Why a Blockbuster Online Subscription May Not Be a Good Value for You

If you are thinking about subscribing to Blockbuster, you may first want to determine if the subscription will provide a good value for you. On paper, a Blockbuster Online (Blockbuster by Mail, Total Access, etc.) subscription looks like an excellent value, but the reality is quite different. Actually, a Blockbuster subscription comes with many hidden pitfalls that dramatically reduce the value. Here are some significant issues you may want to consider before signing on with Blockbuster for one of their various plans.

Few Store Locations
One of the biggest benefits to a Blockbuster Online (Total Access) subscription is being able to exchange by-mail DVDs at stores. With more and more Blockbuster stores closing, many subscribers are being forced to drive longer and longer distances to reach a Blockbuster store. There is no point in spending $10 on gas to pickup or return a DVD that rents for a fraction of that amount. Any Blockbuster store that is not easy for you to reach is a store that is useless to you.

Reduction in Store Hours
The Blockbuster store near you may be reducing its daily business hours. This may be an indicator the store is performing poorly and may be closed in the future, but it also poses an inconvenience. Fewer store hours mean fewer hours for you to pickup and return DVDs,

Insufficient Selection and Quantities of Store DVDs
Once upon a time, you could go to a Blockbuster store at almost any time and find loads of popular titles. Those days are long gone. Blockbuster stores may have loads of DVDs on the shelves, but they are not the titles people want to see. There are plenty of old undesirable titles and bad new straight-to-video titles, but the stock of popular DVDs you might actually want to see is very low, and many of the classic hits are missing from the inventory all together.

Poor Online Availability
Blockbuster's selection of online DVD titles can be a bit limited. Some desirable titles are just not in the inventory. Making matters worse, many titles are in incredibly low supply. If a title has a status of Long Wait, you may have to wait months or years to see it. If a title has a status of Very Long Wait, there is a very good chance you will never see it. Even titles with a Short Wait status may take weeks or months to ship.

Undesirable Queue Shipments
Blockbuster may skip over several Available titles in your queue to ship less desirable titles to you. When this happens, the titles that get passed over are generally newer, more popular titles, and the titles Blockbuster ships are older, less popular titles. Blockbuster must have a philosophy of keeping subscribers busy with unpopular titles while carefully rationing the popular titles. Perhaps Blockbuster intentionally holds back the more desirable titles to ship to its more profitable low-volume subscribers. A more innocent explanation is that Blockbuster is just really bad with inventory management. Regardless, if this happens to you, you may wait weeks to see titles at the top of your queue even though they are marked as Available. The lesson here is: If you don't really want to see a title, you had better keep it out of your queue, because Blockbuster might send it to you when you least expect it.

Shipping Delays
Blockbuster should be able to ship a DVD to you the day after you have an empty slot in the At Home section of your queue, but Blockbuster may not ship when they should. Blockbuster may choose to leave the empty slot open for an extra day or keep a DVD in Processing status overnight. Every time Blockbuster does this, they deprive you of at least one day of your subscription benefits.

Distant Shipping
One of the sleaziest things Blockbuster does is ship DVDs to subscribers from distant shipping centers. If you live in or near a major city, DVDs should normally arrive at your home the day after Blockbuster ships them. If Blockbuster chooses to ship DVDs to you from a city that is hundreds of miles from you, DVDs will take an extra day or two to arrive. Every time Blockbuster does this to you, they reduce the amount of DVDs you can receive during each billing cycle, but, of course, you will be charged full price anyway.

Poor Customer Service
Compounding all of these negative factors is Blockbuster's extremely poor customer service. Blockbuster allows subscribers very few customer service options, and not one of them is sufficient. The toll-free customer service works best, but the hold times can be long sometimes. The customer service-by-email system is good only for ironic entertainment value. The incompetence in this area of Blockbuster is staggering. Your chance of getting a simple problem resolved through email with Blockbuster is about one in four. If you have a complicated problem with your account, you will spend days bouncing emails back and forth with Blockbuster and still not resolve anything.

The Bottom Line
To sum up, depending on your needs and viewing habits, there is a chance a Blockbuster subscription may be a good value for you, but there are many hidden factors that could have a tremendous impact on your ability to use your account and enjoy the benefits you must pay for each month. Before giving Blockbuster your credit card number, carefully consider the negative aspects of a Blockbuster subscription and determine if Blockbuster is prepared to meet your expectations as a consumer and provide you with an acceptable value for your money.

Availability Is Becoming a Liability for Blockbuster Online

One of the biggest problems with Blockbuster Online right now is the issue of poor availability. Many, many titles are simply just not available in sufficient quantities to satisfy subscriber demand. The problem is not just with new releases but with older titles as well.

Add any ten titles to your queue at random, and--depending on your tastes--you are likely to find one or two have a status of Short Wait, one or two have a status of Long Wait, and one or two have a status of Very Long Wait. Even worse, there may be a couple of titles that have a status of On Order or the worst and most dreaded status of all: Unavailable. With all of the availability problems, you will be lucky if half of the titles in your queue have the status of Available.

This situation would not be so bad if it appeared Blockbuster was attempting to correct the problem by beefing up its inventory with more copies of the most wanted titles, but that does not seem to be the case. Titles with wait statuses may sit near the top of your queue for months on end. In some cases, they may never ship.

The silly thing about this is that everyone knows how easy it is to acquire used DVDs. Even somewhat obscure titles are fairly easy to locate on the Internet. Commonly, used copies of most DVDs are readily available for only a few dollars.

Why does Blockbuster not have a buyer who trolls the Internet looking for cheap used copies of DVDs that are in low-supply at the Blockbuster shipping centers? Why does Blockbuster not work out bulk purchasing deals with a few of the larger used DVD dealers who are selling DVDs all over the Internet? Why does Blockbuster not invite its customers to exchange their unwanted DVDs for account credit?

Used DVDs are so easy and cheap to acquire. Why does Blockbuster not want to spend a little money and fix its inventory problems? The issue of poor title availability has got to be irritating a huge portion of Blockbuster Online's subscriber base. What's the point in paying for a Blockbuster subscription when half of the titles you want to see are nearly impossible to get?

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’s New DVD Allocation System Could Leave You High and Dry

According to a Blockbuster employee, Blockbuster Online has recently implemented a new DVD allocation system. Under the new allocation system, subscribers may receive DVDs from any distribution center in the country as opposed to the apparent previous standard of regional distribution. Supposedly, the purpose of the new system is to allow subscribers to gain access to titles which may be in short supply in some regions but available in others.

The surprising aspect of this allocation system is the way DVD availability can dramatically affect shipping times. Monday through Thursday, the new allocation system generally selects titles from only those toward the top of your queue. If none of the titles near the top of your queue are available, Blockbuster will not ship any DVDs to you. Only on Fridays, will Blockbuster Online ship titles which are not high in your queue. Therefore, if the top of your queue is loaded with DVDs which are tagged as anything but “Available,” Blockbuster may not ship a DVD to you until Friday even if you have had empty slots in your queue all week.

This new allocation system is going to be very frustrating for you if you have been waiting months to see titles which are in low supply. You may be able to finally get those titles, but they could come from almost anywhere in the country and take a long time to arrive. Also, their presence at the top of your queue could tie up shipping on your account for days at a time.

The best way to beat the new allocation system is to keep a few Available titles at the top of your queue Monday morning through Thursday afternoon. At the end of the day on Thursday, move the titles with waits back to the top of your queue or just arrange your queue to reflect your actual wishes. Rearranging your queue twice per week will be a headache, but it appears this is the best way to work the system in your favor until things change.

Blockbuster’s Availability Excuse Is Ridiculous

When Blockbuster fails to ship a DVD to you, their favorite excuse is that you do not have enough “Available” titles in your queue. This is a ridiculous and insulting argument. Title availability is clearly an inventory issue, making it Blockbuster’s responsibility. As a customer, Blockbuster’s lack of DVDs should not be your burden. You have no control over how many copies of a title Blockbuster has in stock. As a paying customer, you should be making the demands and Blockbuster should be supplying those demands.

If Blockbuster offers a title and a lot of people want to see it, Blockbuster should not skirt around the problem by making subscribers wait for weeks or months. Blockbuster should simply purchase more copies of that popular title. What’s the problem with that? Blockbuster can easily use queue data to gauge subscriber demand. If people are waiting months to see a particular title, is it not reasonable to assume this is a title that interests a significant number of subscribers? Shouldn’t Blockbuster be focusing on stocking the titles their customers want to see?

The next time you complain to Blockbuster about failure to ship a DVD to you and Blockbuster tries to put the blame on you for not having enough “Available” DVDs in your queue, tell them availability is Blockbuster’s problem not yours. Tell the customer service representative to go upstairs and wake up the people in the Purchasing Department so they can take care of Blockbuster’s ridiculous inventory problems, which happen to be limiting the subscriber benefits for which you are paying.