I’ve been a Netflix member for about 2 years, on the three-at-a-time plan. No big problems – the occasional slight damage to a disc, twice something got lost on its way to me and I had to report it as missing, but the replacements came quickly and I’ve enjoyed my membership.
I mostly watch things other people don’t watch.
The Netflix top 100 are mostly movies I’d never see, and their recommendations rarely interest me.
I tend to watch documentaries, foreign films, old classics, the odd musical or two.
On average I tend to keep each movie for two days.
Lagaan I kept for six months because I misplaced it and couldn’t find it.
So I don’t qualify as a heavy user.
So then why is Netflix throttling me? I sent in a disc last Friday. They should have gotten in Saturday, processed it Monday and sent out the next disc, which I should have received on Tuesday (although they would tell me I’d receive it on Wednesday). Instead, it’s now Thursday and they’ve finally sent me an email letting me know that they’re putting the next disc in the mail today, and I’ll get it on Saturday! That means I’ll have been down to two discs for an entire week, even though I’m supposed to be on the three-at-a-time plan.
I realize that I’m not guaranteed to have three discs in my hot little hand at all times, that transit times will impact how many I have (and if I’m stupid enough to put all three in the mail on Friday, I will be without any DVDs for at least four days.
But that would at least be my decision.
Throttling me is their choice, and their choice seems to be to prevent me from getting what I paid for – three DVDs at a time).
The best suggestion I’ve seen on other websites is to use the minimum plan and subscribe to both Netflix and Blockbuster Online, then pace it so that you hang onto your movies from one while waiting for the other to deliver.
Allegedly this will prevent either company from treating you as a heavy user, and you’ll be able to get about the number of movies per month you
should be getting on a higher-priced plan.
I just can’t stomach the idea of using Blockbuster, though. They, like AOL, are spawn of Satan. And I love my little local video store, but my Netflix queue is currently at 293 movies, every one of which I really want to see. My guess would be that the local store carries maybe a third of what’s on my queue.
I’m not ready to quit Netflix.
Yet.
But I’ll badmouth them to anyone who’ll listen.
