Wednesday Shipping: Blockbuster Online’s Weapon of Choice for Delays

In September 2008, Blockbuster Underground reported an apparent trend at Blockbuster Online.

Since then, Blockbuster has shown signs of experimenting with multiple delay tactics, but the Wednesday shipping delay tactic seems to be emerging as one of Blockbuster’s favorites ways to limit the flow of DVDs to some subscribers.

It appears Blockbuster Online has decided to ship few or no DVDs to at least some subscribers on Mondays and Tuesdays regardless of whether or not the subscribers have open queue slots. This delay tactic makes Wednesday the first normal shipping day of the week for some Blockbuster Online subscribers. Therefore, an affected subscriber could have all of his or her online DVDs checked in by Blockbuster on a Friday afternoon and possibly not see any replacement DVDs shipped out until Wednesday of the following week. Because of transit times, the affected subscriber would not actually receive those DVDs until Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or later.

At this point it is unclear if Blockbuster uses its Wednesday shipping delay tactic on all subscribers or just the heavy users. Regardless, there is a clear trend that Blockbuster is not shipping DVDs to at least some subscribers on Mondays and Tuesdays even though those subscribers may have had multiple open slots in their queues for days.

This Wednesday shipping scheme is the most flagrant and egregious delay tactic employed by Blockbuster since the company began its DVD-by-mail service in 2004. Look for Blockbuster to take more shifty courses of action as it continues to squeeze profits from its shrinking customer base.

If you have had any experiences with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday shipping at Blockbuster Online, please share your experiences here.