Throttled

I cancelled our account with Netflix this morning. For the past several months, huge delays in shipping were bringing the cost per DVD up to that of renting them at the video store. In the past I could return movies on Monday and have three new ones by Thursday or Friday. The cycle of getting three movies per week made their service worthwhile and cost-effective.

Then I read about how Netflix “throttles” customers who are cycling through movies too fast. To slow things down, they delay shipments in the customers queue. I’m not sure if this is true but my rentals have slowed down considerably in the past few months.

From Netflix customer service:

“In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service. As a result, those members who receive the most movies may experience next-day shipping and receive movies lower in their Queue more often than our other members.

By prioritizing in this way, we help assure a balanced experience for all our members. Those that rent a lot of movies get a great value and those with lighter viewing habits are able to count on our service to meet their limited needs.”

Their unlimited rental offer is not what it seems. As a power user, I’m not able to rent, watch and return movies as fast as I want. Instead of my usual 12 movies per month, I get throttled down to about 9 per month.

Receiving popular movies right after they are released is another problem. If I really want a movie, I save it to my queue months before its release on DVD. Then I prioritize my popular choices to the top of the list. When the DVD is finally available, I figure it should be mailed to me within a few weeks. This rarely happens. Instead my queue showed “very long wait” and I often waited months before getting the DVD.

I also read Neflix gives new customers preferential treatment. They are the ones to get new, popular movies first. To test this, I signed up for a no obligation 2 week free trial under a dummy name with a different credit card. Next I placed a newly released movie, one with a “very long wait” in my regular queue, to the top of the list in my dummy queue. The movie was shipped the very next day.

So I cancelled the dummy account and also my regular account of many years. Neflix is a great service with a huge selection of movies from which to choose. Maybe they’ve grown too popular and can’t keep up with their customer’s requests. We decided to separate from each other for a while, maybe things will improve and we can get back together.

For now, we’ve moved to Blockbuster. For about the same price we get three movies to rent plus 2 in-store rentals. I’ll let you know how it goes.