Blockbuster Online Versus Netflix
I originally joined Netflix in 2002. I was in college at the time and didn’t have the means to get to the video store everytime I wanted to rent a movie. Renting DVDs over the mail seemed like a perfect solution, and was. I found Netflix had a great selection of movies, almost every single DVD I searched for they had available, or made available. When I joined the price was $19.99 a month unlimited rentals with up to 3 movies out at a time.
The Switch
In late 2004 I made the decision to switch to Blockbuster Online. They were a pretty recent start up in the online DVD rental game, but offered a much more attractive price, $14.99 per month for 3 movies out at a time. Netflix had also recently upped its price to $21.99 a month for 3 out at a time (which they later realized was a bad move and dropped down to the $17.99 price), making Blockbuster Online more enticing. Furthermore with Blockbuster Online’s $14.99 a month plan you got something Netflix could not offer, two free instore rentals (movies or video games) from any Blockbuster store a month! With so many posit
Unlimited, kind of.
The idea of unlimited rentals sounds great, however due to the laws of physics (or really the laws of the US Postal Service) it isn’t really “unlimited” per say. Since you are limited by the 3 at a time program to only having three DVDs out at any given time, you obviously can’t receive a new rental until your old one is returned. This means when taking into account the turnaround time, the “unlimited” number is dropped significantly. Furthermore when you take into account that you probably need more then 1 day to watch the 3 movies after you receive them, “unlimited” is dropped even further. I watch a lot of movies and I’d say on average I was getting about 9-10 movies a month, a lot, but hardly unlimited.
Well Worth the Price
A lot has been made in recent months of the price wars between Netflix and Blockbuster Online. Netflix raised their price to $21.99 for 3 at a time, then Blockbuster enters the game at $14.99 so Netflix drops to $17.99.
Then Walmart enters the picture at $12.97 a month; Netflix the industry pioneer and leader, seemed destined to die at the hands of the two huge corporations. Then just recently Walmart announced it was teaming up with Netflix, which while I’m not sure what the rates will be for this newly combined business, it will no doubt be very competitive with Blockbuster Online’s prices.
When you think about it, anything below $20 is a pretty good deal with DVD rentals. At Blockbuster’s stores they charge around $5 a rental now. So even if you only get the minimum 3 a month through Blockbuster Online, you have already broken about even. When you add in the cost of the two free in store rentals, you are already up to about $25 worth of rentals a month for the $14.99 price.
Blockbuster versus Netflix
As I metioned above my reason for switching to Blockbuster Online from Netflix was simply price and value. Blockbuster Online was cheaper and offered an additional 2 in store rentals a month. That being said I still do prefer Netflix’s DVD rental system a lot more. First of all Netflix’s website is set up better.
The rating system works well, and gives good suggestions based on rating. Blockbuster has a similar set up, but it is harder to use, and doesn’t work nearly as well. Blockbuster’s website also is very bad at displaying new and upcoming releases. They have a page for them, but the list is often incomplete. Netflix is MUCH better at keeping its members up to date with new releases.
The two things that really serperate Netflix from Blockbuster however are turnaround time and availablity of movies. In the year or so since switched to Blockbuster I’ve noticed that it takes about a day longer then Netflix for the total turnaround process (shipping DVDs back and receiving new ones).
This one day may not seem like a lot, but it does add up over the course of a month, and takes its toll on your “unlimited” rental amount. I’m not sure why Blockbuster is slower, it would seem they maybe just have less distribution centers (something they claim they are adding more of).
The other thing that I find annoying about Blockbuster Online is that quite a few times the movie I wanted had a very long wait on it. This is almost always true of new releases (which may be why Blockbuster Online doesn’t advertise their releases as much as Netflix), but also of many other films I tried to rent.
Blockbuster recommends that you put like 30 movies in your queue (the waiting list of movies to ship out to you next) to keep things moving, but it was very annoying when almost every single one of my movies couldn’t ship because they had very long waits on them.
I never had this problem with Netflix. Maybe it is just because the popularity of online DVD rentals has risen so much recently, but it’s unexcusable. Why am I paying $14.99 a month if I can’t get any moives that I WANT?
In Closing
I still belong to Blockbuster Online, however because of the above mentioned reasons I am seriously considering switching back to Netflix. If the partnership with Walmart allows Netflix to lower their price to around the $14.99 range of Blockbuster for 3 DVDs out at a time, I will switch back.
The only thing keeping me with Blockbuster is the 2 free in store rentals a month. It’s a really nice bonus on top of Blockbuster Online’s already great deal, but in the end Netflix wins out in quality and quantity.
It should be noted that both Blockbuster and Netflix also offer cheaper plans as low at $9.99 a month, but those are not the “unlimited” plans, and do not seem to make as much sense in terms of value.
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