It is interesting to read the comments from various parts of the country. I
live in Saratoga which is a few miles from the Netflix main company
headquarters and adjacent to San Jose where returned Netflix go to a PO Box.
I have been a member since almost day one of Netflix. In my FIRST month of
service (when I had the 3 out at one time service) I did a "test" to see how
many movies I could get in one month. We always watched the 3 movies the same
day they arrived and always mailed all 3 back the next day. To be realistic, I
left the returned DVDs in my mail box and the postman picked them up normally.
As I recall we got 30+ movies. They appeared like clockwork the day after
they were mailed back, so a 2 day turn around. No mail service on Sunday.
Now many years later, we still get one day turn around most of the time. I
have never seen any evidence of a "hold up" to delay movies deliberately. At
one time we had the "5 out option", but we were getting so many movies, we
decided to throttle back to a 3 out service plan.
In my opinion, Netflix is a terrific service. They have every DVD available
(over 55,000 now), at least 11 Distribution Centers around the country to speed
up delivery. The "Save" feature alone makes it invaluable...you can enter
movies as soon as you hear of a new movie coming out in the theater and when
the DVD becomes available, Netflix moves it into your Active Queue. Compared
to the "old days" of driving to the local Brick & Mortar DVD rental store,
browsing their inventory, often finding that titles you want are "all out",
driving back to the store with the return DVD...for about $3.60/title in this
area + your time and your expense of driving the round trip....IMHO there is no
comparison in price or convenience between Netflix and the local stores.
They probably settled the nuisance suit because "unlimited" was too broad a
term. What is seen as a deliberate delay on shipping out new movies, I see as
possibly being a limitation of the employees and equipment that work in the
Distribution Centers to physically be able to move the product to the Postal
System. The lawyers got over $1,000,000 and the members of the class action
basically got zip. I suspect Netflix LOVES the opt-out arrangement, because I
suspect most people will opt to stay as members for the reasons I have noted
above.
--- I am having more fun than should be legal!
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