I have five television sets. (I like to think of them as a set of five televisions.) I have two DVR boxes, three DVD players, two VHS machines and four stereos. I have nineteen remote controls, mostly in one drawer.
—Rick Moranis
WELCOME TO THE PAGE FOR DISCUSSIONS ABOUT NETFLIX'S DVD SERVICE!
This page is a place for subscribers of the Netflix DVD service to talk about anything related to that experience: problems, new wrinkles, changes in the design of the page - or anything else.
If you currently subscribe only to the streaming service, but have questions about getting DVDs, you'll find lots of help here.
For contributors to this page: While it makes sense to use this page for most DVD-related comments and questions (complaints, too), there might be times when there is some cross-over with the streaming side. For example, if a much-loved, but hard-to-find title is expiring from streaming, it's fine to let everyone know it's available through Netflix DVD. Likewise, if there is significant news, say, if the DVD service were to be done away with, that would qualify as something of general interest.
Also, if a discussion here takes a turn that would make it of interest to a broader audience, feel free to leave a comment on another page, such as the main Discussions page, letting us know it's here if we want to check it out. I'm not thinking of this as a "don't put it anywhere else" kind of page. More of a "common topic" kind of page, so that people who have the same interest can group/find information more easily.
There's a page here for DVD comments, so I thought there ought to be a comment.
ReplyDeleteScrolling through the new streaming releases on my Vizio TV app, I saw that some new streaming titles that I watched, and star rated, through the DVD plan, were not showing my ratings. I had thought for some time that DVD and streaming ratings were not coordinated; this confirms it. It is getting harder to coordinate MyList and my queue, as the separation of the two sides is going apace. The DVD side is still profitable for Netflix, I think, and they're using that money to fund their original content. But I expect that they'll sell the DVD side soon, as its operation no longer fits the Netflix business model, and they'll want an infusion of cash for more streaming content. Amazon and Wal-Mart I expect to see as bidders, as they are the players trying to dominate the home delivery market.
i just got this email from amazon and thought of you. i'm guessing these are keepers and not a rental service, but that makes sense given the lower value to used discs these days.
Delete"Rock old school style with our DVDs and Blu-ray subscriptions"
"Keep the love of physical media alive with our DVDs subscription boxes
Receive DVDs and Blu-rays of your favorite genre every month"
"Loved Again Media
Receive 10 gently used DVDs delivered to your door every month. "
"Monthly Critic Movie
Receive snacks and 2 DVD/Blu-Ray Movies of the genre of your choice."
Thanks for this information. I'll look into it, but I am only interested if it is a rental, not a purchase. I have too many things accumulating in my home.
Deleteme, too. this doesn't really interest me, but i would donate or sell the ones i don't want. i'm sure the library and places like good will would take them.
Deletethose are fine guesses, but even amazon and walmart have a calendar. i suspect they would have made an offer already if they were serious about running a rental business with mailed discs in 2017 and beyond. they can keep inventory in their massive warehouses and sprawling stores knowing it either will be eventually sold or returned to the distributor, but old and probably damaged rental discs no one wants to watch after waiting a few days for it to arrive are probably viewed by those thriving companies as just wasted space. it's interesting to think about the future of this service, but no one knows much about it because it's not something netflix is talking about aside from the occasional quiet admissions of their discs by mail service still being a profitable revenue stream.
ReplyDeletemy netflix app still has a "Watch Again" category. although it doesn't show my ratings (or stars anywhere at all, as expected from the initial announcement when the system switched for streaming), it's still accurate and includes newly (re)added streaming content. most of the category when i look through it isn't anything i streamed on netflix. i don't know if there is a disconnection between this app and the netflix database for ratings as far as checking to see that i had rated it 3 or higher to include it in this category. as for the dvd and streaming pages of the netflix site not being coordinated, that is correct by default because the rating systems are different, and personally i don't thumbs up or down on streaming because i prefer more nuance in my ratings and i know those thumbs don't carry over to the discs side of the site, where i can view a filmography or see related titles to one i'm reading about all on one page.
(technical note: i attempted to post this as a direct reply several times, and it didn't go through on any of four browsers.)
Yeah, I can't really imagine Netflix selling their DVD side at this point. I think they need that extra money. Why they don't advertise it more is beyond me. Where I live now, Redbox is pretty popular, so folks are definitely still okay with renting DVDs. Netflix has a huge variety of what's available to rent, too. I think what might hurt them for some people versus Redbox is actually the post office transit times. If you rent a lot (like me and probably most of you), then Netflix is far cheaper than Redbox and worth waiting the extra day or so for the disc. However, if you don't rent as much or just want to see the latest hits and need it for a specific night, Redbox is a fast and cheap alternative, focusing more on fast.
Deleteif this is obvious to you, just disregard it, but i spoke to a CS supervisor today who confirmed that netflix does use the saved section of a queue to gauge customer interest in ordering new titles or restocking old ones. in his words, they don't just order something no one wants to watch. i pointed out that there are popular titles that are still in print not currently available to rent and ones that have been reissued in recent years by specialty labels netflix either hasn't restocked or never added to their catalog for customers at least to save. i also made sure to mention that "netflix originals" can be rented and bought at redbox, amazon, brick and mortar stores, and video on demand but not rented from netflix by mail, driving customers without their streaming service to their competitors. the impression i always had for netflix was from the old days of the video rental store, which would stock at least a few copies of new releases. it seems strange that a national company wouldn't order at least some discs and ship them from the nearest distribution center, even if across the country. anyway, those of you noticing play buttons next to titles in the saved section, lack of interest from other discs by mail customers is the stated reason.
ReplyDeleteGiven how much time has passed since I added them to my saved section, I didn't think Netflix would ever get them, but now the option to save certain seasons of Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest catch is gone. I noticed today that they were no longer in my saved section. Given how popular these shows were/are, I can't understand why Netflix never bought the discs. I think I saw somewhere that Hulu has them.
ReplyDeletei recently went to my browser history to check the episode details listed on the netflix dvd site for black dynamite season 1, a tv series that could only be "saved." they have since removed the show from their site. the person i referred to in my previous comment had mentioned the company is removing entries from their catalog (he was explaining why my queue showed 498 with 0 saved but somehow didn't allow more to be added, claiming 500, which i said happened in the past with invisible saved entries that appeared later). it's kind of funny because he was saying that saving a title is like voting to get it made available, so you'd think they'd not delete entries. i already knew they were doing this because of comparisons of my past ratings (streaming and discs) and times looking up content i know used to be on their site, whether available or to save. still, it's frustrating, especially knowing certain titles are in print and could easily be purchased by netflix for rental (ironically including "netflix originals"; you'd think the company would cut itself a break there, but netflix and "dvd.com" apparently don't mix).
DeleteOvernight, NetFlix has changed how it handles the DVD queue. NF is now counting both main and saved in the 500 limit, as used to be the case years ago.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I had 504 titles on my main queue and 259 on the saved queue. This morning I had 488 on the main queue and 259 on the saved queue. So, I thought I could add more films to saved first and then 12 more to the main queue. But no! Now adding one new title to either main or saved gets the message that I've reached my limit of 500 films and no more can be added.
No point in calling them.
i do see what you mean about less titles. last night i had 498 in my queue, 0 saved. this morning they shipped me a new disc, but i now have 468 in my queue, 0 saved. i know they are purging titles, but what they removed never even went to saved and were all ostensibly available to ship. my guess is these are all accounted for by movie bonus discs (": Bonus Material"). the bonus disc for one i checked is now not even listed on the page for the film. the bonus discs for 2 tv shows are still available in my queue because netflix lists them as the final disc of that "season." i'm hoping this change is an error. i actually asked about these bonus discs last month, to do with changes in site design/programming that made them less apparent to interested renters. the idea was to make them more obvious, not remove the ability to rent them. in fact, going to my rental history, these bonus discs now don't even have hyperlinks, they are simply text. the only reason i don't assume this is definitely a momentary error is i was reading netflix member reviews of a recent criterion collection title added, and it was pointed out that there is also a bonus disc and netflix hadn't added it to the library, the question then being are these discs just sitting around somewhere? because some customers hastily rent the wrong title, the bonus disc, thinking they are getting the film with bonus materials, and then complain, maybe netflix thought the right idea was removing them. what a waste if so.
Deletei know they did some other programming changes recently because i found a bug earlier this week. there are 2 titles i looked at that had exactly 3 stars anticipated ratings for me, yet each of them visualized 5 full stars. my guess is that in the info page of each title any expected rating that is a solid number will show as 5 red stars even while beneath them displaying in text form the correct, lower predicted rating. i checked my queue and didn't see this when i had 498 titles so i think it's just the info pages.
similarly i didn't see the point in calling about this because i just called and spent a lot of time less than a month ago on various issues that until now weren't addressed. because this one with the star mismatch is a bit more visible, could be noticed by supposed average customers, and is an obvious programming error, i'm hoping it's fixed in the next code update. more urgent now that i see it is the sudden removal of nearly 30 entries from my queue and the present inability to add or read about bonus discs, and if that's not addressed in some way by tomorrow i'll call. before streaming, if these happened, heads would be rolling, but when i check outside of this blog if people are complaining about something i noticed, my search usually comes up empty.
Travis, you're right. The titles dropped from my main queue were bonus discs. This makes me feel a bit better, as I didn't lose actual films. I do wish that NF had the common decency to tell its subscribers what it is doing, however.
DeleteI have noticed that some newer DVDs are marked as "for rental" and do not have the "special features" that are on DVDs offered for sale. I don't if NF is getting a better price by buying the stripped down DVDs, or if the seller is trying to increase retail sales by not making the features available to renters.
yes, a lot of discs produced in the last 10 years are just the movie, sometimes indicated on the disc itself or in the menu. excluding the extras was an incentive to get renters to buy.
Deletecriterion collection hasn't produced rental versions, so being able to see their excellent supplemental content without having to buy the sets made netflix a great value. (very many criterion films *and* bonus discs i rented from netflix i went on to buy, so allowing it was a smart move.) again, i'm hoping this is just a bug and not a conscious decision, but i suppose i'll find out tomorrow.
i called them about the star mismatch (a known issue to be fixed in a few weeks) and the bonus materials removal. the first person and the supervisor i spoke to did not know about movie bonus discs that were available to rent being removed from the queue. the supervisor put me on hold for a minute or so and came back with an answer. this was a decision made, and these discs will not be coming back. i asked her if the person she spoke to knew this for sure or was just guessing, and she asserted it was authoritative.
Deletei asked for the reason and not satisfied with what she told me demanded to speak to that other person but wasn't allowed as that other person doesn't take customer calls and i was already speaking to the highest level person i could reach on the phone. basically she told me that netflix can remove any content at any time. she furthermore said i should have seen a notice on my queue saying they were removed, to which i said there was none. she said she'd pass that along. she offered to give me a mailing address to write a letter, and i declined that, knowing that was even more of a waste of time than calling. i tried to ply a better explanation out of her, going back to what i've read in customer reviews about people renting these discs thinking they're getting the movie and saying that the rest of us shouldn't be punished for their mistake, but she said that wasn't what she was told (in the few seconds when she got the explanation). i couldn't even convince her to ask that person again for more, but i made sure to register my complaint about how this was handled, which she said she'd forward and contradicted herself by then offering that this could change, although i think if they went to the trouble of removing all of these from the library it's a pretty final decision. i made sure to underline the arbitrary nature of it by noting that tv show bonus discs that are identified as the last disc were still available, and she said removals happen in batches and those could be removed in the future, but i doubt that.
i'll spare you most of what i said, which you can probably guess from my various comments, but i didn't hold back on what i thought about this decision and what it says about them.
I don't tend to rent discs that are just bonus material, so I don't seem to have lost any titles from my queue. A while ago, I started an Excel spreadsheet of what I have on my DVD queue and saved section, as well as titles that aren't available anymore at all. Every few weeks or so, I go through and compare what's on the site to my Excel spreadsheet.
DeleteMy total between the two sections is a little over 500, and I was just able to add another title to the main section of my queue.
my last saved copy of my dvd queue (in html) is from may 2014. it was right before i rearranged my queue for the "Very long waits" that had sprung up like weeds overnight. (as i've commented before, ever since then i've been renting those almost exclusively, so my original order has been essentially on hold in the interim.)
Deletei never saw the need to save a regular backup of my queue because something like this hadn't happened before (although it does on My List, as we know). titles that become unavailable, usually after i've seen them with a wait listed over a long span of time, moved to the saved section either immediately or after disappearing for a while. because i don't use the saved section, i haven't seen that way titles removed from the library that netflix decided they were never going to get.
what makes me so mad about this is these are discs that are available and there was no notice they were going to do this. at the very least i could have saved a copy of my queue. ideally they would have given me time to rent them before removing them. then they don't even have the decency to give me an explanation for why. i was listening to the supervisor for clues at least. without me saying anything along these lines, she said this wasn't done to make customers switch to streaming. whether she thought that's what i thought, that's something other people tell her, or that is the real reason is unknown. because she did specifically mention having to buy these to see them now, another theory i have is they were asked by the distributors and studios not to rent these because it supposedly deprives them of sales, but i find this a lot less likely than my original theory (that it was to avoid irate customers who rent these by mistake and probably get free rentals and/or credits for their negligence) because, although it's true netflix has direct business deals with these companies now through streaming, they would have done this when netflix had exponentially more dvd customers, not while they are winding down their service through deterioration. after all, for netflix to have ever had these discs they would have been buying retail, not rental, copies, so they owned them fair and square and the distributors were responsible for selling them. they can't change their minds later, but i suppose the business relationship years later may have given them leverage, and netflix is known for its rash decisions and not doing what is best for customers.
more titles were removed from my queue this week, but they weren't bonus discs. i have no idea what they were because they didn't get moved to the saved section, which is still empty.
DeleteMan, that sucks. I think I've maintained a copy of my DVD queue since I lost a title from the saved section and figured it made more sense to keep a copy of the whole list.
Deletethanks. i just spoke to a netflix rep (i didn't ask to speak to a supervisor today), and she recommended the same. i called to register my complaint and my surprise because i had thought this was particular to bonus discs. she said that the content team is assessing the inventory of "Very long wait" titles and deciding which are unlikely to be repressed by "the studios" and "purging" those from the system. she also asserted that netflix does use the saved section to gauge customer interest for reordering titles in mass quantities. i guess the difference is now they are being realistic about restocking, but the result is customers aren't informed what gets removed. she suggested an email from netflix to this effect would be good, and i agreed, and she took my feedback but was upfront about netflix not doing anything with it if other customers don't call about this, which i acknowledged is what i expect, having just surveyed their social media.
Deletebefore we got to all of that, she said that in the last 2 months engineers have been made aware of some kind of bug where titles disappear after about 480 titles in queue, the closer it gets to 500. she recommended using a secondary queue. i said i usually kept it near or at 500 until the purges started last week and didn't come across this, but i'm glad to know about this.
Travis, I'm impressed that you actually got some useful information from a NF CS rep. I didn't have any additional titles deleted in this last round, as I've only a very few listed "very long wait", and they're 2017 releases. I've noticed over the last few months that the number of VLW titles has dropped, and agree with you that they must be becoming more "realistic about restocking." I do wonder if they are going to go after titles on the saved list because, as I noted above, they've recently changed the order on the saved list, putting titles with release dates at the top, then all others in the order they were saved. When they did this I could see that I have saved titles going back to 2008, and I doubt NF is ever going to get those DVDs. So, another purge may be coming.
DeleteThe 480 title bug intrigues me. As I said above, NF was counting only queue titles to the 500 limit, not saved titles. But after the bonus disc purge, I've not been able to add queue or saved titles with my queue at 489 and saved at 256. I assumed that they've gone back to counting both lists to the 500 limit. But if there's a "bug", I wonder what'll happen when they debug it.
the rep today specifically mentioned old titles being purged. i thought about pointing out that bonus discs weren't all old and that they were all removed, but it wouldn't have made a difference. i was able to figure out from her clue that it was a 3-disc collection of tv from the '50s that was purged this week from my queue, which i'd been unable to rent for years despite being listed as available with a wait. i'm going to have to be continually on guard because my queue is full of old movies and shows, partly because i've long expected them to become permanently unavailable to rent, although not handled quite like this.
Deletebecause netflix is not being courteous about this purging, if i were you, especially with all of those titles, i would take Nica's advice and save a copy of your list like i did today (print to PDF). Nica and i both mentioned shows earlier that were saved but are now removed from the library, so it is happening.
Interestingly enough, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations: Collection 1 just got moved from saved to the regular section of my DVD queue earlier today. I had given up on them ever getting new discs for it. Maybe they really are assessing their inventory and comparing it to what people have in their saved sections.
DeleteAnd of course they removed one of the discs in the middle of another show, which is just ultra annoying.
Deleteit took almost 3 weeks, but they finally removed one of my tv show bonus discs from my queue. there's one they haven't taken away yet. i assume they are going about this completely haphazardly...
Deletethey got the other one and a 3-disc tv series from 2000 (meaning it didn't get moved to saved). maybe more.
Deletethey are removing movies (now), too. i think the one i just checked from my history was save only before. it forwarded directly from the dvd site to the streaming site, where it's not available to stream and didn't have other tabs, the first time i think i've seen that.
DeleteIt looks like they may have finally stopped linking the streaming with the DVD side. The movie 'Bernie' (2011) showed up in My List today. I think this was one of the ones that expired with only a 1-day notice back in December (or maybe another time). I put it in my DVD queue and even though it is now streaming (I even tested it), the DVD side doesn't show the 'Play' button and even if you search the movie in the DVD side it doesn't show the 'Play' button. This has happened before but it's usually cleared up within a few days. I hope that's the case this time too.
ReplyDeleteNF is still fiddling with the 500 maximum on the DVD queue. For the last month I couldn't add new titles to either the main or the saved list, as the two combined were over 700. But today I was allowed to add about 30 new titles to the saved list. But only one new title to the main queue (now at 481). My saved list is now at 282 (up from about 250). I could add titles that have no release date, but if I tried to save title with a release date before midJanuary, I got the "you've reached your 500 limit" message.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone else noticed the the "long wait" and "very long wait" notices have all changed to "possible short wait" on their queues? I just noticed that it had changed this morning.
ReplyDeletei just checked, and mine hasn't switched over to that yet: it's still short, long, and very long waits. this is through a web browser, right? this seems like another step in the wrong direction for netflix.
DeleteI had "possible short wait" for several days, but today it's back to "very long" and "short" waits; I have no "long" waits. Could be that the "possibles" were an experiment that has been abandoned.
Deletethis morning i finally have one "possible short wait" amid all my short, long, and very long waits. it was a VLW yesterday.
DeleteI'm interested in what title you have marked "possible short wait", as I still have none so marked. My guess has been that the possibles are titles NF has newly acquired, and for which they expect a high initial demand. They bought enough copies for the expected demand but don't want to overbuy. So, they expect that "possibly", at some distribution centers, a backlog will develop because some customers will keep a disc on their coffee tables for an unusually long time, or some discs will get damaged (When I lived up North I saw more damaged discs during freezing weather, when they become brittle and are easily cracked.)
DeleteDoes this idea fit the title you have, marked "possible short wait"?
i don't have any new releases in my queue. this one was An Unfinished Life (2005). it's back to no wait listed. it's one i've been moving to and from my top 15 for a couple years now because it regularly has at least a "Long" wait.* i now have nothing with "Possible short wait," whatever it means. my concern was that it would be the only designation, which it isn't. it's, ahem, possible i've had this before and not noticed because i search "long wait" and "unav" (but that's more likely to be a rude removal from the entire library now than a courtesy notice that a title is now Unavailable and about to go to Saved, which is still empty). i don't move up "Short wait" titles, and for now i'm assuming that there is even less of a wait with "Possible short wait."
Delete*i know it is streaming.
Well, I'm late to the party again. Titles being purged. I've skimmed through the comments and see NF is providing various excuses/reasons for dropping titles. I noticed "Salt" (Angelina Jolie, 2010) is no longer available, but obviously I watched the DVD in 2012. Needless to say I'm disappointed that NF is losing even more content and their lack of customer service in the way they drop DVD titles without any notification. Do we need a DVD removed list? I know it's after the fact, but tracking the decline of NF might be important.
ReplyDeletethat was my aim with continuing to comment about this here, tracking the decline of netflix's dvd service in real time. (to my knowledge, nowhere else on the web is this being documented or even discussed.) i think they are dismantling their business but without any real aim of selling or spinning off the service because i think that would have happened already. i've kept my own list of what i had wanted to rent that is no longer available, and my rental history still shows every bonus material disc i've rented that is no longer hyperlinked because they were all systematically removed. my ratings history page on the streaming site also shows ratings for titles that have been removed and no longer show in the ratings section of the dvd version of the site. i believe netflix made a firm commitment to preserve the streaming rating record from right until the switch was made to thumbs and percentage matches, but i have an offline copy saved from the netflix ratings extractor addon.
Delete(btw, customers can still rent salt, i just checked.)
Ok, so no more posting at 6AM for me. I see I can add Salt to my dvd queue.
DeleteThose of you that have both plans, do you find yourself watching your streaming queue more or your DVD queue (not counting down time due to disc transit)? I feel like due to volume of things expiring, I end up leaning toward my streaming queue more, to the point where I may have a disc at home for a month or even more before I get around to watching it. Do you have any rules (i.e., discs must be watched in one week)? Trying to figure out how to better balance both queues.
ReplyDeletedisc queue is last priority. i have access to too much instantly right now. the number of discs i return in a year has shrunken significantly. netflix is getting a good value out of my subscription. i want to get back to 2 watched and returned a week. sometimes i think about scaling back my subscription to a finite amount per month, but the difference from unlimited is only a few bucks, so i try to motivate myself to watch more to enjoy the service while it lasts.
Deletei'm still renting discs with waits so i'm not getting what i would pick necessarily given all possibilities, but that's been the case for 3 1/2 years. it also doesn't help that USPS doesn't always scan the return. i used to mark them returned on netflix because i'd have discs out long enough to do so, but with everything else i have access to watch, i don't bother anymore.
i'm definitely thinking long-term on discs. i focus on content that will be increasingly rare.
I am usually able watch one film a day. I watch the DVD the day I get it in the mail so that it can go back with the return post. I have an extra day for Sundays and postal holidays. This generally means I watch two DVDs from my queue per week (Netflix does not make much money from me as I eat up my fee with the postage). This leaves me with about five films a week from my streaming list. I rarely have the opportunity to pick a film I want to watch as there usually are several soon-to-expire films at the top of my list that I have to get to before they're gone.
DeleteOn another note, Netflix has stopped fiddling with the DVD count. Since November I wasn't able to add new films to my Queue or to the saved list as the total on both lists was well over 700 titles. Yesterday, however, I was able to add titles to bring the queue up to 500, and add to the saved list, now at 281. And this morning I saw that NF moved three titles with upcoming release dates from saved to the queue (so it is now at 503). This is the way the count was working before November.
DeleteThe time I have to watch movies/series is greatly reduced from what it used to be. I'm virtually donating the $5 a month for the cheapest dvd plan: 1 at a time/2 max per mo. - not a great value, I agree with you, Travis. I've had the same dvd (The Wrong Man) since 11/15, so I'm not the best person to give movie-time-management advice.
Another problem is that while I'm always jazzed to see something when I order it, I'm not always in the mood for it when I have the time to watch. Instead of Henry Fonda in the Hitchcock classic The Wrong Man, I watched Owen Wilson in the decidedly non-classic Drillbit Taylor the other night. What can I say? I wanted something that wouldn't require anything of me.
CanandaiguaNY, you sound organized. I admire and envy you. Nica, let us know if you come up with an overriding plan and/or rules that help you balance your watching time. I think finding the middle ground between missing too many titles and feeling like a slave to the constant onslaught of expiring stuff, recently released stuff, old stuff I missed or want to watch again, and all the great indie and foreign stuff is the hardest aspect of cinephilia. A certain level of hit-and-miss seems inevitable. What helps me the most is to remind myself that movies and series are for fun, enjoyment, and sometimes something deeper. But nobody's going to die if I miss one. Deep breath.
Yeah, I have been basically throwing money away on the disc plan for years. I have also seen people complaining about how they forgot Netflix was increasing prices, so I'm really trying to get the most out of my subscription now.
DeleteOut of curiosity, I looked to see how long some discs have been sitting in my queue. I have some from 2011. Not very good.
Like you, Carol, I will sometimes rent something but then be in the mood for something else. I have a pretty decent mix of TV and movies on both streaming and DVD, so of course the TV shows take way more time than the movies.
I'm going to try to set a rule that I watch and return 2 DVDs per week. I've also set a resolution that I will watch and remove 52 titles from my streaming queue and specified which titles, with a focus being on those that are only available on streaming. With any luck, by the middle of this year, I will be into discs that were added in 2012, so long as I don't bump up too many from later in the queue, and my streaming queue will be a bit more manageable.
DeleteSounds like a good plan, Nica. My resolution is to set some time aside to take a good look at both queues, and make some similar choices. I hate feeling so out of control. This was a helpful thread.
Well, my plan flew right out the window with Burn Notice expiring. I have too much to watch and not enough time to watch it in.
DeleteFor the past few months, nine out of ten DVDs I receive from Netflix freeze or jump even though my own DVDs (say, from my King of Queens box set) play perfectly 100% of the time. Is anyone else having trouble with their Netflix DVDs lately? Typically there are no visible scratches or smudges. They just start skipping every half second or outright freeze. Happened to me again tonight. I was a half hour into The Book of Henry and suddenly it froze. I took it out and cleaned it and put it back multiple times. Still couldn't get past that half hour mark. I tried it on my laptop. Nope. I tried it on a portable DVD player. Nope. Maybe I should just cancel the DVD part of my Netflix subscription and stick with streaming. It's beyond infuriating.
ReplyDeletehas that happened with any older discs recently? for The Book of Henry, was it a gray rental disc, or did it look like retail artwork on the disc?
DeleteThat is unusual for that to be happening to new movies. I would expect that if you were renting much older discs. I can't really say that I've had issues with this except for some older discs that are scratched (or in a few cases, burned or cracked).
DeleteFor a while I was getting discs that would freeze at a "chapter" break and I would have to manipulate the back and fast-forward buttons to get over the break. This has not happened recently, however. Also, when I lived up North, during the cold weather and Christmas mail rush, probably a fourth of the discs I got in the mail were cracked (I think the cold made the plastic more brittle). (I hate to defend Netflix, but...) such problems are common enough that Netflix has buttons to report them, and it responds quickly to send out a replacement.
DeleteWe have to remember that Netflix DVDs are heavily used and roughly handled, and they have only the protection of two sheets of paper, not the hard plastic protection of discs offered for sale. I'm actually surprised, and pleased, that the USPS gets so many DVDs to me that are playable.
before you get too involved defending netflix, remember that they outsource their quality assurance to customers. they operate at a 50% net profit but send out unchecked broken discs to millions of customers. with netflix stock at an all-time high, and for all of the geniuses working the streaming call centers, they apparently won't spare a few workers to spot check returned mail.
Deleteanyway, the reason i asked about the new release discs is i wouldn't put it past netflix to use or buy cheap materials in their rental discs. when you get a gray rental copy, it's not the same as what you'd buy retail. despite their profitability, with the dwindling customer base and the momentum toward streaming, netflix probably thinks (knows) it can get away with cheaper quality discs that aren't compatible with all dvd players on the market. it's not always about cracks and blemishes. anyway, this is just a theory because i hardly ever rent anything recent. maybe the gray rental discs i've had were produced on sturdier stock than what is being used for recent theatrical releases.
How annoying. I posted a response to the three of you two days ago and it didn't go through.
DeleteTravis - I don't remember if it was a gray rental disk or had artwork on it. After a couple of hours of removing and cleaning and reinserting the disc into multiple machines in my house that night, I ended up shoving it back in the envelope in disgust and dropping it off in the blue mailbox at the end of the street. The Book of Henry was the first movie in quite a while where I couldn't get past the freeze at the half hour mark. Frustrating as I was actually enjoying the movie despite the very negative reviews it received upon it release.
Nica - I usually watch newer movies but I have watched older ones (including those from the 1970s) and oddly enough I don't recall any issues with the older movies. Even when I get a new release (the first person to receive it), I'm getting the freezing and jumping thing which makes me wonder if newer discs are just shoddily made these days. Meanwhile my box sets of The King of Queens and Mama's Family and The Golden Girls play perfectly.
CanandaiguaNY - I live on Long Island so I get the cold weather as well. A few years back (during one summer), I got quite a few outright cracked discs (some all the way from the hole to the outer edge) and one disc even had a circular burn mark on it. Between the cracked/burned discs and the fact that it was routinely taking a full week or more for discs to return to the shipping facility, I complained enough to customer service that they switched my shipping facility here on Long Island to one in New Jersey and I haven't had any cracked/burned discs and belated returns are very rare.
DeleteHi Luke, I went through my email to see if I could find the comment you left two days ago, and didn't see anything. It's bad enough when it doesn't publish here, but when it completely disappears, that's unacceptable. I'm sorry that happened. I'm starting to consider going to the separate-page comments. I'm going to keep a close eye on the problem.
Carol: I've made two comments, not on this page but on the main page, that disappeared. One was a reply to David Speranza's post, similar to your reply, and the other, last December, was a reply to your post about the expiration of the Oscillating Fan film. Both showed up as published, but they were gone the next time I came to the site. I thought they might have been deleted by the blog administrator (not a problem for me, as "your blog, your rules"), but I guess this might but more examples of this problem you are having. Anyway, this is FYI. It's not a problem for me.
Deletethe last time that happened to me was some time last year, and i remember after successfully posting the comment then backspacing to try to get to previous pages, which basically backtracked to the page before my comment. the next time i visited the page, my reply had vanished. (it was probably for the best because i was allowing myself to get sucked into an argument, and i didn't mind that my reply was never rescued.) ever since then i've been more careful not to go back to the page before my comment was posted that way, lest it disappear. i now skip across the previous page instead of letting it load and possibly resynch with blogger.
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DeleteCanandaiguaNY and Travis - I'm embarrassed to say I am just now getting around to reading the most recent comments on this page, so am seeing your two comments, above, for the first time. Time flies; I'm much slower.
CanandaiguaNY, I didn't see your reply to David in my email until after I had already left a similar comment. It seemed like it would be confusing to post yours at that point, so I just left things as they were. I apologize for my oversight in not checking my email first, and for just ignoring the whole thing. I'm afraid I took advantage of your good nature. Truly sorry. As for the Oscillating Fan comment, I don't remember seeing it in my email. If I did, I don't know why I wouldn't have posted it - I might have been really busy, and just couldn't get to it. Again, I apologize. The only time I delete comments is when they are egregiously inappropriate, and then I leave a comment explaining what I did, and why.
Travis, Backspacing after a comment has published shouldn't un-publish it. If you refresh the page, the comment should show up. I think your comment must have been the victim of vanishing comment syndrome. I hate that that is so unpredictable. It strikes without warning, and chooses who and when without reason. Glad in this case it worked for you. It has happened that way for me, too. Sometimes, Blogger knows best. :-)
P.S. I don't remember seeing a missing comment from you in my email, so maybe I don't get all of them, as I thought I did. Then again, I'm struggling to keep up with everything, and probably missing more than I used to.
it was on the new ratings page, if you want to look for it (don't publish, please). it disappeared from the page as soon as i backspaced to before it was posted. i've been careful not to backspace since that happened and haven't lost a comment again. i've also been mostly mindful of what i'm here for, which is not culture wars.
DeleteOver the past month, a number of 2016 and 2017 Chinese movies that were in My List got moved into my saved queue. Then last night I had 32 2016 Chinese movies in my saved queue. This morning, 20 of them had vanished. I cannot look them up in search. I've never known Netflix to do a massive purge like that overnight much less the titles all be from a single country. What's that all about?
ReplyDeleteI don't know what's going on with the China movies, but this is at least the third purge of DVDs at Netflix. Just recently they deleted all of the bonus discs, and a few years ago, just before Carol took over this project from David, I lost about 30 of the 500 titles in my queue overnight, without any explanation from Netflix.
Deletei noticed earlier today that a movie i rented just a few weeks ago is now removed from the netflix dvd library. i'd be curious what they tell you if you end up calling about this. it's clear they are streamlining the service, but the result is it loses a lot of its unique appeal. i'm not sure why they can't see that or why they would voluntarily give up business in not offering certain content, especially considering in many cases they already own the discs.
DeleteI did call customer support and told them about the purge. He asked me if I remembered any of the titles. I gave him a few of them. He looked them up and noticed that they all had the same distributor so it's likely it's some distributor issue. He also said that the streaming side is very good when it comes to getting Chinese films so I'd probably be lucky and have them show up over there in due time.
Deletequite possible, and i hope so. still, some kind of courtesy to you that they will not be available to rent by dvd should be a given. i called netflix dvd customer service recently because my returns weren't being scanned by the post office, and i used the opportunity to bring this up again. i reiterated a netflix employee's own idea to me that an email simply stating what was removed from the queue (and not going to saved) would suffice, and the rep agreed that would be good and would suggest it again. if you find yourself ever calling again, i recommend bringing up this idea to them.
Deletealso, as far as that employee last year telling me titles start disappearing after about 480 in queue and that it was a relatively recent bug they are aware of and working on, i asked if that had been fixed. the new person i spoke to was not aware of this being a particular bug that was being worked on at all but assured me that this happens to people who have a lot (as in hundreds) of saved titles in addition to a full queue and that i had nothing to worry about because i don't use the saved section and thus truly had the number of titles in my queue shown at the top of every page. i'm still a bit spooked so i've been keeping it below 480 just in case. i would have preferred to hear that it had been fixed. the advice they seem to give customers is to start additional queues, but that's not what i want because it's enough work minding one disc queue and the streaming my list (although they may have simplified matters for me capping it at 48, eh?).
also, to anyone curious, netflix has not ended its partnership with USPS. i asked. they are still supposed to be scanning returns.
About three years ago I had a big issue with DVDs taking over a week and sometimes two weeks to get clocked in as being returned. It went on for over a month. After multiple calls about this (and reminding them that, because of this ridiculous delay in returns, I wasn't getting near my money's worth), they did an investigation and shifted me over from the DVD facility here on Long Island (forget the name of the town now - it started with an M) to one in Trenton, New Jersey.
DeleteEver since, returns have only taken a couple of days (same as it takes to arrive) and sometimes only one day. Yes, the post office is supposed to scan the DVDs they day they pick them up from the street mail box which is why I usually get new DVDs shipped to me before they've actually been returned to Netflix.
I've noticed a number of DVDs recently bouncing back and forth between my DVD queue and the saved queue including the Pierce Brosnan movie Spinning Man and the Owen Wilson movie Father Figures. Also a Japanese movie Before We Vanish was one I discovered by accident (it had never been in the weekly new release section) and I added that to my queue. It never had a wait time alongside it so I kept it at the top only for it to constantly get skipped over when the next round of DVDs were shipped out. Finally, a few days ago, it got bounced down to the saved queue with "unknown" next to it so no idea when or if I'll ever get to watch it.
Spinning Man is another title that never showed up in the weekly new release section and I discovered by accident and has bounced back and forth between the main queue and the saved queue. I've noticed the pattern. If a new title that was never available to add to your saved queue is suddenly available to add to your DVD queue then it's likely you'll have trouble ever getting it.
I just discovered over 100 Korean movies have vanished from my saved queue. The whole point of signing up to Netflix was so I could watch hard-to-find movies and now Netflix is purging their library of those.
DeleteThis is in addition to a massive purge of Chinese movies recently. Their Japanese library is virtually non-existent.
It looks like I'm going to have to go elsewhere to get my Asian fix. Netflix has really dropped the ball and I'm angry at continuously waking up to find more and more titles vanishing from my queues.
probably another distributor issue. i can't say i'm surprised, for the reasons mentioned. at least these titles aren't being removed from your main queue, which i still find odd. again, how netflix can be so blind about what made their service great is the most puzzling of all. it's like there are no real movie fans working there. they are concentrating on movies and shows you can see elsewhere with relative ease, but i guess that stocking inventory "people actually want to see" is a pure business move.
Deletei rented a lot of japanese, chinese, and korean movies through netflix's dvd service before my shift to renting discs with waits listed. i've noticed netflix just will not stock a 2014 indian movie i want to see so i guess i've experienced a little of their recalcitrance to add new asian titles outside of streaming. i would be so frustrated if i had a long list of them i wanted to see and so annoyed if netflix kept deleting them from my saved section and their entire library without even acknowledging it. whenever i call them about it, they never know anything about it or much else. some company.
i have noticed amazon prime video has added some older asian titles i've been interested in, and from browsing it seems they have some newer releases available as well, but i didn't recognize the content. you should check it out if you haven't already. regardless, their eclecticism is putting netflix dvd to shame right now, just as netflix is puffing itself up with http://20years.dvd.com/ . when you compare how netflix dvd currently presents itself and what we are talking about wanting to see, it seems obvious we are not the customers they care about (if indeed there are any).
I do have Amazon Prime so I went on there this morning and added 125 Korean movies some of which had previously been on my Netflix saved queue.
DeleteI see a whole slew of French films have vanished from my saved queue as well.
Seeing as there have been mass purges of French movies and Korean movies and Chinese movies of late, it's probably best, if anyone has any foreign movies in their queues, to try to watch them as soon as possible because they may not be around for long. Or at least make a list of them outside of Netflix so you can try to watch them elsewhere.
do you get anything shipped on mondays? i'm still trying to figure this out. even though there should be ample time to arrive by monday if mailed on saturday, it seems monday is the least likely day to ship to me. this one was definitely picked up saturday afternoon and maybe wasn't or won't be scanned until today, if the USPS doesn't scan when the post office is closed. still, it wasn't always like this, at least for me.
DeleteThe Netflix shipping centers don't work on Saturdays or Sundays, and apparently this means that their computers and automated systems are shut off. If the the USPS scans a returned disc on late Friday or on Saturday, Netflix won't take note of the scan until Monday morning. If I put a disk in the mail on Friday or Saturday, I can look on my Queue late Monday morning to see what disk they're sending me, but it won't arrive until Tuesday. I never get a disk in the mail on Monday unless (1) NF mailed it out on Friday and I didn't get it on Saturday because of a USPS delay or (2) it's a "bonus disk" coming from a different shipping center and has taken longer in the mail.
Deletethanks, but that's not what i'm asking. i meant shipped on a monday for tuesday or whenever. it's true that netflix no longer ships on saturdays, so something that used to get shipped locally that would arrive monday is now supposed to ship on monday. what i'm finding is discs aren't shipping on monday either. i don't know if that's because of what you are saying about netflix entirely closing its systems over the weekend and therefore missing the return scans from USPS or if it's because the USPS (or my local post office) isn't doing its part until monday. something is missing in the usual process. netflix told me they ship out very early in the morning, and i've definitely had days when my return was indicated in the afternoon because it was never scanned and sent in, so nothing shipped that day even with nothing listed at home. because my usual shipping center is now several states away, it's no longer possible for me to mail something saturday and for it to arrive at that same netflix shipping center by the following monday morning and bypass the need for USPS to scan the return and send the information in advance. as a result, it's like losing not one (saturday) but two (monday) netflix shipping days compared with the heyday of discs by mail, and it's only the customers who lose and not either of the business partners. i was just curious if anyone here actually gets discs shipped out on mondays now (e.g., today), expecting the answer to be yes and for this to be something peculiar to my situation.
DeleteIf I put a disc in the mail on Friday or Saturday, Netflix in Greensboro will mail me the next one on Monday and I'll get it in Chapel Hill on Tuesday. Your problem may be that your shipping center is several states away and a disc shipped on Monday takes more than a day to arrive. That's a USPS issue.
Deletethat's not what is happening because netflix isn't shipping me anything today and didn't indicate having received the disc i mailed on saturday. i expect they will get the disc, the scan from USPS, or both tomorrow and ship me a disc i'll get on wednesday. i usually get a disc the day after it was shipped even from a few states away (but not cross-country). i should have had one shipped to me today, but it seems there is a longer delay if i mail a disc back on the weekend. when there is a postal holiday on a monday, i also find netflix doesn't even receive the return on the tuesday after, perhaps because of some idleness at the post office, netflix, or both. if this only happened once, i wouldn't much care, but because it happens all the time now it's annoying for reasons discussed on this page. i don't think choosing a different assigned shipping center would help me because all the ones near the major city around me have closed, so choosing one even further away would only compound whatever is going on.
DeleteTravis, so long as I drop a DVD off in the mail box up the street for Friday or Saturday pick-up, I'm ALWAYS getting new DVDs shipped to me on Monday (with their arrival being on Wednesday).
DeleteI'm pretty lucky that my post office people do tend to scan the Netflix returns as soon as they see them so, while they may not actually get back to Netflix on Monday morning (two of mine did today), they still get marked as returned and new DVDs are shipped out anyway (as they did for two others today).
For the past year or so, USPS has taken two days (up from the original one day) in shipping time.
What time of the day are you mailing back your DVDs on Saturday? Is it at a mail box on the street? If so, check the pick-up time. It used to me 1pm here but then switched to 11am about a year ago. There are still some 1pm pick-up mail boxes around here though.
thanks for confirming you get shipments on mondays.
Deletemy pickup times vary because it's from my house. for years they were before noon, but lately it's been after. i know the mail went out because i got new mail and the outgoing disc disappeared from the mailbox. as to whether it then sat in a mail truck or post office until today, i wonder. i understand it that the USPS works even when the post office is closed, so i don't know why it wouldn't be scanned if not en route.
We used to get mail delivered at 10:30am but now it's typically 1:30pm and sometimes later on Wednesdays.
DeleteI once asked my mail carrier if Netflix would receive my watched DVDs sooner if I left them in the mail box at my house and they said no. It'd take longer because they wouldn't even get to the post office until they'd finished their route at the end of the day whereas, by dropping a DVD in a mail box up the street, it'll get picked up at 11am and transported almost immediately to the post office to be shipped to Netflix.
If you want DVDs (such as new releases) shipped out on Monday, you're going to have to find a street mail box and drop them in that before the pick-up time on Friday and Saturday I'd say.
i think you're right. thanks for the tip.
Deletethe other reason this is probably happening to me is because for years i would mail the return at work. it used to be a few miles closer to the local distribution center before that closed. more importantly, there were twice a day mail pickups, and i assume they went directly to the nearby post office (down the street) as opposed to in someone's mail truck for the rest of the day. this year we lost our mail room service, so i've been mailing returns from home. i don't recall this same delay mailing from home in previous years; it really used to be very efficient. i think it's a confluence of events leading to this, and using a mailbox, although less convenient, is a good idea to try to fight the tide.
All street mail boxes aren't emptied at 11:00--there can't be at truck at every street box at the same time. And Saturday and Sunday collection times are always different, or there may be no collection on weekends at all. Check the box, inside the flap, for collection times. Or go to your local post office. The box outside will be more regularly emptied. You can go into the lobby, which is open 24/7, where there'll be a slot for outgoing mail. There are people working back there even on Sundays--the USPS delivers special delivery and Amazon packages around here on Sundays. You can ask at the post office about when and where they scan Netflix envelopes. Clerks there used to be very surly, but now that competition among USPS, UPS and FedEx has heated up, they're more friendly with the customers.
Deletei didn't use a mailbox, but returning the disc friday instead of saturday made all the difference, even though ostensibly that shouldn't matter. i guess it does sit around somewhere if mailed on saturday, at least here, or it was scanned on friday before netflix shut its server off for the weekend, if that happens. either way, it's more effort to work around netflix's increasing lack of commitment to their service.
DeleteAs I said upthread, you do have to allow two business days for mail to get to its destination since the USPS changed things a couple of years ago (two days instead of the previous one day delivery) so Thursday or Friday is when you need to drop a DVD in the mail if you want it to arrive at Netflix Monday morning (and get a new release).
DeleteI got two DVDs this past Wednesday, watched them both that night, dropped them in the mail the same night so they'd be picked up Thursday morning at 11 and they arrived at Netflix this morning and two more DVDs (including the new Bruce Willis movie which is a new release this week) shipped today for this Wednesday's arrival.
I have the five at a time deal and want to get the most for my money so I always pay attention to pick-up times and delivery schedules and upcoming public holidays in order to make that happen.
but the issue shouldn't be when it gets to the destination--the one i returned two fridays ago took almost the whole week to register as received a few states away--rather when the USPS scans the return and notifies netflix. netflix is supposed to, and does, send the next disc when it receives indication from USPS of the return. it's not a matter of waiting for the envelope to return to their possession unless for some reason it isn't scanned.
Deleteif it's taking 2 or more business days even as you described in your example, the system is not working as designed and as it used to, even accounting for saturday no longer being a business day for netflix. that's what i'm trying to pin down here. i still usually receive discs the day after they are mailed from a few states away, and if you're not then you aren't getting your money's worth IMO.
(correction: i meant to type "the one i returned two saturdays ago" even though i did put it in my outgoing mail on friday night. netflix acknowledged receiving the disc at their return center on thursday afternoon, by which time i already had my next disc because of the scanned return system, although doubly delayed by both netflix not registering the return by monday and USPS not delivering mail to my street on wednesday after it snowed. were everything to go as smoothly as it did for years, i would have had my disc shipped to me last monday, received tuesday, maybe watched and back in the mail for wednesday pickup, gotten the next disc shipped out on thursday, and received and maybe watched friday to go out on saturday for a new disc to be sent out today, but because of the flaws in the system as it is now, i got one less disc, as has become common. USPS and netflix still get paid the same, but on average i am paying more per rental for a service that won't last many more years, taking with it a lot of content that will be increasingly harder to see.)
DeleteTravis - Oh okay. Because if you'd done as I thought and dropped a DVD in the mail on Saturday (after the pick-up time), it'd wouldn't have a chance to get to the Netflix distribution center by Monday as you'd be missing one of the two required business days.
DeleteBut if it's taking a week or more for Netflix to receive your DVDs and this happens often, you should do as I did when I had the same problem. I live on Long Island and originally there was a distribution center in Flushing (Queens) that my DVDs always came from and went back to. Then Hurricane Sandy happened and they had flooding I was told and shut it down. After that, my DVDs came from and went back to a distribution center in some town here on Long Island starting with an M. I forget the name of it now. Everything was fine for a while but then suddenly it would take a week or more for DVDs to return to Netflix. Never to come to me though (this was back when the USPS delivered next day). I called multiple times to complain and finally someone at customer support did something and now all my DVDs come from and go back to a distribution center in Trenton (New Jersey) and I've had virtually no problem since.
Before they switched me over to Trenton, I was complaining to both Netflix and USPS and each one was blaming the other of course. I even staked out the mail box up the street where I was dropping off my DVDs in order to make sure they were actually being picked up. Both Netflix and USPS did an investigation and that's when Netflix shifted me over to Trenton. I don't know what was going on at the remaining distribution center on Long Island. It made no sense to me that I was getting DVDs delivered next day but they were taking so long to get clocked in as returned. Maybe some new idiot working there was leaving boxes of DVDs in a corner or something. Who knows?
From what I was told, USPS is supposed to scan returning Netflix DVDs right away (hence why the next DVD often gets shipped out to me a day earlier than it should with it finally getting clocked in as returned the next day - notification as returned in my history queue and the title being removed from my At Home queue). DVDs are only shipped out in the mornings (that's why, if you have a payment problem and fix it even at 8 am when you get an email telling you about it, you won't get a DVD shipped out to you until the next day). The scan doesn't seem to trigger things at Netflix until around 3 or 4 am which is why, even if USPS scans your returning DVD at 3pm, nothing happens in your queue until the next morning.
In regard to titles that are harder to see, that reminds me that I need to push up to the top of my queue those old French films like, say, the Brigitte Bardot film Contempt, that I don't expect them to ever stream or Amazon Prime either. Especially knowing that a lot of foreign titles have vanished recently (French, Korean, Japanese, Chinese).
i don't care if netflix doesn't receive my return for nearly a week so long as they receive the scan of my return the day after i mail it (excluding the weekend). that's been inconsistent. it is curious that i can get what they send me in 1 day from a few states away but it takes them a few days to get the same disc back from me, but that's not my problem. the unpredictability does recall the old days of throttleflix (reminder: those with more than 1 out at a time plans would be throttled so that their top queue spots, typically new releases, would be skipped over for someone with less discs out at a time, and often nothing would ship out despite netflix having the return, as in the days of the distro center being in the same state). i would be getting a decent price per rental if USPS and netflix held up their ends of the arrangement. i do believe in getting a good value and holding companies accountable, but i'm even more so racing the clock.
Deletei made a point of mailing back the disc friday, not saturday, just to test this. the next test may be walking to the mailbox in time for pickup on a saturday morning and seeing if that also gets the return scanned for netflix to ship on monday morning. we have the same distribution center btw.
funnily enough, contempt is near the top for me as well because it's had a Very long wait listed a few times. in preparation, the one that actually shipped to me today is vivre sa vie, directed just prior by godard. the one i returned was belle de jour, another frenchy. i talk about these like they are going to be scarce relying on streaming, but i should temper that. criterion has filmstruck for these, and a review on this site said that audio commentaries are available, so it's criterion's wonderful extras that will be harder to see without buying each disc. other titles will be a lot harder to watch in general when discs by mail goes the way of the dodo.
all Frontline discs have now been consolidated under the series title. this may seem inconsequential--at least they weren't removed--but now all the old member reviews and features details are gone, and you have to navigate through many "seasons" of the series to find the particular disc. more streamlining if not deliberately alienating the customer, as it's hard to believe they can be this obtuse.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi DVD subscribers/comment posters: I'm taking a poll to see if you would like a fresh page for comments, or if you would prefer to continue with this one that has all the background of discussions on it. I could make a case for either option. What would work best for you?
Given how recent some of the discussions have been, I think keeping this page open for now would be wise.
DeleteSince yesterday, Netflix has deleted more than 50 DVDs from my saved queue, including Madeline, which I have had saved since 2008. They have given up, apparently, on ever adding these titles to their inventory.
ReplyDeleteI noticed within the past week that Netflix did another purge of French titles. That's twice in the past month or so. They also did a purge of Korean and Japanese and Chinese movies (all on separate days interestingly enough) too.
DeleteSupposedly, having titles in your saved queue let them know that the public wanted them added to Netflix but I guess not anymore. My saved queue gets shorter and shorter. I used to have over 700. Now I'm down to just under 400.
they've all but given up on this service other than the current phony nostalgia campaign and amusing themselves on social media. for instance, according to roger moore's netflix biography, he's still alive and working. when it comes to upkeep, dedicated service, and inventory, you know, the stuff that matters, they are not very interested. i guess we should all just be glad our queues didn't suddenly top out at 48?
DeleteYeah, two seasons of The Golden Girls that I'd had in saved are just gone. I guess I'm joining Hulu sooner than later just so I can watch that show.
DeleteWow even content on there DVD side can expire and is not safe. NF is a pathetic company.
Deletei just talked to a supervisor for an hour who confirmed a lot of what's been discussed and what i've long suspected. if anyone has any specific questions, i may be able to answer them, but he made sure to mention the dvd service is not ending any time soon.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I have two questions.
Delete1 - Is Netflix just not bothering to replace older/foreign/obscure titles once the current ones they have in stock are damaged/lost? If so, anyone with such titles in their queues should probably shift them to the top of their queues so they can see them while they have the chance.
2 - Is Netflix having issues with certain distributors (hence why a whole slew of 2016 Chinese titles vanished from my saved list overnight and likewise similar overnight purges of Korean and French titles)?
Luke, you are probably right on both points. There is a financial consideration as well. Netflix will not spend more for a title than it thinks it is worth, and it will consider it not worth its while to keep in its inventory titles for which there is too little demand. Libraries do the same, regularly culling their collections. I was at the Stanford University library in the mid1980s and saw in the Russian history/politics collection a large number of books with blue slips in them announcing that this book is scheduled to be removed and, if a reader disagreed, to mention the title at the circulation desk.
Deletethey may have acted too hastily on those books.
DeleteLuke, your questions interrelate for what i was told. this was very much what i was interested in because i had a title disappear from my main section (there is no saved section) overnight and still no notice. like i said, a lot of what was told to me echoes what we've theorized and past calls with netflix, but some of what he said surprised me.
you didn't ask, but i'll tell you because it illustrates what follows: i brought up to him all of the bonus disc removals and how unsatisfied i was with the lack of explanation from another supervisor, and he was quick to affirm what a representative told me earlier this year that i thought was a guess, which is the distributors asked them to remove them as well as other reasons related to customers that i already believed. the move still seems odd because they removed every single bonus disc no matter who the distributor or studio was, but it just shows the power they have over netflix, even the dvd.com division.
netflix buys its rental copies from distributors, not retail. when a disc in a series (like disc 3 of 5) becomes unavailable, they can't just buy or make a new copy of that one disc; their only option is to buy the whole set again. that itself didn't surprise me, just that they can't go into a big box store and buy some cheap retail discs, which i thought was both law and sound business because, and i inferred from him this was correct, distributors charge more.
what i was told was that netflix is clearing massive swaths of its library because the distributors have informed them that titles are out of print. evidently, the thinking is these will remain out of print, and so there is no reason to keep them in the catalog and give false hope to customers. (the supervisor actually recommended i sign up for filmstruck.)
you may be wondering where saved upcoming, new, and relatively recent titles come in, and here's where i think it gets really interesting. even though this is a disc rental business, distributors are treating it like streaming. if they decide they don't want certain titles, or bonus discs, rented, even if netflix already owns the discs, netflix complies and won't rent them and apparently removes titles from the catalog altogether. you have pointed out amazon has featured a lot of these international titles on its prime streaming service; i bet that deals with streamers is a major reason for those removals. the supervisor also stated the obvious, which is that discs are on the decline and streaming the new model.
i pointed out that this influence seems at odds with copyright law that allowed video rental shops to prosper as a business model for decades and compared netflix discs by mail as like one giant video store. i said it seemed like distributors and studios were using their relationships with netflix streaming to strongarm the dvd division. the supervisor agreed with me but claimed that laws have changed since the times of rental stores. i don't know if that's true, i don't follow copyright law that closely, but it seems netflix believes it to be true at least.
(continued)
he agreed with me also that neflix is not adding titles to its library like it used to. as CanandaiguaNY said, it's primarily a financial consideration, and because they buy from distributors they often have to make a minimum purchase, and from what i'm about to say i think you'll understand why in many cases they are opting not to. he repeated what'd been told to me previously, that they use saved titles as a measure of interest, but added that they also use the streaming data, which i was heartened by because even he said the two divisions function totally separately (i asked once again why i have to check two places for information about what's available to me as a customer of one company with one monthly bill). i pointed out that a lot of titles are either new or reissued but not in either the netflix dvd or streaming catalogs, so the only way a customer could express interest is by calling and requesting it. i also said a lot of "famous movies" are saved only and that many have been released on blu-ray but aren't available through netflix that way. i told him i keep a list on IMDb of over 200 titles i most want to see that are not on netflix. i think he was surprised to hear from someone like me and that most of the customer calls they get are from people with a very different view. one reason they've been removing so much from the catalog is customers don't like statuses that read "Unknown." also, customers complain about netflix having so many old movies.
Deletehe also said that if a blu-ray is reported three times as damaged or defective because it won't play, netflix tosses it even though they know it's most likely because the customers haven't updated their blu-ray player firmware. they are at the mercy of customer knowhow. they also do most of the work in advance of the post office and have to make regular trips on site to tell them how to process, suggesting most of the broken discs are the post office's fault for not sorting and transporting them right. you can probably guess which titles are more likely to be replaced by netflix, and of course if the distributor says it's out of print then it's taken as an invitation to straight up remove it from the system.
bottom line, although i've not been renting the titles i would have otherwise most wanted to see, i'm glad i've spent the last 4 years renting titles with wait times. a lot of those have since moved to saved or been removed entirely from the site. i let him know i wasn't happy with the rapidly reducing catalog and that i get so many damaged and broken discs and that it takes me longer to get them and for netflix to realize they've been returned after my distribution center near my major city closed, effectively making it so i get half the discs i used to during peak years for the service. i made sure to point out what he already knew, that netflix publicly acknowledges this business is profitable whereas their streaming division isn't. i wanted him to know that i know. he said what i already knew, that netflix values its streaming service more and that the cutbacks in the discs by mail service has allowed them not to have to keep raising prices, but also specifically mentioned that netflix nearly ended its dvd service in 2015.
although i was firm with what i wanted to say, the conversation was cordial and i really appreciated his candor. i've gotten this impression before, but he seemed to value what i said and that he would not only pass on my feedback through the usual way (including tech support for changes to the web site), but also may mention some of my ideas in the meeting he was having that day. whether or not that happened, i think it helps for those of us who care about "older/foreign/obscure titles" to pick up the phone once in a while, even though it is a bother, and let them know not to cater to only their lowest common denominator customers and basest instincts as a business.
Wow. Thanks for such a detailed reply.
DeleteI remember things being up in the air when Netflix was going to split their streaming and DVD services into separate companies but I had no idea that they were actually close to ending the DVD side in 2015. Especially considering I've read multiple times that the DVD side is the only side that makes a profit.
That said, I've often been inclined to ditch the DVD side as a few times over the years I've had a run of discs that wouldn't work no matter what machine I tried to play it in.
Plus maybe I've been spoiled by streaming in that, if I don't like a movie, I can easily shut it off and move on to the next one in My List unlike a DVD where you have to wait for the next one to arrive.
Thankfully Amazon is good for getting a lot of Korean titles which I enjoy. They don't have that many French titles though. But they make up for that with the really good British TV series that Netflix doesn't have.
The suggestion that the post office is responsible for damaged DVDs certainly makes sense which I've long said because sending out scratched or outright broken discs (as I received for a while a few years back) isn't in Netflix's interest business wise. Of course whenever I called both Netflix or the post office, they'd always blame the other party. I always suspected though that it was the post office that was at fault just as the post office's decision to change first class mail from one business day to two business days cost Netflix's DVD customers thanks to no longer getting as many DVDs a month.
I've complained on here in the past about so many Korean and Japanese titles in my saved queue vanishing overnight and then how happy I was that I was able to find a lot of them on Amazon Prime. Today I just happened to go through my Watch List on Amazon Prime and discovered that, out of about 300 Korean and Japanese titles I had on there, a good 95% of them are now "currently unavailable" and come with a message stating "our agreements with the content provider don't allow purchases of this title at this time."
ReplyDeleteHence I'm now putting the blame on the distributors rather than Netflix (or Amazon Prime). I guess the distributors would rather people pay for (over-priced) DVDs of their titles rather than make them available to stream on a subscription service. Not sure how that works for them business-wise.
It could also be that the distributors are making deals with other streaming services that focus more on Korean and Japanese titles, such as DramaFever and Crunchyroll.
Deletein case anyone thinks it's just us (it feels that way to me sometimes), here's a recent "review" i found. i don't think netflix reads these, unfortunately.
ReplyDelete"I note that I had season 1 on my list, but it disappeared along with many other movies and shows. I had a bunch on my wish list that have also disappeared. Many on my wish list have been there a long, long time. Will I ever get to see them??? Would have loved to have seen the first season of the Monkees. If they're offering the second season, where's the first ???"
Today, my DVD queue shows 499 titles. It was 500 yesterday, so I assume something got bumped down to the 'Saved' section. However, when I tried to add another title it said my "500 limit was reached." I know there was some discussion here about this before, but I don't have any DVD extras in my queue, so I don't know what the problem could be. Is anyone else experiencing this today?
ReplyDeletethe above comments are about more than just bonus materials discs. they do that with movies, tv series, and all other types of discs now. if you have a lengthy rental history, try browsing it and seeing if you can find titles that are now delinked (and in some cases, especially tv, no longer rated). i saw a new one just this week that has been taken out of the system.
Deleteas for this particular error, when this used to happen to me, sometimes the title would appear under Saved later. it would eventually clear up. look for that or for your count to update/error message to go away for a title they removed from the library.
Did you have the Matt Bomer movie Anything in your DVD queue?
DeleteIt was on mine before I went to bed last night then I woke up this morning it was not only gone from the DVD queue but no trace of it on the Saved queue. I think there is a last minute distribution issue (maybe the distributors got sick of the movie being referenced in all those nasty recent articles about Scarlett Johansson dropping out of Rub and Tug and they figured, screwed it, and dropped the movie).
All trace of the movie has been removed from Netflix though if you Google "anything matt bomber netflix", the third link shows a cache version of Matt's filmography page on Netflix and it lists Anything (but it's not there when you actually click on the link).
Thanks Travis and Luke. Unfortunately, I don't keep a separate list of my DVD queue, so I'm not positive, but there are several titles that might have recently moved - True Romance, Someone to Watch Over Me, The Dead Girl. I'll just keep an eye on this I guess.
ReplyDeleteLuke, I don't recall that title, but it could have been there. Is it messing up your limit?
I've never had problems with my limit and used to have 500 in each.
ReplyDeleteJust some titles (usually foreign or indie) bouncing back and forth between my saved and dvd queues or, more often, foreign films outright vanishing from either queue. I've had over 100 French, Korean, Japanese and Chinese movies vanish in different purges over the past few months. It's gotten to the point that, as soon as a movie from one of those countries shows up in my DVD queue, I push it to the top in order to increase my chances of ever seeing it.
Sometimes titles vanish or return to the saved queue within 24 hours of the day they'd be shipped.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/netflix-dvd-business-still-alive-what-is-it-like-to-work-there.html
ReplyDeleteNetflix's internal projections are that the DVD service will last until 2025. I have a lot of watching to get done!
Anyone notice the weird new format on the DVD search? I don't like it. It's hard to tell what's what.
ReplyDeletei haven't used the search yet, but i loaded up a page for a title that arrived at home today and saw the new design. i really don't care about the design itself, but i was just calling them (closed, of course; multibillion dollar, multinational corporation with small town, mom & pop store hours) because they removed a part of the site i use almost every day: the list of features on the disc. granted, this was often wrong, but generally if there was an audio commentary, deleted scenes, or interviews listed, they would be on the disc. that dictated whether i would rent the disc or watch it elsewhere as well as when i would rent it, preferring discs with lots of extras for weekends instead of weekdays. with competition being what it is, they should be adding information, not taking away what they already had such as these and, on the streaming side, reviews. i think they are the biggest boneheads for removing titles because they are throwing away unique reviews as well as rating data to use in their customer profiling, but they are clearly determined to run this business into the ground so they can finally get out.
DeleteYes. I hate it. After seeing that, I pretty much wanted to just get all of my discs watched and add as few as possible so I won't have to deal with that horrible search. (Of course, even doing my best to get through all my discs, I still have a few years worth of watching to do...)
DeleteIt seems like my DVD queue has a much harder time loading since they updated the graphics, too.
DeleteI am not sure whether this is the right forum for my comment but it is related to the Netflix DVD queue (mine at least) so I'll leave it here. Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video platform for public libraries and educational institutions (quoted from wikipedia) and I get it free through my local library (limited to 10 movies a month). I incidentally found out last night that it has recently partnered with A24 and now streams titles like Moonlight, Lady Bird, First Reformed, The Florida Project, etc, many of the titles in my maxed out Netflix DVD queue. Thought this information may be of values to those who can get it from their local libraries.
ReplyDeleteps. Thank you for maintaining this site. It really helps a procrastinator like me. :-)
NF 'disappeared' another movie. I've had 'Smooth Talk' in my DVD queue for ages, but it's had "Very Long Wait" the entire time. Yesterday, I noticed it was gone, but it wasn't in the Saved section either. When I search for it now, it's like it never even existed.
ReplyDeletethey must have done another cull this week. i called last night because on part of the page it said i have 475 titles in my queue, but in my queue it only listed 473, and i noticed my #1 movie of over a year (a "Very Long Wait") had disappeared, also without going to the Saved section. i couldn't immediately tell what the other was but figured it out later by comparing against a saved list. even now it still says both 475 and 473 without any Saved section. in my call, i urged them once again to go back to the 3rd status of "Unavailable" (example) or at least have the decency to notify us what was removed. it's sad that they are clearly still investing time and money into their dvd site but won't do this simple courtesy.
DeleteThrough the Wormhole season 2 also disappeared.
DeleteThere were two films called “Gemini” released in 2018; Netflix has both. The Malay film is streaming, but Netflix does not have the DVD. The Hollywood film is available on DVD, but is not streaming. This is not unusual. But now there is a play button on my DVD queue next to the Hollywood film that links to the Malay film. Odd.
ReplyDeleteCarol: you suggested earlier, archiving this thread and starting a new one. As discussion here has dropped a good bit, this might be a good time to do so, after the holidays, when you have the time.
that is odd. amazon has something slightly comparable. amazon owns IMDb, and its listing for The Last Minute (2001) has a button to watch it on prime. clicking on it directs to a different, more recent movie of the same name.
Deletethis bit with netflix is more egregious, yet typical of netflix. if you were to raise this with them on the phone they would probably pass the buck and blame their streaming counterpart for not providing good data. there was an example i used for years with them about the movie This Is The Life. it was up on streaming and never showed a play button on the dvd site. i pretty soon realized they were under different movie IDs (that number, 70116666). i would point this out along with another, also now outdated example from the director Barbara Kopple (The Farm), pleading for them to integrate the two sides of the same web site of the same company so that all available streaming content was obvious whichever side one was on. they always thanked me for the specific examples, said they would pass them on, and yet neither instance was ever corrected, and to date you can not get a full picture of what all is on streaming by navigating the dvd site, particularly the filmographies. between this and the dropping of titles without notice, not to mention the little nugget a supervisor shared with me about other customers complaining about too many old movies, it's easy to conclude they care little about their own content beyond the most popular titles.
I honestly don't think Netflix corporate cares about the DVD side. While that's still, from my understanding, their cash cow, they don't see that as their future and seem happy enough to let it die a slow death. I still think those of us with 100+ DVDs in our queues are the minority, so they don't particularly care about our squawking. They know we'll keep using that service because our queues are too high.
DeleteThe play button, linked to the Malay "Gemini" has disappeared from next to the Hollywood "Gemini" on my DVD queue. The Malay film is still streaming. I never called them, but somehow, someway, for whatever reason, they fixed it.
DeleteLiz Garbus directed The Farm. i don't know why i wrote Barbara Kopple there (although she's great, too), but the example i always gave them was the correct one and a good example at the time because she (really) directed the hit netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?.
Deletetoo true. here's another example. my regular distribution center hasn't changed in a couple years, but my last 2 movies shipped from there with 2-day arrival times for the first time, for this past wednesday and now monday (tomorrow). except for when netflix shipped from other distribution centers and sundays, i always had 1-day deliveries forecast, even if they sometimes took longer. my first title this past week arrived as scheduled, and i suppose i'll get my 3-hour movie with commentary tracks tomorrow at the beginning of the work week instead of saturday (yesterday) as previously would have happened. i asked why this change and wasn't given a satisfying answer. the rep repeated the company line that there's always been a 1- to 3-day window netflix accepts and informed me that the arrival dates are provided by the post office. the rep claimed nothing on netflix's end has changed and supposed the change could have something to do with holiday deliveries, so i am waiting to see whether this changes back next month. anyone else suddenly have another day to wait in the post from their usual spot? i'm wondering if it's a shrewd effort to get some of us to increase our subscriptions to more discs out at a time. regardless, it's another nail in the coffin for this poorly managed and undervalued (as articles draw attention to recent roadblocks to watching classic, foreign, and indie films) service.
ReplyDeletehere's another title the dvd site claims is streaming but currently is not: Kurt & Courtney (1998). this streamed from the very beginning, as i recall, and was only relatively recently removed after all those years. the data today showing that it is streaming again may be a sign that it is coming or was supposed to, but either way it's another blatant uncorrected glitch.
ReplyDeleteAnyone know how to delete a title from your queue after Netflix has "disappeared" it? I've had 'The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)' at the top of my list until today and I was at my 500 limit. Now that title is gone and my count says 499, but if I try to add something else it says I've reached my 500-limit. Really annoying.
ReplyDeleteyou can't. you just have to wait. the next time something ships, the number at the top of the screen should go down 1. when you then add something, both numbers should adjust. AKA netflix programmers are incompetent and their policy on this is still appalling.
Deletethey may have finally fixed this. they "disappeared" one of mine yesterday, but unlike all other times in memory, the number at the top of any page matched the number shown within the queue. i wonder if that's related to cookies. anyway, this makes it less obvious when they do this heinous action, since there is no notification whatsoever when they remove something this way even years into claiming to the contrary, but thankfully i now keep my own record of how many titles were last in my queue. (it just takes more time to find out what they removed.)
Deleteanother programming note: these titles used to cause a weird error in the rental history that's also since been corrected. for a while, even just hovering the mouse over, as if to read the popup description, autoforwarded to the homepage. trying to click these removed titles still does, even though they still bear their old link. now you can easily discern these ghosts by their lack of poster art (probably completely deleted from the server).
I discovered today that some of the play buttons on the DVD side had disappeared, even though the titles are still streaming. There are also play buttons for titles that were pulled from streaming without notice. Way to communicate between the two sides and make things easier on your customers, Netflix.
ReplyDeleteThe Greensboro, NC, Netflix DVD distribution center has, apparently, closed. I’m now getting my DVDs mailed from Trenton, NJ., which appears to be servicing most of the east coast. This slows turnaround time, and I get fewer discs per month.
ReplyDelete“Netflix confirmed that there are only 17 distribution centers left across the United States, with recent closures in Arkansas, Hawaii and New Mexico. That's down from 33 in mid-2015 and 50 at its peak”, “a former employee tells us internal projections see DVD.com surviving until 2025.”— https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/netflix-dvd-business-still-alive-what-is-it-like-to-work-there.html
I can’t find online a list of the centers still open. Netflix is not forthcoming, and the business press does not seem to be interested in covering this story.
“Even though the DVD service has lost nearly 10 million subscribers over the past 5½ years, Netflix keeps it around because it remains tremendously profitable.” — https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/netflix-s-shrinking-dvd-service-faces-uncertain-future/article_4a3677d0-1d14-5ca3-98b0-01f2434cd036.html
that is the same distribution center i referred to in my December 16, 2018, 11:14 AM comment. unfortunately, my delivery time permanently became 2 USPS days, and for you farther down the map i can't imagine it will be any better. i asked a supervisor for a lower price considering i'm getting a lot less discs now because of the unexplained time increase, and he all but laughed when he told me they won't be lowering the price.
DeleteTrenton NJ is my distribution center as well (I live on Long Island).
DeleteI remember my original distribution center was in Flushing NY but I believe it got flooded during Hurricane Sandy or one of the other hurricanes then my distribution center switched to another one here on Long Island (town starts with an M but I can't for the life of me remember it) though I ended up having SO many problems with that one (everything from multiple unplayable DVDs in a row to DVDs taking a week or two to get logged in as returned) resulting in me making SO many calls to customer service that they finally switched me over to the Trenton NJ distribution center.
Everything was fine until recently.
I haven't received a single new release in two months even though I have them all pushed to the top of my queue and I make sure DVDs return on a Monday so new releases can be shipped out. Instead, I keep getting DVDs sent that are from below number 20 in my queue. When I called customer service I was told that it was basically the luck of the draw. No mention of distribution center closings. I told him I'd gotten new releases every week since I signed up about nine years ago and what's the likelihood that I suddenly haven't gotten a single new release in two months and he couldn't answer. Now that I've learned their number of distribution centers has dropped from 50 to 17 and my distribution center is now shipping DVDs out to the entire eastern seaboard, this is all starting to make sense.
I'm also having a problem every week with one DVD always taking over a week to get logged in as returned even when I drop it in the mail box at the same time as another DVD which gets logged in as returned the very next day. Or a DVD taking too long to get checked in so I have to wait the next day for something to be shipped out even though that and another DVD (which got logged in as returned on time) arrived back at Netflix at the same time.
I'm putting serious consideration into deleting the DVD part of my Netflix account and just sticking with streaming especially considering I have Amazon Prime and a lot of movies that are in my DVD queue are on there.
I'm also annoyed by their repeated purges of upcoming foreign titles over the past couple of years. I had maybe 100 Korean and Japanese titles in my saved queue and they vanished overnight. Same thing happened with most of my Chinese titles to the point I don't even add the odd one that pops up anymore. Amazon Prime is great for those.
I watch a lot of French movies too (or used to) but they're as rare as hen's teeth on Netflix nowadays too.
i think it's deliberate at this point. i just know that they've timed it so i can only get one a week. i've considered scaling down my subscription to two rentals a month, but i priced it out and even at one a week it's a better value than that would be. if they delivered like they used to i would actually scale up my subscription and add blu-ray, but i will not reward them for poor service.
Deleteas i've mentioned, the same distribution center went from one to two days to deliver with no explanation. i still return my rentals with the bar code on the sleeve facing outward, so the way it's supposed to work is my local post office scans the return, which informs netflix so that a new rental is sent to me on the next business day. that system worked reliably for years, probably approaching 90% accuracy. now it doesn't work. i've mentioned that putting a return in the mail saturday is especially prone to error for this reason (despite the extra turnaround time), and true to form the last two weeks in a row they didn't have the return registered on monday. a rental i returned midweek before then never seemed to get scanned at all; by friday afternoon, they had received it, leaving me with zero at home titles because discs ship only in the morning.
when i've asked them about this, they only maintain the company line that it's within the timeframe of one to three business days to arrive or be returned. this ignores the whole local scanning apparatus. i'm starting to suspect netflix turns off its ability to receive that information, at least at strategic times that would ensure more rentals. i'm sure they feel this makes good business sense to them. they get paid the same subscription rate and only have to send out half of the titles they used to.
throttleflix used to be the nickname customers gave netflix for the very problem you are describing. newer customers and those with one-at-a-time plans would receive new releases, favored over customers whose steady returns made less money for the company. i would have thought with the advent of streaming and the widescale abandonment of the dvd service this would be a thing of the past, but i believe it's evolved into an overall slowing approach. combined with the low stock for one center servicing an entire coast, that may explain what you've experienced.
if anyone reading this believes they are being purposely slowed down one way or another with their dvd service, i recommend using the hashtag #throttleflix on social media and direct it to their attention just to let them know you are onto them.
another way they seem to be throttling me now is sending me discs from a distribution center even farther away. this one takes 3 instead of 2 postal days to arrive, and they don't send a bonus rental to make up for it like they used to do in these cases. there's no explanation because the titles in question don't have waits listed. this ensures i only get one disc a week.
Deleteagain, i would be ready to upgrade to a blu-ray plan except i don't want to reward them for this sort of thing.
i just want to say that from this same distribution center 2 states away from me i went from 1 postal day delivery until late 2018 when it became 2 and now in mid-august 2020 when it became 3 postal days (still within the 3-day timeframe, netflix is quick to point out). if you've followed the news lately, you already know that this coincides with sudden controversial changes at USPS that even employees say have slowed down service for no good reason, with sorting machines removed, hours cut back, and mail left at the post office. today it's been announced that these changes have been suspended, so i am going to see how long until or even if the delivery time goes back down to 2 days (still worse than it was for most of my membership).
DeleteNetflix keeps 'disappearing' my DVD titles. I just lost the 5th title in less than two months. I was able to figure out 4 of the 5, but that 5th one will likely remain a mystery. I just know it was a Sci-Fi movie, because I organize my queue by genre. I don't understand why they can't just move them to the Saved section. I'm now in the process of putting my titles in an Excel spreadsheet, so I can trace the disappearing ones. I recommend everyone else do the same, or figure out some way to keep a separate list of what's in your DVD queue. Here are the four known titles that have disappeared:
ReplyDeleteThe Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)
The Killing of Sister George (1968)
12:01 (1993)
The Nanny (1965)
i lost one, too, last week. mine was a criterion collection title, which is odd because "dvd netflix" has a good relationship with them, being one of the few niche distributors netflix stocks (although often not in blu), and my "Very long wait"s for CC titles usually go to Saved, with two recently being restocked, to my surprise when i rechecked, and i seized the opportunity to rent them this month after waiting much of last year for them.
Deletewe've been posting about this for a year and a half now. i've called them about it. they are well aware, although they have lied about it to me multiple times. they do not respect us as customers. we are only a revenue source.
you are welcome to keep an excel file, but in my November 17, 2017 at 4:26 PM comment above i recommended print to PDF, which requires no transcribing.
they are petty about it, too. i called last night about the false advertisements of "get it on blu-ray" buttons on pages for titles that are saved only and probably out of print, which was conveyed to the department while i was on the line (just like when i called about the what you rated page not displaying all ratings). the example i gave was deleted from the web site between last night and this morning when i tried to rate it. other examples still have the misleading "get it on blu-ray" button. their contempt for customers is not lost on me.
DeleteI am now getting dvds from ohio instead of illinois. They must have closed my center as well. I am tired of netflix screwing their customers, I am glad I moved all my ratings to IMDB so I have no reason to no longer be faithful to a crap company. I had been a dvd customer since 2004 those A@#$@ . I am so mad that I may get rid of my streaming account as well, we will see.
ReplyDeleteNetflix DVD site has been down for 12 hours so far.
ReplyDelete"You are currently on the 5 out at-a-time plan which is no longer offered. If you select a new plan, you will no longer be able to return to this plan."
ReplyDeleteI just noticed this when I looked at my account to remind myself how much I was paying each month for their increasingly poor DVD service. I haven't received a new release in two months, half the titles in my queue have a short wait, long wait or very long wait notification, and more and more DVDs take a full week to get logged in as returned even when I mail two DVDs at the same time (one will get logged in the next day but the other won't for a full week).
The next highest DVD out at a time plan is three DVDs. What happened to four?
The customer service guy insisted they're not throttling me (and never mentioned the distribution centers dropping from 50 to 17) but it's clear they are. I'm still going back and forth on whether to delete the DVD side of my subscription as I'm getting significantly less DVDs than I used to. And, once again, this morning, Netflix received two DVDs but only logged one in as returned in time to ship me out the next DVD in my queue. The other one they waited (deliberately?) so I have to wait until tomorrow for them to ship another DVD. They did this last week as well.
If I reduce my subscription from 5 at a time to 3 I'll save $12 a month but I see others on here who are on less DVDs out at a time than me are getting throttled too so I don't know what to do. Should I just delete the DVD subscription and stick with the streaming? I also have Amazon Prime.
i share your frustration. as much as i would love to punish them by canceling after 14 years of uninterrupted service, i know there are DVDs for which there is no digital equivalent to stream for free, pay to rent, or purchase. not everything makes the leap to the next format. it's foul how netflix treats us, including lying to us when confronted with facts, but they are the last retailer standing when it comes to disc rentals of catalog and obscure titles (i.e., not redbox fare). to leave certain titles unrented is to accept the possibility of never seeing them. then there is the bonus content on the disc. i'm not sure if netflix is even aware of holding this card because everything seems so geared toward new releases and popular titles.
Deletedon't forget that monday will be a holiday, so they are probably timing for that. don't be surprised if they take this friday off unannounced as well.
Agreed.
DeleteI think I'm going to add all the old French movies I want to see (at the moment I have 85 American 2018/2019 titles) and watch as many of them as I can while I make up my mind whether to keep my DVD subscription or cancel it.
I did see that they shifted the 1978 Gerard Depardieu movie Get Out Your Handkerchiefs from my saved queue to my regular queue. Then again it has a completely new box cover on it (Cohen Film Collection who I guess got the rights to it and put it back into circulation).
when a title gets new distribution, the cover graphic often changes even when netflix opts not to stock the reissue, oddly.
Deletei'm still prioritizing titles with a "Very long wait" listed. here are the last few i rented and gave 4 stars to that are not streaming for free on netflix or prime.
Thesis
My Boy Jack
Awara
Fortress
Beauty and the Beast (criterion)
Nature: "The Gorilla King"
Vagabond (criterion)
Wonder Showzen
Woodstock
As always, a rare French movie (One Nation One King featuring an all-star cast) was going to be released this coming week and what happens? Yesterday it got disappeared from my queue and tossed to the bottom of my saved queue likely to never leave that queue again.
DeleteLast week I did add all the old French movies I'm interested in watching so on Tuesday I'll get a Claude Chabrol film Les Biches.
I have two discs at a time. I can't say that I've noticed being throttled, since I am sometimes really horrible about watching and returning discs in a timely fashion, depending on how much is expiring on streaming and what I have going on in my life. I do know that the transit time has changed, I think due to the post office (my distribution center hasn't changed in a long time). I keep the DVD side and will until they pry it from my cold, dead hands because there is no other way for me to watch some of the things I want to watch.
DeleteI'm shocked. For the first time in two months I actually got a new release shipped to me today (Ma). Of course I'd sent two DVDs back at the same time and the second one didn't get logged in as returned until noon today so I have to wait until tomorrow for them to ship the next one.
DeleteNica - That's the big thing that keeps me hanging on to the DVD side of my subscription too. There are just too many titles that aren't available on streaming either on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I'm not signing up for any other streaming services. But whenever there are these delays in DVDs I'm reminded why I added streaming in the first place. If a DVD is late I still have something to watch.
In regard to the post office, what frustrates me is that Netflix is always quick to blame the post office for delays just as the post office is always quick to blame Netflix. The customer will never know the truth so both sides get to blame each other and shirk any responsibility.
just curious. When you put your dvd back in the sleeve and put it in the envelope do you make sure the barcode is showing through the window. I am asking because even though netflix does not show my dvds as arrived they ship out my new ones after a day seemingly when the barcode is scanned by the machines.
DeleteI am asking because maybe you are screwing yourself and they can't mark you as received until someone manually opens it up because of your barcode not showing for the machines.
Anonymous - I always put the DVD back in the envelope with the barcode showing.
DeleteI don't get the emails telling me a DVD has returned until a day after a DVD has been shipped to me so I don't know if the post office is scanning them for Netflix or Netflix is just slow in sending out those returned emails.
For example, I dropped three DVDs in the mailbox up the street on Wednesday night, they got picked up Thursday morning and three new DVDs were shipped to me today (Friday). I don't expect to get a returned email about the first three until Monday.
Okay. I may have found a work-around about the DVD issue.
ReplyDeleteI've been a Netflix member for about ten years. I'm on the 5 out at a time plan and have always gotten new releases as I time some of my returns to arrive back at Netflix on a Monday.
Then Netflix cut their distribution centers from about 55 to about 17 with my Trenton NJ distribution center apparently servicing the entire north east. For the past four months I've not only received only one new release but I'm only three occasions (third time being today), I haven't had any DVD in the first 30 in my queue shipped to me. There's something about that 30 number because I kept getting DVDs shipped that were 31, 32, 33 in my queue etc. It's like their was some invisible force field around the top 30 in my queue. Strange. Even when there was no "short wait" or whatever against it. Ten of my first 30 DVDs would be available and they'd still get skipped over and DVDs 31,32,33 would get shipped instead.
Which brings me to last night. I noticed that nine of the DVDs in my first 30 suddenly became available with the "short wait" vanishing. So I pushed those nine DVDs to the very top of my queue. That way, the computers are Netflix would see available titles at the top of my queue when my DVDs arrived the next day.
This morning I woke up and checked my Netflix queue. Three DVDs returned to Netflix as scheduled and the first three titles I had in my queue were shipped to me (to arrive on Monday).
It seems like, if the computers at Netflix see too many "short wait" or "long wait" at the top of your queue, they'll skip over them and start shipping from DVD 31. At least that's been my experience these past four months. So, to get around that, make sure the first nine to ten DVDS in your queue don't have a wait next to it. Also, Friday morning is a good return date if you want newer titles as the newer titles that were shipped out on Monday (because most people want new releases) will have returned by then.
Excuse my rambling but I just thought I'd share what has worked for me.
i can assure you there is no universality to that number.
Deletefive and a half years ago when netflix changed its wait time algorithm, i put most of my newly "Very long wait" titles at the top. for the next several months and years, these would be skipped to a title usually without any wait. it didn't matter what number it was, but it did so happen that in the beginning i had dozens of titles skipped because of the status change. as those numbers dwindled over the years, there would be fewer and finally no titles skipped.
in fairness, i don't rent new releases. that being said, from everything i know, there is no real discrimination between wait times for a title with low stock and one with high stock but high demand (catalog vs. new releases). if you are putting new releases at the top, you are waiting like all other customers who want those titles. whether there is throttling that puts you at a disadvantage is probably not something a netflix representative would answer knowledgeably or truthfully. if it were me, i would probably try testing your theory by putting new releases a few spots down, like in the 5-10 range, and see if those first few that aren't new releases get skipped in favor of a new release.
Does anyone know what happens when everything on your DVD queue either has a future release date or a short wait or long wait alongside it? I have 73 titles in my queue at the moment and only 6 are free of any kind of notification. Will they ship one of the short or long waits to me from another distribution center (and send me an extra one to make up for the extra time it takes) or will I just not be shipped anything?
ReplyDeleteIf none of the films in your queue are available at your center, because of high demand or low supply, you'll get one from another center unless none of your films are available at any center (increasingly a possibility since there are so few centers still operating). You'll get an extra to make up for the delay only if there is a title on your queue available at your center, which there won't be since that's the problem in the first place. So you'll just have to wait until a title on your queue becomes available somewhere. NF advises keeping a few titles that are available always in your queue. So add a few oldies.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really a fan of adding movies I don't want to watch just so I can get shipped something. Especially considering the older a title is the more likely it is to be scratched.
DeleteI've heard differing stories about what happens when everything in your queue is short wait or long wait. Some say you'll get shipped something from another distribution center (and get a free one to make up for the extra wait) while others have claimed they simply don't get shipped anything at all and so a week or two has gone by and they haven't received anything.
All the titles in my queue are 2019 and 2020 titles. I've watched every earlier title I've wanted to watch. I've been a DVD subscriber for over 10 years.
I've never been in a situation where everything in my queue has a notification next to it but it's going to happen very soon as I'm on the 5 out at a time plan and there are only 6 titles that are "available".
The problem with the distribution centers going from 50 to 17 is that, since October of last year I've received exactly one new release (I used to get new releases every week as I'd time everything to make it happen). Other than that one title (Ma) every new release automatically gets hit with a short wait and I'm shipped something (as happened this week) from slot number 60.
I now only have six titles in my queue that don't have a short or long wait or future release date notification. That's out of 72 titles (I just deleted Freaks as that's coming to Netflix streaming this week). It's ridiculous.
I'm giving serious thought to just canceling the DVD portion of my Netflix subscription. A reason I still have the DVD portion is that my father likes to watch one or two a week but thanks to no longer getting new releases and them getting stuck as short or long waits for months on end, he rarely gets anything to watch because he has very specific tastes and half my queue (which he'd watch) is constantly getting skipped over (I have his titles at the top of my queue).
It doesn't help that it now takes three days for me to receive a movie and seven days for them to get back to New Jersey (I'm on Long Island). It used to be a two day turn around. Now it's a 10 day turn around and four titles this past month have been clocked as not returned at all (so I've had to report them as lost after 5 days).
So between the new 10 day turn around, getting a wrong DVD and the usual unplayable DVD every now and then, and not getting any new releases at all for months I'm seriously frustrated.
I do have Amazon Prime and have been able to delete titles from my Netflix queue as they occasionally have titles I want to watch available to stream but I'm spending a lot of money on Netflix's DVD service and getting very little for it.
i don't understand what you mean by a 10 day turn around. Anonymous was a little rude, but the conversation you two had about this last october presented both the problem and the solution. how is it a 10 day turn around if you are getting new discs shipped to you the day after your returns are picked up by the post office? missing returns aside, you are lucky if you can rely on that; i still have to deal with USPS not scanning or not even picking up my returns (i had to email a complaint when two days in a row they left it in my mailbox and shoved it down to put new mail on top of it). delivery time is slow enough without USPS compounding it. i always describe to the USPS supervisor as less of this mail for me is money taken out of their pockets, which seems effective because he then has a talk with his employees.
Deleteas for your other problem, i can say personally i have not had an extra title sent to me in probably years now, and that's 1 out at a time. they've shipped from halfway across the country without any adjustment for the extra day. i doubt they will give you an extra title on 5 out at a time. as ChapelHillNC said, your problem is basically an empty queue, which netflix, to their credit, discourages (even while joking among themselves about these being their ideal customers).
Travis, it's a 10 day turn around because it takes three days for a DVD to get to me and then seven days for a DVD to get back to the distribution center. Three plus seven equals ten. I DON'T get the next DVDs shipped to me UNTIL they arrive back at Netflix. I know there was talk about postal workers scanning Netflix DVDs and new ones being shipped out by Netflix before they ever reach Netflix but that has not been happening here for months. It was in the past. But not anymore.
DeleteBasically, the moment the number of distribution centers dropped from 50 to 17, everything went to hell.
I just checked my DVD history. Since October 21, 2019, I've had to report a whopping 30 as lost. Some "miraculously" got lodged as returned the same day but others took a couple of weeks to finally get logged in as returned with four still not returned (one has been over a month, three for two weeks).
The problem with a mailing service is that Netflix will blame USPS and USPS will blame Netflix.
I actually had a problem with USPS last week. I received mail that belonged to the people across the street and I had to call USPS and have my mail carrier come back and find my mail. Nobody on my block had gotten their mail. They'd all gotten someone else's. Eventually she found my mail (including a Netflix DVD) in the mail box of my next door neighbor who would never have dropped it in my mail box. They'd have thrown it in the garbage if they'd gotten to their mail soon enough. They're that kind of trash. I pay extra for the USPS service wherein they email me every morning scans of the front of every envelope I'm due to receive that day plus a notification of any parcel. It means they can't claim I was never sent anything which is why the manager was forced to call the mail carrier and have her return to my block and find my mail.
I always got an extra DVD if a DVD they shipped had to come from another distribution center. It always came with a notification next to it in my queue. That hasn't happened in quite a while as everything has come from Trenton. I did receive a free DVD (with no notification to explain it) within the past month though I put that down to perhaps being a belated "sorry" for sending me Wild when I'd ordered Rocketman (someone had put the wrong DVD in the envelope).
It's late Friday which is when those short and long waits usually vanish before returning Monday. Unfortunately thanks to the public holiday on Monday my returns didn't arrive in time and, sure enough, 25 titles are now "available" (11 of which my father would watch given the chance). Of course they won't be on Monday nor will the new releases which will automatically switch to short wait.
I'll be interested in seeing what happens when I have no "available" titles left in my queue. If they don't send anything from my queue then I will cancel the DVD portion of my subscription and just keep the streaming side which I'm very happy with.
the seven days for a DVD to get back to the distribution center shouldn't matter if you "always put the DVD back in the envelope with the barcode showing" and USPS scans that barcode. how long it takes to get back to netflix should be just their problem, not yours; they are supposed to ship you a new disc the first business day morning after receiving that scan from USPS. you said yourself that you "dropped three DVDs in the mailbox up the street on Wednesday night, they got picked up Thursday morning and three new DVDs were shipped to me today (Friday)." that was good timing for you. i wasn't seeing where the "10 day turn around" was in that particular scenario.
Deleteit sounds like you need to contact your local postal distribution center supervisor like i have. problems do originate on their end; like i said, they've either not scanned or not picked up my return mail, which delays the turnaround time. netflix compounds that with all sorts of shenanigans we all know and have discussed above, which does make it hard for me to get more than one disc a week at one out at a time. if you have five, you and the USPS are doing what you are supposed to with the barcode scanning, and you have a healthy queue, you should be flying even with netflix closed on saturdays (and some days before postal holidays) and the longer delivery time (mine doubled, as i've mentioned). that problem seems fixable even with netflix's terrible customer service and declining service in general. when USPS doesn't scan my return, netflix usually has it in time to send me a new one on the third business day after i put it in the mail, and that's across multiple states. i don't understand why it would take you longer when you are so much closer.
i've not had to report a disc as lost since 12/14/16, although that was only 202 rentals ago. i report damaged discs for anything that has problems playing due to scratches or cracks, but that's become rare in the last year and a half, probably testament to what i'm renting and the relentlessness of netflix throwing away their inventory.
i get USPS informed delivery as well, but it doesn't cost me anything. i'm the kind of person who brings misdelivered mail, including parcels, to my neighbors' houses if on my street, but not everyone does that. i've gotten mail for people on other streets entirely and put it back in the mailbox, labeled "delivered to wrong address." oh, and in late 2018, early 2019, before i signed up for email notifications, i didn't get mail for several days, and a few weeks later i got a bundle of old mail left on my front steps including a sizable check i'd been expecting in december, apparently lost by USPS.
I've always put the DVD back in the envelope with the barcode showing. I've been doing that since day one.
DeleteI don't know if Netflix is behind the seven day returns or the USPS. I've come to suspect it's a little of both. Maybe USPS isn't actually picking up the mail from the street mail boxes every day. I experimented and went out of my way to drop my mail in a different street mail box and it worked for a while. They would get logged in as returned the day after they were supposed to be picked up. Then they started taking as long as the other (closer) street mail box I usually use so I went back to using that one and for a while that started working well.
Now I never know how long a DVD will take to get back.
I used to see the mail carrier empty the street mail box every day (it's a block away from my house) and I realize I haven't seen that in several months. Maybe they're not emptying them all around here every day because they want them to fill up a bit in order to make it "worthwhile".
And of course every now and then one reads about mail carriers who stole or discarded thousands of pieces of mail instead of delivering it.
But then so often in the past when I reported a DVD as lost it would suddenly get logged in as returned (in my DVD history) about an hour later so it seems the DVD had actually been in the distribution center all along and someone finally went around looking for it and scanned it.
And then of course there are the occasional instances when I'll return two DVDs at the same time but only one will get logged in first thing in the morning (so I'll be sent my next DVD) while the other one gets logged in later in the day (or the next day) and so I have to wait an extra day for the next DVD to be shipped. Throttling much?
This is why I say Netflix and USPS are in such a great position. Each gets to blame the other and the customer will never really know.
that's why i put my complaint in business terms to the USPS supervisor i email. it's less revenue for them, even if they don't really care about me getting my mail in a timely manner. you may want to reframe your complaint accordingly or talk to someone else. it's absolutely to netflix's advantage that the mail takes longer, and i think they have multiple ways they slow down the process. they are probably throttling you because you have five out at a time, which they no longer offer (probably because it's a money loser for them if they didn't throttle).
Deletei don't know what your work situation is, but if you can bring your personal outgoing mail to an office, i found pickup there to be much more reliable. during the peak years of netflix, the return process ran like clockwork for me, at least compared with the last few years.
Four DVDs returned to Netflix today and no surprise that they completely skipped over the 25 "available" DVDs I'd moved to the top of my queue and instead shipped those from slot number 60. Never change, Netflix. Never change.
DeleteThis morning I reported Spider-Man: Far From Home as lost since it was five days after it had arrived (as always, I watched the DVD the night it arrived and dropped it in the mail box up the street the same night) and, sure enough, the next DVD they shipped me (Teen Spirit) was from slot number 60 (skipping over Last Christmas and The Peanut Butter Falcon which were both listed as available). Supposedly the number 60 is just a coincidence even though it happens over and over again. Uh huh.
DeleteI noticed on Reddit that multiple people are like me - no longer getting new releases and always getting shipped DVDs from way down their queue. It all seems to have happened starting in June of last year with nearly everyone having their "nearest" distribution center switched to Trenton, NJ (same as mine) even if they live in South Carolina.
The general consensus seems to be that Netflix is driving people to cancel (many have) so that when they finally shut down the DVD side of the business (allegedly happening in 2022 according to press releases) there won't be many people left to complain about it. If that's the case, they're doing a great job.
I was thinking of reducing my DVD plan to 3 out a time in case that makes a difference but I see people who only have one DVD out at a time and they have the same issues so I'm probably best sticking with the 5 out at a time plan (which technically no longer exists) just so I can watch as much as I can before I delete it. That is if they're going to send me any. I have 70 titles in my queue (after 5 new releases were added today) but only 6 are "available" despite Netflix skipping over two of those this morning.
if 60 isn't a coincidence, then again i can assure you it isn't universal. i've had 2 very long wait titles at the top of my queue for months, so they ship me from #3. that isn't a coincidence, it's just what they have available for me. they don't ship from 60 or 31.
Deletebased on what you're reporting, maybe they have drastically cut back on stocking new releases since the service is winding down in a couple years and it wouldn't make sense to get stuck with a huge amount of a physical format that is already on the way out. as i've mentioned, i rent catalog releases, mostly movies from the previous century, so the inventory is still from netflix's peak years as a dvd service.
i haven't gotten into it with notflix (c) tony in a long while, but when i've accused them of tanking the service on purpose to shutter it, they've sounded hurt. that could be because they know it's true and that it means they will be out of a job, or it could be because they are sincerely running it badly without meaning to and despite our best effort as customers to point out the problems and even offer solutions. like you've said about them and USPS, who knows where the truth lies. i can't take their word for most things, unfortunately, but they always deny being deceitful, naturally. i really think a lot of it is ineptitude.
After reading numerous threads on Reddit last night I've come to the conclusion that the reason so many people like myself are no longer getting new releases and anything that is shipped to us is shipped from way down the list is because my "nearest" distribution center (Trenton NJ) now seems to be servicing half the country. It was very strange to see EVERYONE who complained about the sudden drop in service mentioning that their "nearest" distribution center had been switched over to Trenton NJ even when it's 550+ miles away from where they live. And naturally it now takes a week or even a week and a half for DVD to ship each way so they're getting way less DVDs than they use to. Hence numerous people saying they'd finally canceled the DVD service and just stuck with streaming and occasionally going to Redbox.
DeleteAre there still even 17 distribution centers (down from 50+ a few years back) in America? It looks like Trenton NJ is doing all the heavy lifting. So between half the country getting their DVDs from one distribution center and the possibility that Netflix is not only ordering less new DVDs and tossing out (and not replacing) any that are reported as unplayable I'm really not surprised that I can't get one of the 59 DVDs in my queue shipped to me anymore.
I will say one positive thing Netflix has done is something I noticed yesterday - they now show you the top ten most popular movies and series on any given day. The series top ten could be useful when determining whether a show I like might get renewed.
This definitely sounds like it's an issue on USPS's end, at least with the 7-day return time. Either the discs are getting stuck or left in the drop box, your carrier is dropping the ball or doing something hinky with your mail, or the processing plant is having an issue with them. The discs have to be hand-sorted, not machine-sorted, which apparently pisses off some people at the post office, so they might just be delaying dealing with them. When you get a really mangled disc, that's a sure sign they ran it through a machine.
DeleteAlso, if your neighbor does throw out your mail, that is illegal.
DeleteNica, that's something that bugs me. We never know if it's the fault of Netflix or the USPS. It could be one or the other or even both.
DeleteAll I know is that since October I've only gotten one new release DVD in its debut week (all the others have gone straight to short wait for months on end), the shipping times to me and back have slowed and I've had to report so many DVDs as lost (thankfully they dropped it from 7 days to 5 days until you can report) so far this year. I just checked my history. This month alone I've reported 9 as lost with 4 of them yet to have been found, 1 of which even almost a month later.
I've had issues with Netflix before (which is why my distribution got switched over to Trenton NJ years ago in the first place) and I've also had issues with the USPS.
Next month's Netflix subscription cycle begins March 5 so, depending on what happens this Friday (I should have 4 DVDs returning to Netflix that day so knock wood they actually get there and I'll see what they ship me) I'll make the decision by March 4 what I'm going to do. If Netflix doesn't send you any DVDs if everything left in your queue is short or long wait I may as well reduce my 5 out at a time plan to the 3 out at a time plan which will save me $12 a month and won't annoy me as much if I'm stuck paying for a service I'm not getting (I only have 6 titles that are listed as "available" out of 70 titles in my queue).
I also have Amazon Prime which is a very user non friendly site but they really do have a lot of stuff Netflix DVD doesn't have including foreign titles (I love French and Korean and Japanese movies) so I've been watching stuff on there lately.
After only receiving titles from certain numbers in my queue since October of last year (the past few weeks it's been from slot number 60), I did an experiment last night because I really wanted to be shipped something that my elderly father would watch as I'm on the 5 out at a time plan and I've always made sure one or two of those each week has been for him. Unfortunately, the past two weeks has resulted in him not getting anything to watch due to Netflix shenanigans.
DeleteI moved every upcoming release movie to the top of my queue. Then I moved every title listed as a short wait (no long waits in my queue) underneath those with those my father would be interested in at the top of the short wait part of the queue. Then I moved the "available" ones underneath those with those my father would be interested in at the top of that part of the queue.
Problem: With 70 titles in my queue, there weren't enough titles for the "available" ones for my father to start at slot 60. So I added a few upcoming release titles and moved them to the top until Rambo: Last Blood was moved down in the queue to slot 60 with Ad Astra, The House That Jack Built and Hustlers underneath that.
Then I crossed my fingers and hoped my returns would actually get back to Netflix on time for a change so I could finish the experiment.
This morning I checked my queue. Four DVDs had been shipped to me, three of them ones my father would watch. Rambo: Last Blood which had been at slot 60 was shipped as expected. The other three titles (two he'd watch - Black and Blue, The Goldfinch and one I'd watch - Last Christmas) that had all been in the short wait part of my queue were shipped as well, all three being before slot 60.
So it seems the slot 60 thing isn't entirely set in stone even though it had seemed to be the case for weeks.
I have learned in the past however that Fridays are the new Mondays. Titles are more likely to be listed as "available" on a Friday (I now have 11 titles that are "available" in my queue - up from 6 - not including the four that were shipped to me and are now in my at home queue) because most people want to have their DVDs arrive for the weekend and so those that were new releases that week or recently have watched and returned their DVDs by Friday which means more copies are lying around the distribution center. Yes, it's annoying that I don't have any DVDs to watch on the weekend (Friday shipments arrive on Monday) but at least I stand a chance of finally getting shipped some of the normally short waits on Fridays.
I've now deleted the titles I'd added last night just to get Rambo: Last Blood to start at slot 60 and have rearranged the queue into alphabetical order. From now on I'll just concentrate on having my returns get back to Netflix on a Friday instead of making Monday my return day.
I called Netflix this morning to tell them I've had to report so many DVDs as lost including one on February 1 and three on February 16 which still haven't been scanned in as returned.
DeleteThe customer service woman was actually helpful. She seemed to think it was the fault of not the post office but more likely the distribution center in Trenton NJ.
I told her that almost everyone complaining about shipping delays on Reddit was dealing with the Trenton NJ distribution center so she wrote up a lot of what I was saying and they're going to investigate it.
Because I have four DVDs that haven't been scanned as returned this month, she processed four DVDs from my queue. She didn't even ask me first. She just did and told me after she'd done it. It's too late in the day for them to be shipped out today so they'll be shipped out on Monday and should arrive Wednesday. All four (Ad Astra, First Love, Frankie, The House That Jack Built) from the first 20 slots in my queue.
She did say that if you report too many as lost you can get hit with a hold on your account. Your slate is wiped clean at the beginning of each month though.
Hopefully they do actually investigate the Trenton NJ distribution center so things can get sorted out for me as well as everyone else who has been having trouble with them since June of last year.
Is anyone else unable to add the upcoming Patrick Wilson/Vera Farmiga sequel The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It to their queue? I noticed the title show up yesterday and tried to add it but no "add" button appears when I hover of it and, when I click on the title, a blank page shows up. Is this some sort of weird promotional gimmick or did Netflix just mess up some code? I've never had this experience before. There is no way to add the title even though I can see it right there on the page.
ReplyDeleteyou've reached netflix's new purgatory page. notice that right now there is no hover box over the (clearly temporary) poster art with a blurb or any credits. netflix probably has assigned it a movie ID but not received other information yet. i checked, and it doesn't even come out theatrically for 7 more months.
DeleteThere are movies that haven't even started filming and probably never will (Six Million Dollar Man with Mark Wahlberg, Legally Blonde 3 with Reese Witherspoon, World War Z 2 with Brad Pitt) that have been available to add to your saved queue for months so I'm not sure that the newest Conjuring's release date in 7 months is a reason why it can't be added. At least that movie has been filmed already (it's in post production according to IMDB) so no idea why an add button neither appears nor the page comes up when you click on the title.
Deleteyeah, i've noticed that over the years as well, and they will even have user ratings and reviews because people are ridiculous. those listings in many cases persist on the site for years. maybe netflix is just trying to do something different because this actually has an imminent release date. if you really want to know, you know what to do. my experience recently was getting that white (blank) page for a catalog title, which i assumed was bad code for a recently removed listing, but i tried one in another browser today and it eventually directed to the page that i thought had been removed. that wasn't the case for your movie for the reason i offered.
DeleteThe upcoming Fast and Furious movie is another one that finally showed up on the site but has no add button when you hover over it and goes to an empty page when you click on the title.
DeleteJust found another new title that has no add button when you hover over it and goes to a blank page when you click on the title: the Andrea Riseborough/Bill Nighy movie The Kindness of Strangers.
DeleteIs this some kind of a joke?
Update: All three of those movies are now able to added to your saved queue.
DeleteI've been watching movies on Amazon Prime in order to also knock some titles from my Netflix DVD and saved queues and it's crazy how so many of them are no longer on Netflix at all. Not in my saved queue or anywhere else when I do a search in order to rate them. I didn't realize Netflix had purged so many titles from their library. I was aware of the foreign film purges a year or two ago which is when about half my (to the limit at the time) saved queue vanished. But these movies that I'm watching on Amazon Prime and are suddenly no longer available anywhere on Netflix are English language movies - British or American and with name actors so not obscure. Rather disappointing and seems to indicate that the press release about them shutting down the DVD side in 2022 is actually true. Why else would they have slashed the number of distribution centers, remove hundreds of titles from their website, not bother to replace older or broken titles, and not buy more copies of new releases so people aren't waiting months for a new release to stop being listed as a short wait?
ReplyDeleteit's actually in the thousands. i've been ringing that alarm here for years now. sometimes when they remove multiple titles from my queue i call and give them a piece of my mind about it. they still insist there is some kind of banner or popup for these, which there isn't. i make them read to me the number of titles in my queue listed on the top of the page and the number actually shown in the queue and then ask them to explain why they are different, which always makes for an awkward response. sometimes they start inventing explanations like the last one who accounted for the two "very long waits" at the top of the queue. for these less bright ones, i usually make them tell me how many titles i have in my saved section (zero). i then drop the act and remind them how rude this practice is for those of us who use their service to keep track of what to watch, even if that doesn't end up being through their dvd service.
Deletei sometimes am able to use my browser history, google search, or the movie ID number from the netflix streaming site to get to an unlisted ("Unavailable") entry to rate and maybe read reviews and other info, but the rating is almost an empty gesture because the title doesn't show in filmography pages or my list of ratings. it's funny netflix is so adamant about outright removing content because without apparently caring they amassed one of the greatest collections of user ratings and reviews, and they are just unceremoniously deleting them.
On rare occasions the number of titles in my DVD and saved queues don't match the numbers at the top of the page. But then they right themselves maybe an hour later.
DeleteI was just surprised how many movies I was watching on Amazon Prime and which had been in my Netflix saved queue a week or two ago are suddenly no longer there. I hadn't realized they were even gone until I went to Netflix to rate them.
Back when I could see every DVD I'd rented in the history tab (it's forever stuck at 2,500 now) I'd notice quite a lot had gone from red add buttons to green saved buttons while others had some kind of (black if I recall correctly) unavailable button.
It's clear that Netflix is not interested in maintaining their collection - the very thing that made them so great. That's why I spent a good portion of last year watching as many old French movies as I could because I knew they can't have many copies and even then quite a few would drop into my saved queue or vanish altogether (especially the newer French movies for some reason).
Is Netflix DVD getting rid of the star rating system?
ReplyDeleteI went to rate a movie this evening and the stars were all grey and nothing happened when I clicked on one of them. I went to my queue and it's just grey stars everywhere with no way to rate anything. Then I went to my rated and reviewed section and it said I hadn't rated or reviewed anything even though I've been rating titles since I signed up over a decade ago. Maybe they're replacing it with a thumb up or thumb down like the streaming side? I actually wouldn't mind that.
I'm still getting the option to rate, but the one time I got a T.V. series, one video at a time (I usually just do movies, not T.V. series), I dutifully rated the first episode after they told me they got it back. But then I was not able to rate each subsequent episode separately. However, I think I liked all 9 episodes about the same, in the 4-5 star range, so it wasn't too much of an issue.
DeleteI had to report two more DVDs as lost this morning and a couple of hours later I got a message across the DVD side of my account saying that there was an issue and to call a number. I called it and of course it said the DVD side is away for the weekend and I have to call Monday morning which, considering I live in New York, actually means Monday afternoon for me. I assume this is because I've had to report so many DVDs lately (30 since November 15) due to either post office shenanigans or Netflix being incompetent when it comes to scanning a disk as returned (funny how they only get lost on the way back and never on the way to me which makes me more inclined to think the issue is with Netflix rather than the post office). So I have the weekend to cool off and figure out what I'm going to do. When I call Monday, if they don't lift the hold immediately I'm going to cancel the DVD side of my account which will be a shame however I'm not going to continue to pay for increasingly bad service for which I end up getting punished for on top of it. What annoys me too is that my monthly account renewal was two days ago so, if I cancel, I'm out 28 days worth of service. Either way I get screwed. Thanks, Netflix. Great way to treat a customer of a decade and a half.
ReplyDeleteJust got off the phone with customer service. I had to call them because they'd put my account on hold Saturday due to reporting so many DVDs as lost. She admitted that they had received a LOT of complaints about the Trenton NJ facility in regard to long shipping times and lost DVDs. I told her that virtually everyone complaining about Netflix's DVD service mentioned Trenton NJ as their "nearest" facility so there's obviously something strange going on there. Will something be done about it? Who knows? Meanwhile, apparently it takes 24 hours for a hold to be removed so she said she'd make it up by shipping me out another DVD today (I'm already due two) but so far nothing has switched to my "at home" queue and the "account problem" message is still at the top of the page.
DeleteOn a positive note I've been using Amazon Prime to watch movies and rate and then delete them from my Netflix DVD queue.
Well I found out the answer to my question. If everything in your DVD queue is a short/long wait then you get shipped nothing. It finally happened this morning. Actually it would have happened yesterday but for Netflix taking so long to scan them as returned (including one of four at 1pm) that nothing got shipped out yesterday. I should have been shipped four DVDs this morning but everything was short/long wait or had a future release date so they shipped nothing. I just added a bunch of second tier French movies as well as several I'd watched before but didn't like maybe because I wasn't in the mood at the time to my queue so at least I'll have something to be shipped to me in future. Frustrating but at least I got a definitive answer to my question.
ReplyDeletewas it worth it? there's so much i want to see that as inquisitive as i am by nature i probably wouldn't have ever let that happen, but like you said, at least now you know.
DeleteIt's not a case of whether it's worth it or not so much as it's simply that I only had 68 titles left in my DVD queue due to the fact I only have 2019 and 2020 titles on it.
ReplyDeleteOlder movies I just wait to pop up either on Netflix streaming or Amazon Prime since the older DVDs I used to get tended to be scratched or otherwise damaged in some way or simply not available because they're not replacing old movies anymore.
Plus there are a bunch of movies that used to be in my DVD queue but got shoved back down to the saved queue within 24 hours of them being due to ship out to people. I seriously doubt they'll ever leave the saved queue unless it to be deleted altogether like so many French and Asian movies that have been in my regular or saved queues have already.
I'm on the 5 out at a time plan but when my next billing date comes up I'm going to reduce it to 3 out at a time because otherwise I'm going through my queue too fast and it's just not worth it when I have to add 30 year old movies to my queue just to be shipped something.
I'd rather focus on streaming where there's no shortage of content especially considering I do prefer foreign stuff (especially series).
right, but this didn't come out nowhere; we'd prepared you for this happening. again, i wouldn't let my account (my money) go to waste like that, but i also can't imagine ever running out of titles to rent even in the narrowing library. for instance, in spite of it all, netflix continues to carry most in-print criterion collection titles, which seems a great place to go if you aren't going to be shipped anything at all. you even get the extras, which you won't outside of criterion's own streaming service. most of the catalog rarely if ever appears on netflix streaming or amazon prime video anyway. the discs also tend to be in good condition regardless of age because of the customers who rent them.
DeleteHow did you get a 5 out at a time plan? The most I've ever been offered is 3. Whenever there's a holiday coming up, and thus the loss of a Netflix shipping day, I would have loved to have gone up to 4 or 5, knowing I can change back later. I have only had Netflix DVD since June 2018. I'm guessing that you're grandparented in on a no-longer-available plan.
Deletenetflix has said on twitter if you call and ask they will give you higher service plans than offered on the website.
DeleteHi, I have been looking for a forum like this for Netflix DVD subscribers to rant and occasionally rave about the service. I see that there hasn't been anything posted in the last 6 1/2 months. I'm putting in this placeholder comment now to let you know that I have some things I've been wanting to say in the 2 1/4 years I've been a Netflix DVD and streaming customer. So please keep it open for me!
ReplyDelete
DeleteHi Regina, I'm glad we have a page that meets what you're looking for. It will be staying open, but I might be putting up a new one because I think we can only go to 199 comments per page. This page would then be archived. But in the meantime, feel free to leave whatever comments you have. People are pretty good about responding to comments here.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous October 9, 2020 at 3:40 AM
they don't have to listen to us. they have a monopoly. Look at DVD site, they won the war and now instead of getting a movie the next day I get it 5 days later and they have gotten rid of tons of movies when the dvd rules say all they have to do is buy dvds if they can't get a owner to let them make copies. The only way we could ever get them to fix the site is if we could somehow organize 10 to 20 million people to drop netflix as a protest to them ignoring their customers. They would care about that but could you get people to actually care enough to do it.
has anyone watched the recent documentary (somewhat ironically streaming on amazon prime video and not available in any form on netflix) about how netflix defeated blockbuster and became the global force it is today? one of the viewer reviews i saw said it was like reading the wikipedia article on netflix, so if anyone actually think it's worthwhile (well told, offers something new), please chime in.
Deletei've commented on this before, but i have it on direct knowledge from one of the long-time dvd netflix supervisors that they can't purchase DVDs or blu-rays retail to restock. regardless of what copyright law says, they only purchase, at generally higher prices, rental discs from distributors. if a distributor informs them a title is no longer available to stock or restock, netflx's instinct in recent years, as you can review above if you haven't already, has been to delete the title from their system regardless of whether it was listed as available or saved. after complaints from customers such as me, they have left some listings up but generally inaccessible (can't add to queue, much less rent), probably on the hopes they become available again. i wouldn't get my hopes up; i've pointed out to them there are a lot of releases (including of catalog titles) from the last few years on dvd and/or blu-ray that i'm interested in but that they haven't stocked, including from their regular distributors like criterion, in many cases not even having a listing for customers to supposedly vote on stocking by adding it to their queued saved section. i believe they rely on their distributors persuading them to stock certain titles.
i tend to look at the dvd service as like sears or jc penney. you might have loved them long ago and still have a soft spot for them, but the paradigm has shifted and they are going out of business sooner probably than later, so don't expect much and get what you want while you can if there is indeed still something left that you want.
I have 500 titles, the maximum, on my DVD queue and 171 on my Saved list. A few years ago Netflix changed its ordering of the Saved list, so that the titles were in the order I added them, oldest first, but at the top of this list were “pending” titles — those to be added in the next month. These titles would then be added to my queue about two weeks before they became available. They did this even if it put my queue over the 500 maximum. However, this changed about two weeks ago. Now there are no titles listed as pending. Either Netflix has reduced its purchases of new DVDs or it has decided to no longer give notice of coming titles.
DeletePart 1, because there's a character limit:
ReplyDeleteI'm probably unusual in that I'm a fairly new Netflix DVD customer. I signed up for both forms of Netflix on the same day in June 2018. I signed up for streaming Netflix first. As you probably know, streaming Netflix does not allow people to see what is available through them until after they sign up. Disney + works this way, too, but Amazon Prime does let prospective customers see what's available. Anyway, I had retired about a year earlier and had begun a project of watching every Best Picture Oscar winner, roughly in sequence, and whether I had seen it before or not, and even if I had not liked it when I saw it before. I was tired of getting damaged DVDs from the library. I figured that Netflix would have tens of thousands of videos from the whole history of the motion picture industry, just like Blockbuster did with their DVD service when I subscribed to them from 2007 until they closed down. And I mean streaming Netflix. I didn't even know that their DVD service even still existed.
Well, once I signed up, fortunately with a free month-long trial period, I discovered that they have only a few thousand streaming videos, a growing number of which are their own productions and/or TV shows. And there are very few classic titles. So I bit the bullet and got a DVD subscription, too. I started out with 2 at a time but eventually upped it to 3. I would have gone higher if the website had offered more. (Although I'm retired, I am fortunate to be in a financial position to allow me to get these packages.) I don't have a Blu-Ray player, so I don't have that option.
At the time I signed up for Netflix, the next Oscar winner on my list was "The Bridge on the River Kwai", 1957. I put it first in my queue on the DVD service, followed by "Gigi", "Ben-Hur", etc. Streaming Netflix had very few Best Picture Oscar winners then. Two that they did have were "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II". I jumped way ahead of where I was and watched "The Godfather". Six months later, when I discovered that both of these movies would be leaving Netflix on Decmeber 31, 2018, I jumped ahead again to "The Godfather II". Another lesson learned: Movies on streaming Netflix don't stay around forever.
Three Best Picture winners were not even available on streaming Netflix, and I had to get them from libraries: "Oliver!", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", and "Amadeus". (Fortunately, libraries were open in 2018-2019.) In the case of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", it is only available for Blu-Ray. WHY?? I have since discovered other such movies, including a movie I saw when I was in the 5th grade in 1963 called "How the West Was Won". (I'm not an Amazon Prime member yet. It's available there, but it's one that you have to pay to rent.)
Part 2 (I hate character limits!):
ReplyDelete"Oliver!" was an elusive movie for me. I have library cards from several libraries because of cooperative agreements between my local one and others. I had noticed that a library in a community I had planned to be in one night in December 2018 had it on their shelf. That early evening, after I had finished my business, I checked their catalog on my phone, and it was checked in. It took me just a few minutes to drive there. Once I got into the building, I realized that this was one of those videos that could be in either the Children's section or the Adult one. I brought up the website on my phone again, and now the DVD was marked as checked out with a due date of exactly one week, that library's checkout period. I told the woman at the circulation desk my story, and she said she had just checked it out to someone and had been humming the songs from it for the past few minutes. I soon got it from my home community's library. It's a long movie on two discs. And disc one was damaged, just before intermission! I eventually got a good copy from a third library. Nothing about getting "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" stands out in my mind. Getting "Amadeus" was also no big deal. I had decided to have a binge-watching weekend with DVDs I already had from Netflix of movies that won just before and after that one. I got "Amadeus" 10 minutes before closing time on that Friday from the same library where I had gotten the clean copy of "Oliver!". As I approached the front door from the parking lot, a patron who was leaving said to me, "They're about to close." I told her that I knew and that I was just getting a DVD for the weekend. Just like old times when most people watched movies via videos borrowed from libraries or rented from video stores!
When "Parasite" won, the DVD was not available on Netflix yet. I still had a few to go, plus I had a new project underway and was alternating the videos for the two projects along with a few that didn't fit either one. I put it in my Saved list, as I'm sure many others did. And of course it displayed as "Long wait" once it was available. But after it moved to the top of my list, I got it right away.
That's enough for now. I'll vent on some of my other Netflix experiences another time.
One more thing - We have Comcast Xfinity with some of the fee, including HBO, subsidized by our condo. I got some of my Oscar winning movies and movies for my other projects from HBO and other sources that are part of my service. That may have been how I watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
welcome to this page. i believe stocking oscar best picture winners was for a long time a priority of the dvd service, but like so much it's probably fallen by the wayside. i still find copies of delisted and removed movies on their editorial lists (try looking up a famous film and see if you can find one of these "top 10"-type lists suggested in the search results).
Deletei've never attempted to see all best pictures or any list like that. the closest i may come is the imdb top 250. coincidentally, i've seen most of it, although i'm not sure i want to see every bollywood entry on it just to complete the list eventually. some of those are harder to come by, but i noticed netflix streaming tends to have them. it also so happens netflix is where i once streamed amadeus, and it might still be the best film i did so that i had never seen before. the movies of that caliber that get added to streaming are fewer and farther between now, are almost invariably ones i've already seen, and don't tend to stay on the service for as long.
Part 1: Some of my other Netflix DVD experiences: I got "Patton", the 1970 Oscar winner, before it reached the top of my queue. I got an email saying that it would be coming ahead of the others because the next available one would be sent from a different place than where my DVDs were usually sent from. In addition, it was being sent as an additional DVD. I was still on the plan in which I could only have two out at a time, but until I sent back "Patton", I had three.
ReplyDeleteI live in the mid-Atlantic part of the company. My DVDs almost always get sent back to Trenton, NJ. I remember one video being sent back to Orlando, FL. I think that may even have been the one that "Patton" was meant to replace, at least at first.
When I first joined Netflix, I got the DVDs the day after they were sent to me. Not long after that, though, some time in 2018, I started getting them two days after they were sent to me. Excluding holiday periods, the mailing and receiving days were Monday-Wednesday, Tuesday-Thursday, Wednesday-Friday, Thursday-Saturday, Friday-Monday. I learned early on that if I mailed a DVD back on a Friday, there were no outbound shipments on Saturday, so it wouldn't be shipped out until Monday (just as one that I mailed on Saturday would be). I read somewhere that Netflix had shipped on Saturdays in the past, but as their customer base declined, they discontinued it. In my experience, they also don't ship on Christmas Eve and "Black Friday" and possibly also not on New Year's Eve.
Just in the past month or so, probably related to all of the other mail delivery problems that have been publicized nationwide, about half of my shipments are taking three days to get to me. Today is Monday. I sent one back last Thursday. They sent one out on Friday. I should have gotten it today. I didn't. Every so often, the video being sent back doesn't scan at the post office, and my next one is delayed. One of the worst delays was right when I started experiencing almost as many three-day instead of two-day deliveries. I sent one back on a Tuesday or Wednesday. It didn't scan. Netflix got it back on that Friday but too late, of course, to be sent out that day. It went out on Monday. I should have gotten it two days later on Wednesday, but I didn't get it until Thursday.
I've only once never gotten a movie that was sent to me. The 1973 Oscar winner "The Sting" didn't show up for several days. I was coming up on the first day I could report it missing when I got an email saying that they had received back "The Sting" and were sending me my next movie and asking me to rate it. I called and said that I never even got it. They sent me a replacement right away, in addition to what I already had out or coming to me. The good part of me thinks that the package probably tore in shipment. The bad part thinks that someone intercepted it, opened it up to see if it was worth watching, and shipped it back after that (whether they watched it or not). With either possibility, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often. (I hope the one that's a day overdue right now won't be in this category!)
you're fortunate. they used to send those to me sometimes, but it's probably been years now since they did. they send me discs from other centers that take longer to get to me, but there's no compensation for it, it just works in their favor because they pay the same mail rate and get paid the same subscription, but i get less out of my membership. i didn't get mine yesterday as scheduled either, it's supposed to be in my mailbox today instead, and i'm fully expecting it to have shipped from a different distribution center, as you yourself will probably find today.
Deleteif you want more backstory, we've been discussing the increased wait times and distribution changes above. my experience was yours once upon a time, except that my center was in-state and they did mail on saturdays, both of which ended some years back. it makes sense to know the shipping logistics if you want to get the most out of your membership. what's harder to predict is what days other than postal holidays netflix will give its dvd employees that year. they haven't been putting that information out in advance like they should. the most recent one i experienced was friday, july 3, 2020.
i also one time never got a disc that they reported as returned. the ship, return, and next ship dates didn't make sense; they told me this happened occasionally and call it looping, where USPS looped back the envelope to netflix instead of delivering it to the customer.
people used to talk about mailmen opening up the envelopes to watch them, but in 2020 or even 2018 that seems far fetched when streaming is so prevalent. some people don't even have dvd players anymore.
Well, guess what. The DVD that was shipped on Friday that didn't come yesterday (Monday) didn't come today (Tuesday), either. The first date that I can report it missing is this coming Thursday, October 29. So it will be shipped this Friday, I guess, if I have to report it. I have two DVDs from them now anyway, and my movie watching priority this week is movies expiring at the end of the month from Netflix and other sources. Still, I had hoped to watch the fairly short movie I was expecting yesterday before a particular Netflix movie whose last day will be October 31. It's not that important for this particular sequence to be swapped, however.
DeleteOn September 27, I put three DVDs of movies not available elsewhere on hold in a large library system which has some branches within easy driving distance from me. I requested they be sent from the various branches that have them to one of the ones closest to me. I got notified on October 13 that two of them were ready, and I picked them up on October 15. Several of the local library systems have changed their DVD checkout periods from 1 week to 3 weeks in the past few years, and this is one. So the due date for these is November 5. After I finished watching them, I figured I'd take them back once I got notified of the third one being available. And once I got that video, it would probably take precedence over any of the ones from other sources, except for streaming ones about to expire in a day or so. I called the library's central office today to find out why it has taken a month to get it to me, when the others took only a little over two weeks. It is marked "In transit" in the online catalog, and I am the only one waiting for it. I learned that the branch it is in is having some construction right now and nobody is allowed in there. It was probably pulled from the shelf and put into the bin to be sent to the other library, but it likely never left the building. I believe that this missing movie may also be available from a pay as you go streaming service called Vudu that I have never used. If the library one really gets delayed, I'll look into that one. I'll also need to find time by November 5 to drop the two watched DVDs off at a library in that system. One of those two has a second movie I wasn't planning to watch, but if I find time, I may watch it.
DeleteGood luck with all that juggling, Regina. Getting the most out of watching movies isn't as easy as some people think. Deciding what to see, then sourcing them, then fitting them all in can be challenging, can't it? But I love having movies so available (most of them). I'm old enough that when I was a kid, the only way to see a movie was to go to the theater. I went a lot, but I absolutely love big-screen TVs, DVDs, streaming, and commercial-free television. They're on my short list of things that are better than they used to be
That DVD did show up on Wednesday last week. The envelope showed more wear and tear than Netflix ones usually do. I was concerned that the disc would be damaged. I wanted to see it that day so that I could watch it before the streaming video that was expiring on October 31. Fortunately, I had no problems playing it. I put it back in the mail on Thursday, and the next movie in my queue was sent out on Friday, with expected delivery today. However, it did not come today. I am now resigned to the situation in which Netflix movies will be taking three days to come. Or maybe four or more, based on last week's experience. I watched another one over the weekend and mailed it back today. Maybe after the election is over, things will get back to normal, since the mailed ballots will not be taking up resources.
DeleteThis leaves me with one Netflix DVD currently in my possession. It's "Saving Private Ryan", a blockbuster from the mid-1990s that I wanted to see back then but didn't get around to seeing. After seeing "Platoon" during my Oscar-watching project, I wanted to see more movies set in the Vietnam War. Two other Oscar winners, "The Deer Hunter" and Forrest Gump", also had some Vietnam War action. For some reason, I thought I remembered "Saving Private Ryan" as being set in Vietnam. I didn't bother to read its synopsis before I added it to my Netflix queue a couple of months ago. I finally read the one on the inner envelope after I got it and learned that it was yet another World War II film. I saw enough of them during the Oscar project as well as other times throughout my life. The other problem with it is that it's almost 3 hours long. I do tend to split long movies over two or more days, but again, I didn't want a 3-hour movie from a war I had already seen enough of. With four days of no shipments coming up over Thanksgiving, I'll probably watch it then. Another Vietnam War movie I got on DVD from Netflix recently is "Born on the 4th of July".
When I was young, movies were available in theaters as well as on TV, on shows with titles such as "The Late Show", "The Early Show", and "[fill in the day of the week] Night at the Movies". The problems with films shown on TV were, (1) They often had to be cut to fit the time slot including time for commercials; (2) If they were R-rated or otherwise had mature content, those scenes got cut; and (3) Only the most popular films got ported to TV.
Part 2: I have had two totally defective, unplayable discs. One of them was "The Sound of Music", the other the first disc of a 2-disc documentary that had originally been shown on PBS. The first time, I called them, and they sent a replacement out right away. The second time, in June 2020, I found an option on my Android app to report it defective. I saw the instructions to send it back, so I sent both discs back. A couple of days later, disc 1 showed up. I waited a few days, but no disc 2. I finally called. They told me that I had only reported disc 1 as defective. After I reported it, they sent me a new disc 2. You may be thinking that since I now had disc 1, I could go ahead and watch it while waiting for disc 2 to arrive. But I really wanted to watch both discs in quick succession. Fortunately, I had two good copies in my home in a short period of time after my call.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson I learned is that the defective reporting option in the Android app does not have a feature to report which one of a multi-disc set is defective. The website version does have this feature. (I use the iPad app, too, but less often, so I don't know if it has such a feature.)
I've had very few discs with momentary bad spots, but I've been able to get through the few that I've had with little or no lost time spots. This was not the case when I relied on libraries for my DVDs (see my "Oliver!" story).
make sure you report damaged discs even if you don't want them replaced. that way they inspect them and may take them out of the system, saving another customer from a movie or tv show episode that won't play. i can't remember if i already told this above, but a couple years back i got a disc with another customer's sticky note on the sleeve saying it wouldn't play. that meant i had to wait another week before i got the replacement and could watch it.
Delete
ReplyDeleteHi Everyone -
I have created a new DVD page (looks exactly the same) because we have almost 200 comments here.
If you want to respond to one of the above comments, please copy/paste it to the new page, and go from there. The link to the new page is in the sidebar and footer. The link to this page is now in the sidebar under "Other Archives." There's also a link to this page on the new page.