Netflix updates, 154.1

Here’s a direct copy from my Netflix Excel spreadsheet:

# Title Sent In Out Received
1 Jim Henson’s The Storyteller 3/8/04 3/10/04 3/12/04 3/16/04
2 Lost In La Mancha 3/8/04 3/10/04 3/11/04 3/15/04
3 Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 3/8/04 3/10/04 3/11/04 3/15/04
4 Northfork 3/15/04 3/17/04 3/18/04 3/22/04
5 School of Rock 3/16/04 3/18/04 3/22/04 3/23/04
6 Dawn of the Dead 3/16/04 3/20/04 3/22/04 3/23/04
7 21 Grams 3/22/04
8 Session 9 3/23/04
9 Donnie Darko 3/23/04

Hoo boy, that’s ugly.

Netflix updates, 141.1

Just a quick update, two movies were ‘received’ today:

2. Lost In La Mancha : S124.1, I131.1, O132.1, R141.1
3. The Meaning of Life : : S124.1, I131.1, O132.1, R141.1

Which means it took me two days to receive each of these titles after they were sent, and it took Netflix four days to receive them after I returned them.

One replacement is slated to be shipped today, another is slated for tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll receive Movie#1 tomorrow too, and get another film queued up for shipment. I’ll add an update to this post as soon as I get the “movie has shipped” emails for the replacements for these two.

UPDATE: I have received the email.

4. Northfork : S141.1

Netflix updates, 133.1

So, I got the third disc in the mail today, but after the late pickup, so it really won’t get on its way until tomorrow morning. We’ll see. The tally so far:

1. The Storyteller : S124.1, I131.1, O133.1
2. Lost In La Mancha : S124.1, I131.1, O132.1
3. Meaning of Life : S124.1, I131.1, O132.1

Just so it’s kept track of.

Netflix – the beginning

I signed up for Netflix.

After reading a whole stack of reviews, I felt I understood most people’s complaints with them, and what most people liked about them. I also read carefully through everything I could find on the actual site, the requirements, everything. New distribution centers, including one in Phoenix, should address most people’s main complaint; slow shipping, back when they only had one distribution center. Other complaints included not being able to get the movies at the top of their queue, especially when they were new releases, plus … how much trouble it is to add movies to your queue all the time; some people kept getting to the end of their queue without realizing it, and then going days or weeks without getting movies.

Which won’t happen to me.

The site suggests that the “average” person adds 6 to 10 movies to their queue on their first visit, and encourages me to add movies to my queue. Except that before I ever got to the actual “queue” screen where it suggests that, I’d added the maximum number of movies to my queue – 500. I didn’t have any trouble browsing, or finding movies I’d like to see and adding them to my queue. I doubt I’ll ever have trouble.

There were a couple of movies I’d have liked to add that they don’t seem to have in their library, but here’s my idea: I’ll rent every movie that Netflix offers that I want to see, and when I’ve exhausted their library, I’ll cancel Netflix and switch over to Greencine, which is a service with the same features and price structure as Netflix, but which focuses on independant and foreign DVDs.

Anyway, to observe the progress of their shipping times, I’ve added the “netflix” category to FYTH, and will post all netflix activity here. ie: when they say it ships, when I actually receive it, when I ship it back, when they say they receive it, and when they ship the next one and so on, including broken, scratched, and other problem DVDs and how they react. I’m also going to do a count of the DVDs and see exactly how fast I can get and watch 500 DVDs from Netflix. After 500 DVDs, I’ll not only be able to give a fair review of their service and customer service, but I’ll actually have quite a bit of data on their shipping times as well. There will, undoubtedly, be graphs.

So, look forward to that.

Anyway, here are the first three DVDs, they said were shipped today (3/08/04) and I should expect them on or around Thursday (3/11/04):

1. Jim Henson’s The Storyteller
2. Lost in La Mancha
3. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: Special Edition