Thursday, July 10, 2008

Movies by Mail

Sometimes, something just has to give.

My husband and I have been members of Netflix since December last year. We love the convenience of having movies mailed directly to our home. These are movies that we would be renting anyway so we're saying the movie with a flat fee each month, not to mention the outrageous gas costs.

In the beginning, it was wonderful! The convenience, the selection, and they even had HD DVDs that we could choose from. Later when we added our Blu-ray player, we easily switched our preferences and were able to get the Blu-ray discs as well. It was wonderful fun. They have profiles so that my husband and I can each get something we want without the paths crossing.

Then the difficulties started happening. It seemed like more and more of the discs we received were unplayable. While they are swift about helping getting that fixed, (i.e. mailing out a new disc or your next select), it was a pain to be excited about your movie only to not be able to watch it. Then you were stuck driving to the movie place and renting a movie, the very thing you were trying to avoid. They took the cake this last round though. Our movies arrived and DH was excited about seeing one of his Blu-rays. He puts it in, and what to ya know... it was the bonus disc!

Renting movies through the mail is wonderful in some aspects but not in others. If you get home with a movie from the movie place and it doesn't work, you turn around and exchange it that day and you still get to watch your movie. With Netflix, though it comes straight to your house, it takes at least 2-3 days to get a replacement movie.

So we are going to try something new. I have cancelled the membership with Netflix. I loved it while it lasted but it's time to try something new. We have switched to Blockbuster's mail-order movies. Hopefully, their DVDs will work the first time we get them. If they don't, at least we have the option of exchanging the store, even if the closest one is 30 minutes away. It's sooner than 3 days and we're in that town every day for work anyway.

As our trial progresses, I'll keep you updated. I know I will certainly miss some of the features that Netflix has. However, I'm hoping for a better percentage of movies that are playable. I hate wasting time and money on a movie that we can't watch.

Do you use Netflix? Have you had any problems? Or are you a Blockbuster? How do you like it? Or do you rent movies the normal way?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have been thinking about using netflix but maybe we will try blockbuster now!

Liz Harrell said...

I just stumbled onto your blog this afternoon and wanted to say hi. We use netflix, but I really miss the convenience of blockbuster. It's a toss up.

Ariel said...

We used netflix for a while but I'm not much of a movie watcher... But it was awesome for a geek like me :)
MST3K WOOT!