Wednesday, November 9, 2005

The Netflix Conspiracy

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but the last two weeks have caused me to raise a suspicious eyebrow.

Normally, the cycle goes like this:

Day 1 Watch DVD.
Day 2 Mail DVD. Usually it's received the same day, otherwise it is recieved on Day 3.
Day 3 DVD is recieved, next DVD is mailed.
Day 4 Get the next DVD at home.

The four day turnaround isn't bad. It gives us time to cycle out and have one DVD at a time to watch. Usually. The last two weeks have had nearly a full week for turnaround time. Now, four days means that you can have two sets of DVDs a week, if you remember to drop the watched ones in the mail. We all know that since there is nothing good on the El Cheapo cable on Mondays (and most other nights), it is critical to have DVDs arrive in a timely fashion.

"So where is the conspiracy?" you ask.

See, we have the standard, 3-Disc plan. We have been perfectly happy with this arrangement; it's less expensive than fancy schmancy cable. So, in order for them to really get us to spend money with them, they're trying to make us up our plan so that we never run out of commercial-free entertainment.

Ok, maybe it's not a *real* conspiracy. But it TOTALLY could be. The really stupid thing is that I work around the corner from their headquarters. If it was their headquarters/master distribution center I could totally walk in, grab my DVDs, and save them exactly $2.4 gazillion** dollars on our household ALONE.

**Amount subject to interpretation.

1 comment:

  1. I have been a netflix subscriber for years and have tried the 8-disc plan, but each week half the movies ALWAYS come from other states, so in a sense, they throttle you if you use any plan above the 3-disc plan especially if you like to rip and mail the same day like everybody does. I currently use the 3-disc plan and rarely do they come from other states or take more then 1 day to get here. You actually get movies faster if you stick with the 3-disc plan. With the 3-disc plan, i can get 2 sets shipped per week, totaling 6 discs a week. On the 8-disc plan, i would get 4 one week, then the other 4 would come the next week, so i was paying all that extra money for nothing.

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