? They are sadly disappointing.
Thank you."

"Dear *me*,

Thank you for contacting Blockbuster Online Customer Service.

We appreciate you taking the time to submit this feedback. I apologize for the service delays you have experienced. Because of loyal members like you, BLOCKBUSTER Online has surpassed our growth expectations. While we're thrilled so many movie fans have turned to BLOCKBUSTER Online, The Movie Store At Your Door, we know our rapid growth may have impacted our service to you. We recognize the need to continuously improve and we are taking the following steps to do just that:

FASTER SHIPPING

The U.S. Postal Service will now notify us when the envelope containing the DVD you are returning has been scanned in. This means we will send you your next movie before we actually receive the returned one. This means quicker turnaround times for you.
We are adding 10 new shipping locations in the coming months to speed more movies to your door.

MORE COPIES

We are buying more copies of both new releases and old favorites. This should reduce the time you wait for your favorite titles.
Please know that we are working very hard to improve in this area. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve your concerns.


Your Friends at Blockbuster Online"

I did notice the -not as many out - problem, but in my case, the things at the top of my queue were all in Wait status, so perhaps it took some time to find a title.
I'll give 'em time, I can see they're going through growing pains, hopefully they'll improve.

I haven't had any issues with BBV shorting me on out titles. It's either always 3 out at a time, or occasionally 4.

I still think they are using the USPS scan but most of the time it hasn't helped me get the next movie any quicker. Quite frequently it takes about 3 days to scan in a movie as returned and to ship the next movie from my queue.

I found a a telephone number but haven't verified that it works. Source was from the following thread at post #21.

866-692-2789