Comments on: Blockbuster Online goes from “Really Good” to “Great”

By: TJ

TJ — Sat, 26 May 2007 01:00:36 +0000

@ Jen:

Sorry you've had a bad experience. I still consider it great money spent. We drop off movies on Sunday and new movies get sent out on Monday.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:41:26 +0000

Blockbuster Total Access must throttle. We turned in 3 movies to the store on Sunday and it took them 4 business days to send more out, and then they only sent TWO. We have 50 in our que, and nearly all are available. This is not the first time we’ve had a problem. I would not recommend the service and will not pay for it. We are on a free one month trial.

By: Richard Reynolds

Richard Reynolds — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:58:00 +0000

Blockbuster can claim whatever they want and have in fact claimed one will never be w/o a movie. They are still throttling. For the past three weeks (I began to notice a slow down months b4 that, but didn't pay enough attention to be positive) they have not shipped the movies the next day after returning them to the store. This week has been the worse and aggravated me to the point of discontinuing their service. I have been returning 3 movies on Thursday morning. For the past three weeks, the earliest they have shipped new movies has been Tuesday. Two weeks ago I decided to see if it was a lack of communication with their brick and mortar store or if they were indeed throttling. I took two of the movies back to the store on Thursday morning. The third movie was mailed from my house the next day, Friday. Interestingly enough, for the first and only time, all three movies were reported as returned on Monday. Even with them being reported as being returned, they still didn't ship two movies until Tuesday and one on Wednesday. I was emailing them about the apparent discrepancies and during the day they changed the day the movies were being shipped in my queue from Tuesday to Monday!!! I have received all of my movies from St. Louis and it is a maximum two day delivery time to where I live.

This week I returned all three movies to the store, as usual, on Thursday. As of Wendsday, (six days after returning them to the store) they still hadn't confirmed receiving them and haven't shipped the new ones either. One of the tricks they like to pull is to change the status of the movies from available to short wait. Another trick they like to use is, after reporting the movie as being returned, they put a statement at the top of the queue saying, something to the effect of: Thank you for reporting this , make sure you have available movies in your queue and they will be shipped the next business day. They did that to me Tuesday when I reported them as being returned even though my top six movies were listed as "available." I don't even rent new release movies. Lately I have been renting TV series DVDs. Not high demand rentals. Six days later, after the movies were returned to a local blockbuster, I have had neither conformation of them being returned or new ones shipped. Blockbuster is not being honest about their delivery practices. It is their dishonesty I am most appalled over. If they stated there was a limit of movies per month, cool, no problem. Instead they use double talk and deceptive practices to fool us consumers. They can go out of business as far as I am concerned. They have lost me as a customer both online and in-house.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:53:19 +0000

I've found that when I return DVDs to the store, it always takes a day or two for them to clear my queue and then have the next one mailed out. Since this is not what they are claiming in their explanation of "Total Access" I've pointed it out to them, but I just got the same lame response back that I always do when I complain or ask questions - that they're sorry I'm frustrated and here's a coupon for a free in-store rental.

I've also found in the last month that movies are taking 3 or more days to get here in the mail. They used to only take 1 day. The interesting thing is that the change occurred when I changed my subscription plan from 1 at a time to 2 at a time. This really ticks me off.

By: TJ

TJ — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:04:37 +0000

@ bitstreamer: I’d complain to Blockbuster Online. It sounds like something is not working right. I dropped off 3 movies on Sunday, and 2 were shipped Monday and 1 on Tuesday - however, all of them said to expect them by Thursday. I haven’t had a single delay since the Total Access begins.

By: bitstreamer

bitstreamer — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:40:52 +0000

Unfortunately, everytime I return my movies at my local store, the next movie is mailed out to me the next day only around 10% of the time. Usually it takes around 2-3 days for the next movie to be mailed out to me even though I return my movies at the store where they are scanned into their system. This seems like throttling to me.

By: kte12

kte12 — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:22:24 +0000

Starting December 19, 2006, Blockbuster Total Access (online) is giving customers 1 free video game rental each month plus the first month is free.

Facts:

Offer changes to 2-week trial beginning Jan 15 2007. 3 movies out at a time.
Members will be able to exchange online movies for titles at their local bb store for no charge. (online mailer/movie will work like a coupon).
Members will also receive 1 in store coupon every month for a free movie OR video game (even during free month).
Only $17.99 per month after the 1st month.
As soon as the online movies are exchanged at the store the next movies in your que will ship as well.