In a March 2nd press release, Blockbuster responded to a large number of inquiries about throttling. Blockbuster has clarified their position on throttling and declared that the online DVD rental company does not throttle subscribers.
Apparently, Blockbuster did test throttling at one point, but decided to discontinue the program in 2005. Perhaps, they realized the repercussions from angry throttled customers exceeded the financial benefits of throttling.
Blockbuster left little wiggle room with their official statement on the issue. Shane Evangelist, Senior Vice-President and General Manager for Blockbuster Online, stated, “Blockbuster Online does not throttle. When we say our service offers unlimited rentals, we mean it."
With such a bold statement from Blockbuster, the company had better not dabble in throttling again at a later date. If they do, Shane Evangelist’s quote will certainly come back to haunt the company. The subscribers are watching, and this is one of those “Read my lips. No new taxes” moments.
Blockbuster Online Press Release
3/03/2006
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7 comments:
They most definitely do "throttle." I noticed a slowdown in delivery of my movies, so I decided to do an experiment opening an account with Netflix. Both Blockbuster and Netflix warehouses have the same mailing address here. The result was obvious, I got about 2 days extra delays from Blockbuster that can only be explained by deliberate throttling. Anybody can do this experiment to verify my findings.
not true, over the last 5 months I average 20+ movies/month...there are loopholes in their system
18 movies this moth plus 2 free rentals on my new acct. 3 out at a time. i'll keep ypu posted.
I've been renting movies from Blockbuster for about a year and had a reasonable turnaround time until February. The first alarming sign was these kind of emails from BB:
Hello XXXXX,
We know receiving your movies quickly is important to you. It's important to us, too. That's why we need your input, and it will only take a moment.
Your input will help us make continuing improvements to your delivery experience.
Please tell us when you mailed XXXXX back to us by clicking on the appropriate response below. XXXXX was received by us on Thursday, February 16th.
Shortly after that the shipping delays became much bigger, upto a week turnaround time per movie. Contacting customer service is like talking to a marsian, all they can do is send you a boilerplate meaningless emails.
They absolutely throttle. Blockbuster will NOT mail out 3 discs at a time. Even if you mail them 3 discs on the same day they will deny receiving all of your returns until Friday, even if they actually receive them on a Wednesday, and then claim their one day turnaround time is adhered to by mailing out a new disc on Monday. This is positively their new strategy.
They are definitely throttling. As the one person said about the changes happening aroudn Feb. The same exact thing has been happening to me. Sometimes it would take them a week to ship a movie out to me. I have written them numerous complaints about this. They usually give me an in store coupon, but this doesn't make up for the fact. I mean, I use online renting so I don't have to go to the store.
Blockbuster does throttle. I was a member from August 9, 2006 till December 19, 2006 when I quit because I got tired of their throttling. Everything was great until about October when it started taking me 4 to 6 days to get a DVD and them about 3 to 4 days to receive it. Before that, it took me one to two days to receive a DVD and one to two days for BB to get it back. They shipped from Baton Rouge, LA and I lived in Vicksburg, MS. My top choices would be put on short wait or long wait or sent from distant distribution centers. I would never get three DVDs at the same time. I complained to BB support continuously. Kept getting the same respnse and a coupon for free rental. I joined Netflix and after one month Netflix started doing the same thing. I filed a complaint with the BBB on Netflix. I will be quitting Netflix at the end of January, 2007. I refuse to do business with companies that lie about unlimited and then use underhanded tactics. I plan to stay away from all internet rental companies.
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