I’ve signed up on a free trial of the Blockbuster delivery service. I’ll let you know how I get on, but so far, I’d say it’s average. There’s no doubt the service is very easy to use, the website has everything you could ever want and is very intuitive, indeed the delivery and packaging of the DVDs are excellent, and the turnaround time is good, but, and this, considering the service is a pretty hefty but, they haven’t been the best at sending me DVDs I actually want to see.
The way it works is you login to the website, create a massive list of all the DVDs you want, and they send you them. You’re allowed three at a time, so if you’re clever, you can pretty much always have a DVD waiting for you to watch. As I said, the delivery has been excellent, but so far, I have not been receiving items at the top of my list. Inevitably, you add a bunch of films that you might quite like to see, but not too fussed at all. So I did that, and have been receiving them, rather than all the mustsees that I also added to the list. So this is either due to me filling my list with crap, or, and I suspect this is more likely, that their supply of the popular films is quite limited, and a result, it’ll take a while before you receive them.
I expect there are some good tactics to master here, but it’s gonna take a while to do it. Unless of course you’re really not fussy and will watch any old crap, in which case, this service is probably for you.
They do a free trial so it’s worth a crack. If you are considering using the service, please, let me recommend you! It’ll get me some cash! If you’re interested, just drop me a line. Cheers!
Can’t you remove all but the must-sees from the list and see if that makes them get their arses into gear?
I’ve tried all of the mail-order DVD services I can find - CleanFilms, GamezNFlix, NetFlix, Blockbuster, IntelliFlix, CineGreen (or is it GreenCine?)…
I gave everyone 30 postal-delivery days to perform, and kept track on how many were delivered, how ‘groups’ were processed and shipped, and I tried to figure out what the Processing Cycle was like (they pick my film, they package and ship it, I receive it, and ship it back, and they return it and process the receipt).
I set up accounts for 3-at-a-time processing to try to make it equal.
Most companies broke up my 3-at-time because of some reason - usually they’d say “Your queued films existed across several warehouses - 2 shipped from here, 1 from there.”
Fine, I’ll buy that. Since I was ordering ‘classics’ from the ’80s, ’70s and ’60s, I was thinking “Those can’t be in huge demand so hopefully they’ll have that DVD in-stock.”
Sometimes they said they didn’t. That’s why some DVDs were shipped 1 day later. Or 2 days later. Or SIX days later (jeepers - SHAWSHANK is on TV, like 18 times a year - and IntelliFlix had to wait SIX days to get one Shawshank DVD back?!! Oh well).
Blockbuster had the 2nd Best Processing Cycle behind NetFlix, but Blockbuster sent 2 wrong DVDs out of the 13 they sent - both were foreign films which had American remakes, and of course I was sent the American version.
It’s a fascinating exercise. The best deal in town, however, is Hollywood Video Stores IF they have the “MVP” program - $15 a month, 3-at-a-time, and you come in and get them on YOUR schedule. If you want to make 10 visits a day, fine, you can get 30 DVDs a day.
Their stores have a varied selection, and its always less than the mail-order places. But you can do this on YOUR schedule…
If you’ve got a Hollywood Video Store nearby!
-Ollie
Hi Ollie, how’s it going? In the UK we only have a few options. Amazon is one, a few other places do it, but I’ve only used Blockbuster, and have to say they haven’t given me any reason to want to switch. Sure, the really popular films might take a while to get to me, but they seem to have improved this in the last few months, maybe they bought more copies, I don’t know, but given that I live in Guernsey which is bloody miles away from the processing centre on the mainland, their turn around times are astonishing. Fair play to ‘em.