What the f*ck is Up with Netflix and Damaged Discs?
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 - 9:46pm
The last six months, about half the DVDs I'm getting from Netflix are messed up. Is Blockbuster doing the same thing? I like the convenience of Netflix service and I like giving them the business because they were the first in the market, but I'm running out of goodwill.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
I've had a couple of damaged discs...on a percentage basis it has been pretty small. They ship a replacement immediately when you register a damaged disc, so what's the problem?
The wait? Even if it's a day or two, it's still more than simply going to the nearest Blockbuster.
Yet even then we ran like the wind,
whilst our laughter echoed under cerulean skies...
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http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/39927
It all makes sense now.
As for Blockbuster, I can't remember the last time we got a disk from them that couldn't be read by our player.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
For what it's worth I haven't received a single damaged disc from Netflix in the last six months.
I guess I am spoiled. The local shipping depot is Worcester, MA, so my dealings with Netflix are rather quick.
I don't get the logic, though. I have the 3 disc at a time version, and if one shows up bad or broken, I still have two others to watch. I can also avail myself of Watch Instantly.
If I really want to see the movie that showed up broken, then I could go On Demand instead of leaving my house, for about the same cost as Blockbuster.
Are you saying that your time would be better spent going to Blockbuster, renting some title that you kinda wanted to see, but not the one you really wanted because all of the copies are out, instead of telling Netflix "hey, this copy is busted, send me a new one?"
I am all for yelling at corporations with bad service, but Netflix ain't one of them. 2 days turnaround is not bad at all.
Alien, are you renting a lot of reasonably popular, but older (> 1 year) movies? We've had bad luck with the ones we've picked up to use for Rifftrax (Batman & Robin, The Sixth Sense, Dark Water, Cocktail). I think they don't bother to take any discs out of circulation unless people complain, so the discs just keep getting more and more scratched with every new idiot who confuses a DVD with a coaster.
Virtually everything else has been golden.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
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That was one of my reasons for dumping NetFlix. They don't offer any compensation for the inconvenience and I swear they kept sending me the same disc that I set up the return and labeled as bad. Three times and I couldn't get a playable copy of The Last Temptation of Christ so I finally gave up.
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I hit a bad streak a couple months back with a couple of scratched disks and one that was completely broken. I blame the broken one on my mailman as he has a tendency to just jam crap in my mailbox, but NF was good about quick replacements every time.
I'm the same as mateo. I'm on the five out at time plan, so I always have something else to watch (it only sucks if I'm watching a TV series). If that doesn't work, then I do the NF Watch Instantly stuff. That or read a book.
Maybe you ought to write "UNPLAYABLE DISC" on the data-side of the disc in Sharpie.
In my time with Netflix, I haven't had a single bad disc. In fact, most of the discs I get look brand new, especially a lot of the classics. People probably don't rent those too often, though. Might just depend on the age of your local shipping center and how many subscribers there are that use that shipping center. I think the one in Pittsburgh is still pretty new.
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I've only had 2 DVDS in three years that were broken (one was split completely in half), and maybe about 3 lost DVDs, so I can't complaint too much. As far as my low number of broken/scratched/otherwise ruined discs it may be that I hardly ever rent popular mainstream films so most of them have probably seen light use.
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I've been a customer of Blockbuster Online for the last year and a half or so, and, as far as I remember, I've never had a problem with damaged discs.
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"I might have gotten away with it if it wasn't for a damningly tenacious clinger." - Crouton on a childhood excrement escapade
An occasional inconvenience is one thing. What I'm seeing is a big uptick in the percentage of DVDs that are damaged. Now maybe it's my DVD drive, or maybe it's something else on my end, but I never used to have this problem. And if 1 out of 3 of my DVDs are bad, another one is in the mail going back to Netflix, and the third is some unwatchable POS that my wife wanted, then there's a problem. Blockbuster let's you return the DVDs at their stores as well as in the mail, so if I really want to watch a particular title and was using their service, I could go to their store and swap it out.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
I've had a couple, as well as a couple wrong disc mistakes, over the course of the four years I've been with Blockbuster.com. It's not a big deal, and the ability to trade in at a store (plus the in-store discounts and freebies) more than makes up for it, in my opinion.
I am jealous of the coming Xbox availability, though.
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Agreed. I like that I can trade it in at the store for a free rental and that it then immediately counts as returned on my account. Thereby, speeding up the turnaround time for the next one in the queue.
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"I might have gotten away with it if it wasn't for a damningly tenacious clinger." - Crouton on a childhood excrement escapade
I refuse to give Blockbuster any money after their attempted Rental Window strongarming on DVDs.
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Web: Mantis on the Mountain
--
My wife liked the man part monster I made. -Pharacon
I've had Netflix for four years and I don't think I've ever had a damaged disc.
Ouch, I have lost myself again
Last.fm
I have netflix for about 3-4 years? I have the two disk option. I have had 3 problems I can remember
1) Little Women: My wife wanted the Joan Crawford one, we got the Winona Ryder one, in the Joan Crawford slip. We sent it back and we JUST got the Joan Crawford one in the mail a week ago. But I didn't want to see it anyway.
2) One disk was shattered but more then likely a US Postal worker getting hungry as the envelope was completely trashed, we submitted a complaint the replacement came next day.
3) We got a disc that was completely scratched to hell. Got a replacement next day.
I like Netflix because good selection and quick response to get a replace ment.. well 2 out of the three times but that movie was a rare find. Also becauce they have Tromaville classics such as "Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy" on Instant Watch.
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I once hit a bad spot where I got a few cracked discs in the same period but outside of that it has been pretty infrequent to get a damaged disc. All told in 2+ years we've had probably 10 broken discs arrive.
It is hard to fault netflix, because I think for the most part their envelopes are good enough and for the price, it's awesome to cycle through about 12 or so movies per month. I can tell that the post office sorting machines wreak havoc on the occasional disc but I also think my local post office or post person had a habit of folding our mail bundle (i.e. a catalog around our letters) that resulted in a some of our discs being cracked in quarter or half.
I couldnt believe it but once I actually got the same disc cracked (differently) 3 times.... and that one I chalked up to the dvd maker for using such crap quality discs. It was an import disc and they were noticeably thinner.
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Well, once I got a DVD from Blockbuster that had jam on it...
So I had jam for tea!
Pistols for two and coffee for one.
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Delicious!
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
This fall you will be able to watch movies from your Netfilx account on Xbox live. Since I posted my thread I've had one more that skipped. If not for the xbox thing I'd be switching to Blockbuster.
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I'm thinking it's my DVD drive. I took a bad DVD out of one laptop last night and it ran fine on my work computer.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
Could be, some are more sensitive than others.
Definitely some are. I think I said in the other thread, the disks we were getting from Netflix prompted us to get a new Sony DVD player that claimed to be better at reading scratched and damaged disks (DVP-NS55P). And it seems to be the case, at least in comparison to the player we were using before.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote: