Netflix Losing DVDs
 

Tomorrow looks like I will have to report to Netflix that I’ve lost two more DVD’s. This is a total of 5 since Thanksgiving. In all the years I rented before only one DVD was lost.

The first two did not arrive at home. The last three were lost on the way back to Netflix. Both the Post Office and Netflix appear to have lost quality control. I wonder how much longer I can continue to rent. If they try to get the costs of the DVDs, I’ll have to cancel and deal with Netflix through the Credit Card Company.

Netflix seems like their partner Tivo to be caught up in a swiftly changing technology market and are now stuck behind the 8-ball.

DVD rentals will only last a few more years before they completely die out anyway. With the net and bandwidth increasing, I can only see it being a matter of time before rentals become purely "on demand" downloads.

You rent a box from your rental "shop", order a film for a buck or two and let it start downloading, and start watching 10 minutes later. Keep it as long as you want, but once you have ordered (say) three movies, the first one get overwritten. It's exactly the same as Netflix, except you get your movie in 10 minutes to an hour later rather than waiting 2 days for it to arrive (and pay additional for postage).

The only time you'd ever need to visit the video store is when you want an obscure title that hardly ever gets "requested" (and then you'd more than likely want to buy it anyway).

Owning the physical medium is one thing (pride of ownership; control of what you watch, when you watch it; choice of title privacy; etc), but renting [physical] DVDs from a mail order/net company is dumb in this day and age.

I've never had a problem getting the discs from Netflix, they typically arrive overnight. Returning them is another story.

I've had to report 7 discs missing in the past 2 months of service. 4 of those reported missing were checked in a few weeks after I returned them. I subscribed with Netflix early last year for several months and did not have to report any missing discs. I restarted membership a few months ago and its been horrible.

For those discs that do get checked in, the average return time for my distribution center (that is 1 hour away) is 6 days.

Are you mailing them from the same place? One week I mailed two from a different post office than usual and none of them showed up.

One month later I mailed another from that PO and it didn't show.

I think a postal employee has a nice collection of DVDs and I don't send from that PO anymore.




This week one disc showed 10 days after promised and another was promised today and didn't show. They usually arrive the day before they are promised.

I have a question for you guys who lost Netflix DVD in the mail. Does Netflix charges you money for the DVDs that never got back to them or do they absorb the cost of lost DVDs in the mail?

If you have two many in a short time they supposedly charge you. They didn't do that to me.

I had three that I mailed back at once that took 17 days for Netflix to receive.

Put two in the mail yesterday at 5 p.m. Just got an email that they were received.

Oh yeah, one was promised for this Wed. and one for this Fri. They both arrived Thu.

My last two missing DVD's eventually showed up at Netflix. 3 lost in the last 3 months. So far I haven't been charged for any of the missing DVDs. The day I am charged is the day I cancel my subscription.

The Tivo-Netflix movie download scheme is their only real future. In order to work the picture has to be equal or better than a DVDs. I'm not sure there is an encryption-coding scheme that would work to make reasonable downloads over broadband in like an hour. Optical cable would work but any company who hooks up you to optical will want total control over content in order to earn back the installation costs and to make money.

Very good points!

My Netflix service continues to be fine. If I have a disk in the mail on mon., I have a new realease in my home on Wed.
In the past three weeks (just as an example) I've received Friday Night Lights, The Village, Cellular, and The Grudge all on a wed. after they were released with no problem.

I signed up last Sunday night, received my first 3 discs on Tuesday morning and put them back in the mail on Wednesday morning. As of yet, they have still not been returned.

I'm just learning about Netflix. I didn't see any beginner's guides on DVD Talk, so I'll ask here:

What are the rules about how long you have to (are supposed to wait) before you can report a disc as missing that Netflix was supposed to send to you? On the flipside, how long before reporting a disc you sent to Netflix as missing? Do you have to wait a week or 2 which would really hurt your turnaround time for that month?

From what I read, Netflix is good if only a few discs are lost in transit per year, but if it's higher than that they might charge you or cancel your subscription. My biggest worry about online rentals is discs getting lost because USPS has been pretty bad in my area. Almost every week we receive a piece of somebody else's mail and I expect that means someone else is probably receiving some of our mail. I've had several things from other places like Columbia House not arrive in the past. The fact there is a Netflix distribution center about 30 miles away probably doesn't matter because it's the local post office that does the sorting, I think. That's why I want to know the lost disc rules before signing up because I'm expecting the worst. However, I only plan to subscribe for a few months, so I'm hoping I won't have too many losses during that time period.

I was told by someone who uses Netflix that they ship you a mailer for each of the 3 DVDs they send. If you live in an area with a high USPS loss rate, would it be better to mail all 3 discs in separate envelopes or all 3 in 1 envelope? I don't know if they'd all travel together, but I'm wondering if splitting them up would decrease the chances of all 3 getting lost/stolen.

I think you're supposed to wait a week before reporting a missing movie. If you report a lot missing, they'd freeze your account. I'm not sure what you have to do to get it unfrozen, but I think I heard that you just have to call customer service and tell them you're not screwing around with them or whatever.