Speed or Order: Choose How You Want Blockbuster to Throttle You

Blockbuster has added a new feature that allows you to apply new settings to your queue. On the My Account page, under Manage Account Settings, you can designate Shipping Preferences for your queue. You may choose either Speed or Order. If you select Speed, Blockbuster should ship DVDs to you according to which titles in your queue will ship the fastest with less regard to their rank in your queue. If you select Order, Blockbuster should ship DVDs to you according to their rank in your queue with less regard to speed. Furthermore, if you select Order, you will need to select how many extra days you are prepared to wait for the highest ranking titles in your queue. You may choose to wait one to five extra days.

Choose from these queue options carefully, because Blockbuster can use these preferences to their advantage. If you select Speed, you will be inviting Blockbuster to send DVDs that might be low in your queue but abundant in Blockbuster's inventory. If you select Order, you will be inviting Blockbuster to slow down your shipments with no guarantee you will actually receive your most desired titles. Either way, Blockbuster could use these settings to your disadvantage. Either you could get less desirable titles more quickly or more desirable titles more slowly.

At this point, it is unclear how these settings will affect which distribution center will be shipping your DVDs. When Blockbuster ships from distant shipping centers, days may be added to transit times. In recent months, Blockbuster has displayed a strong tendency to slow down the flow of DVDs to some subscribers by shipping from more distant centers. Blockbuster has not yet specified whether or how transit times will be factored based on a subscriber's Speed/Order queue shipping preference.

Here is the safe way to play this new Speed/Order queue feature. Set your preference to Speed, and do not have any titles in your queue that you would not be happy to receive. Keep your most desired titles at the top of your queue, and hope for the best. Blockbuster is still probably going to throttle you, but if you have your preference set for Speed and you have plenty of desired titles in your queue, Blockbuster will not have any legitimate excuses. Yes, Blockbuster will still probably throttle you, but they will have a hard time convincingly pinning the blame for the delays on you.

Blockbuster Cops out with Partial Fulfillment

Since late-September, Blockbuster has become more aggressive with one of their more cheesy throttling tactics. For some reason, the minds at Blockbuster have assumed they can get away with shipping fewer DVDs to subscribers by partially filling empty queue slots. Blockbuster may not ship all of the DVDs they are supposed to send to you, but they will at least send one or two, so you cannot accuse them of letting your account sit idle for days at the time.

Here is how Blockbuster's partial fulfillment works. On Monday, you have three empty queue slots, but nothing ships that day. On Tuesday or Wednesday, Blockbuster ships two DVDs to you. These DVDs have been sent from far enough away that they will almost never arrive until Thursday or Friday. If you are lucky, Blockbuster will ship the third DVD to you by Friday, but they might hold off on shipping until the following Monday or Tuesday.

Here is the important thing to realize: By trickling out partial shipments, Blockbuster will have the ability to claim--at almost any given time--they either recently shipped something to you or will be shipping something to you soon. At almost no point is Blockbuster living up to the terms of the subscription agreement you have with them. Blockbuster is perpetually leaving one to three of your queue slots empty while hiding behind the illusion they are shipping DVDs to you on a regular basis.

Now, here's the deal. If you have three empty queue slots on Monday morning, Blockbuster should ship three DVDs to you by Monday afternoon. If Blockbuster does anything else, they are cheating you out of your subscription benefits. Just because Blockbuster ships a DVD to you on Tuesday, it does not mean they are absolved from sending another DVD to you for the next few days.

Do not let Blockbuster trickle out DVDs to you and con you into thinking you are getting the subscription benefits for which you are paying. When you complain to Blockbuster about delays and they try to appease you by telling you they just shipped a DVD to you, fire back with, "Okay, congratulations for partially living up to our agreement. Now what about the other DVDs you should have sent to me days ago? What is Blockbuster going to do to compensate me for this delay?"

Blockbuster Tries to Confuse and Distract Complaining Customers

If you email Blockbuster with a legitimate question about unexplained delays on your account, there is a very good chance a customer service representative will attempt to confuse or distract you with irrelevant information while completely failing to address your question.

You may have a simple question about why Blockbuster has not shipped any DVDs to you even though you have had three empty slots in your queue for two days. Blockbuster will probably not address your question. Instead, they will try to bombard you with extraneous details about your account. Perhaps they will hope you will think they have sufficiently answered your question even though they ignored it.

Try this out by contacting customer service (http://www.blockbuster.com/help). Ask them a simple question in an email like:

Dear Blockbuster:

I have had empty slots in my queue for days. Why has Blockbuster not shipped any DVDs to me all week?

Than You,
Joe Customer


Most likely, Blockbuster's response will be something like this:


Dear Joe (Sucker),

You returned DVD A on __/__/____, DVD B on __/__/____, and DVD C on __/__/____. We shipped DVD X to you on __/__/____.

We will ship you the next available title in your queue within 1-2 business days, provided you have enough "Available" titles at the top of your queue.

As a reminder, always keep 15 available titles at the top of your queue to ensure prompt service.

Thank You,
Blockbuster Customer (We Don't) Care

Notice that Blockbuster used data from your account to give the illusion that someone actually investigated your issue; however, Blockbuster did not actually address your question or provide any useful information. They simply just mixed some easily obtained facts with boilerplate text to fake an answer to your question.

Do not be fooled by these confusion tactics. When Blockbuster does this to you, hit the reply button and tell them they did not address your question. While you are waiting two to eight hours for a response to your email, consider picking up the phone and calling Blockbuster toll-free at (866) 692-2789. Maybe the Blockbuster employee on the phone will not be as bold about evading your questions. The important thing is to make Blockbuster explain why they are screwing you. If a company is cheating you, they should at least be forced to come up with some sort of a direct explanation, even if that explanation is a total lie.

Blockbuster Shipping Delays Spanning Multiple Weeks

Blockbuster Online must have recently determined that throttling customers down to one set of DVDs per week was not profitable enough. It now appears Blockbuster is experimenting with a throttling tactic that allows subscribers' empty queue slots to sit idle for many days on end.

Under Blockbuster's regular system of throttling, Blockbuster would delay shipping until the later half of the week or simply ship DVDs at the beginning of the week from distant shipping centers, knowing they would not reach the subscribers until Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. Regardless, throttled subscribers would not receive DVDs until the end of the week, which made it nearly impossible for the subscribers to get more than one set of DVDs per week.

During October, however, shipping has gotten slower on some accounts. Blockbuster has allowed queue slots to remain empty for extended periods, even for time periods that extend through weekends. For example, a throttled subscriber could have three empty queue slots on a Monday morning. Blockbuster might ship only one or two DVDs during the week, leaving one or two slots open through the weekend. The following week, Blockbuster might ship an additional DVD or two to fill the empty slot(s). Under this potential new system of throttling, subscribers could have to wait more than a week and a half to receive just one set of DVDs.

Blockbuster claims the October delays are due to a shipping center upgrade. At this point, it is unclear what sort of an upgrade actually slows shipping, but if Blockbuster is telling the truth, this problem should be over soon. Presumably, Blockbuster will then resume its standard throttling program, which effectively limits subscribers to one set of DVDs per week.

Watch your Blockbuster Online account closely, and make sure Blockbuster is not delaying your shipments for extended periods. If you find that Blockbuster is delaying your shipments, the best thing to do is contact them via email and phone to complain every day they fail to ship a DVD to you. If you contact Blockbuster enough, you will get free weeks of service, free store rental coupons, discounts, etc. You can call Blockbuster toll-free at (866) 692-2789.

Blockbuster Store Check-In Delays Mysteriously Vanish

Blockbuster store check-in delays seem to have disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived. In May, some subscribers may have experienced significant delays while waiting for returned store DVDs to clear their queues. These delays were sometimes adding days to the turnaround time for each DVD. At no point, did it become clear whether the delays were due to system problems or deliberate throttling measures intended to reduce the flow of DVDs to subscribers.

There are three main theories. 1) Blockbuster had some strange system glitch that coincidentally allowed them to ship fewer DVDs while still charging full subscription fees. 2) Blockbuster was experimenting with a new throttling technique, and realized the horrifying potential for a massive class action lawsuit. 3) Blockbuster was experimenting with a new throttling technique, and the outcry from subscribers and Blockbuster store managers was too great to be ignored.

The Blockbuster store managers had to hate the check-in delay problem. Blockbuster Online requires each subscriber with issues about store DVDs to call that store's manager during business hours. The managers must have resented getting calls from angry Blockbuster Online subscribers about check-in delays. Every time a subscriber called the store manager about a check-in delay, that manager would have to log into the store's computer system, confirm the DVD had been checked in, and then offer a variety of explanations about why Blockbuster Online's system was out of sync with the store's computer system. This had to be an irritating waste of time for the managers, especially since these calls only consumed the store's resources and generated no revenue.

Blockbuster needs to explain what was going on with the check-in delays. Regardless of whether the delays were due to system problems are deliberate actions, some Blockbuster Online subscribers were inconvenienced during this time and did not receive the full benefits of their subscriptions. Blockbuster needs to compensate the affected subscribers in some way to make up for the delays. Several DVD coupons or a temporary subscription plan upgrade might be sufficient.

Have you experienced any strange store check-in delay problems? If so, post the details here.

Blockbuster Online Post-Dating Appears to Be Related to Time of Day

Further tracking of Blockbuster's online system has shown that the practice of post-dating some store transactions appears to be related to the time of day at which a given transaction takes place. For store transactions taking place in the earlier part of the day, Blockbuster tends to assign the correct date in the online system. For store transactions taking place in the later part of the day, Blockbuster tends to assign a later date in the online system.

This trend suggests that Blockbuster has established some arbitrary cutoff time during the day. This would mean store transactions taking place before the cutoff time would be recorded on the correct date, and store transactions taking place after the cutoff time would be recorded as taking place on the following date. If this is the case and Blockbuster does have an arbitrary cutoff time during the day, Blockbuster has established an unfair an unnecessarily confusing policy of recording store transaction dates.

One Blockbuster Undergrounder has suggested that Blockbuster has chosen to use a posting practice common to the banking industry. For example, if you deposit money into your account after 2:00PM on Monday, the funds will be posted to your account on Tuesday. The problem with this idea is, even though the bank will post your funds on the following day, the bank will still accurately record the date of your actual transaction. Confirm this by looking at your ATM receipt the next time you make a deposit after your bank's cutoff time. The funds from your deposit may not be available until the following day, but the actual date of the transaction will be correct in the system. In Blockbuster Online's system, the transactions are sometimes being recorded as actually happening on the following day.

If Blockbuster is somehow basing their arbitrary cutoff time on shipping center hours, this is also an unfair practice. Blockbuster Online shipping center hours should be irrelevant when recording store transaction dates. The online shipping system is supposed to operate based on whether or not a subscriber has available queue slots in time for shipping. The online system has no reason to be basing anything on store transaction dates. As far as the queue is concerned, either a store DVD has been rented and returned, or it has not. A slot is open at shipping time, or it is not. What would be the legitimate reason to record store transactions one day late? We already know the Blockbuster Online system is operating beyond shipping centers hours, because the system often displays in-store exchanges quickly after they happen, even when those transactions take place late at night. Why should the system not record the actual dates of transactions?

Since the transactions in question are physically taking place in Blockbuster stores, the transactions are taking place within normal business hours for the store. Therefore, the transactions should be recorded on the proper dates. If Blockbuster is assigning different dates, they are unjustifiably skewing subscriber data. This skewed data would inaccurately indicate subscribers are one day slower when exchanging some online DVDs at stores and Blockbuster is one day faster when shipping some online DVDs after the return of store DVDs. In short, the skewed data makes Blockbuster Online look better on paper by artificially making the subscribers look less active and Blockbuster Online look faster. Some subscribers could end up getting fewer DVDs because of delays, but the records would show many of Blockbuster's shipping delays are one day shorter than they actually are.

Blockbuster Prominently Displays False Statement on Web Site

Once you have returned all of the DVDs allowed by your Blockbuster Online subscription plan, a message will appear in the At Home section of your queue. This message reads,

To have movies shipped, just make sure you have added movies to your queue that are Available Now.

There's nothing else to do. We will ship your next available DVDs within 1 business day.

This statement is false. In fact, Blockbuster may not ship another DVD to you in one business day. They may take days to ship another DVD to you. If you call Blockbuster and ask why they have taken longer than one business day to ship a DVD to you, they will give you a variety of excuses. Blockbuster's favorite excuse is that the delay is your fault because you do not have enough available DVDs at the top of your queue.

How does Blockbuster get away with insisting subscribers have certain quantities of Available DVDs at the top of their queues? As long as the subscriber has at least one Available DVD anywhere in his or her queue, Blockbuster should ship something.

The fact is Availability is a very vague concept at Blockbuster. Just because a DVD shows up as Available in your queue, it does not mean the DVD is actually available. A title may be in abundant supply for the rest of the country, but if that title does not happen to be in ample supply in your shipping area, you could wait a long time to receive an "Available" DVD.

Also, why is availability such a ludicrous problem at Blockbuster? If DVDs have wait statuses of Short Wait or greater for month after month, doesn't that mean Blockbuster's supply is insufficient? Most of these DVDs are readily available for sale on the Internet. Many of them are available for very reasonable prices. If these Internet retailers can stock these titles, why can't Blockbuster?

Blockbuster Sometimes Post-Dates Store Transactions for Online Subscribers

The next time you exchange an online DVD for a store DVD at Blockbuster, check the date on your rental history on Blockbuster's Web site. You might notice that Blockbuster's system will sometimes indicate you rented and/or returned a store DVD one day later than you actually did.

For example, if you exchange an online DVD for a store DVD on 5/25/09 and return that same store DVD on 5/27/09. Your rental history on Blockbuster's Web site may sometimes erroneously indicate the transactions took place on 5/26/09 and 5/28/09.

Even when considering time zone differences, there is no logical explanation for these errors. Oddly, the process does not seem to work in reverse. These errors seem to only show some transactions taking place later than the actual dates. The system does not seem to be indicating transactions are taking place earlier than the actual dates. Why are the errors only resulting in apparent late transactions?

This practice of post-dating transactions might benefit Blockbuster, because--on paper--it might seem a subscriber held an online DVD one day longer than the subscriber actually did. This would artificially show a Blockbuster Online subscriber as being less active than the subscriber actually is, which would look better on Blockbuster's balance sheets, because subscribers who are less active are generally more profitable. The errant record keeping might also hide that Blockbuster took too long to ship an online DVD after the return of a store DVD. Post-dating a transaction makes it appear Blockbuster took one day less to ship a DVD than it actually did. In short, post-dating store transactions makes the subscriber appear to be slower and Blockbuster Online appear to be faster. Since store transactions take place in person, Blockbuster cannot directly delay when a subscriber gets a store DVD, but Blockbuster can delay when that subscriber gets the next online DVD by adding an extra day through the practice of post-dating.

Another strange thing is Blockbuster's ship and receive dates for online rentals seem to be fairly accurate. The post-dating seems to be isolated to some store DVDs upon rental and return.

To investigate this post-dating issue for yourself, click on the Rental History link located just above the At Home section of your Blockbuster Online queue and crosscheck Blockbuster's reported dates with the actual dates from your own records.

Make sure to keep accurate records of all of your transactions with Blockbuster. You may need these records to defend yourself against Blockbuster at some point. These records will also come in handy if you choose to take action against Blockbuster at some point in the future.