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Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System
dvd_rent_test writes "Netflix uses the number of movies you have previously rented to determine your priority in getting movies. The more movies you rented during your last billing cycle, the less chance you have of receiving a movie versus an individual who has rented fewer movies. This is why new users have great success getting their movies and older or heavy users have a difficult time getting some movies."
Cancel one account, sign up for a new one.
classic bait and switch:
Get every movie you want during your trial period and first few months and then get screwed over for the rest of the lifetime of your account...
Why do I h8 apple?
Many businesses do this. They rely on new customers, not repeat-customers. Kinda like BMG music, etc. This isn't rocket science.
I mean, after all, waiting for movies has got to be increasing piracy ratings. It should only be fair that %93 of Netflix's profits go back into the MPAA to make up for lost sales caused by people waiting on movies.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I was wondering about this. I have been a member for almost two years, and I am very efficient about sending the movies back quickly (thus maximizing the total number of movies I can see.) I have been wondering for a long time why I never seem to get any of the "Short Wait" movies, much less the "Long Wait" ones. Well anyway, I'm thinking about cancelling Netflix anyway. The post office has lost (or stolen) a number of movies I've sent back anyway. I'll probably just get a PVR instead.
I thought it was just a coincidence that I (with a newer account, not many rentals) got the same movies my mother(very old account, lots and lots of rentals) couldn't get. Kinda stinks really... good thing im in the dorms at college so I get to change my address/CC/account every 6 months :)
(This Space For Rent)
It is to most Slashbots.
It's a paid service, you would think that they would want to cater to their most active customers to keep from losing them. On the other hand, you might think that since you pay a flat fee that those who didn't make good use of their account in previous months but paid the full fee anyway deserve a little extra priority.
Hmmm... I'm not sure that anyone really has a reason to complain to loudly about this. No-one is being ripped off. Still, I'm not sure I understand their logic in implementing this way. In the end I'm not sure it is in their interest to give preference to either group: the frequent users or those who pay and don't play.
lysergically yours
Sometimes Blockbuster doesn't have the movie I want in. Burger King screws up your order 50% of the time. Walmarts are usually filthy. Netflix has a finite amount of movies to rent out, and a desire to lure new customers to their service - hence, new customers that are less active have a better chance at getting the movies they want, which increases the likelyhood that they will remain Netflix customers. Wow, stop the press.
It does seem fair as there are only a certain number of physical DVDs to send around. That said, they should buy more of popular titles to keep the waits to a minimum for long time, and presumably good, customers.
Trolling is a art,
DVD burners are cheap now. They ought to just license the ability to burn-on-demand from the MPAA. That way they never run out of Titanic or whatever. Perhaps the MPAA would need to fund "UN inspections" to ensure that the excess DVDs are destroyed.
I notice blockbuster charges ~$3.90 for all DVDs now, "because the cost of replacement for damaged DVDs is so much higher than VHS". Sha, right, why blockbuster's don't all have DVD burners in the back room is purely a testament to bad/non-existant negotiations between Blockbuster and the movie companies.
You'd think it would be the other way around. Give priority to existing customers who have already demonstrated their buying power.
Of course, they could always switch tactics once critical mass has been reached...
Don't trust any concentration of power.
I've heard that other companies do this, like Customer Service departments. Of course, in these implementations, calls from "good" customers are answered more quickly than calls from customers who don't spend as much money.
Must begin regimen of diet and exercise.. Which should be easy since I never seem to be able to get the DVD I want.
That's the way to do business, get them in and tied to your system, and then make it harder for them to use the system to their advantage. It is still much better than going to blockbuster... I don't blame them... i am sure they lose money on hardcore video lovers...
But from the bottom of the linked article:
I had to stop using NetFlix a couple months ago because my USPS carrier wouldn't consistently put them in my apartment's mailbox (leaving them outside risking theft--those big red & white envelopes just scream FREE DVD!).
When I went to kill my membership, they offered me the same membership for less money, what was 3 DVD's for $20 a month, was now two or three bucks less. And the savings could be had on all there other plans, if agreed to use their services for a year or so.
Seems like they've got some pretty "creative" ways of handling their customers. I'm content buying DVDs off of eBay.
Anybody else think they're a little "funny"?
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
And, of course, the account B was the new one that was having an easier rental time. So it must be that Netflix gives better rental times to people who use Internet Explorer! Microsoft owns everything!
Philip Sandifer's academic website
This may be the case, but as a long time (although currently ex-)customer, I must say that NetFlix was satisfactory in getting movies to me. I remember a couple of waits for the most popular movies, but never over a couple of days. I subscibed at the 3-movies at a time level and was able to pretty much watch a movie every other or every third night when I wanted to (ordering new releases).
Allocation strategies always involve prioritizing one type of customer over another - in Netflix's case, this current strategy would seem to make sense while they are trying to grow the business and rake in new customers. Assuming that there aren't significant supply chain issues that are getting in the way of prompt availability for all customers, like a larger number of people than expected not returning DVD's in a timely fashion, Netflix will need to revisit this at some point before they screw their loyal customers one too many times.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This is another example of the Microsoft's strategy for world domination. NetFlix gives preference to customers using IE over Netscape/Mozilla.
signature pending slashdot approval
...this promotes identity theft. Needles for hackers? Screw that, I'd rather steal your ID so I can get my DVD quicker.
StackGuard, ProPolice and UML ain't gonna solve that one.
Could this result in people continuously generating new accounts? This would be a potential nightmare for Netflix.
(insert sig here)
I was one of the "first 1000" to sign up with Netflix. If I remember right they had the "Lifetime membership for $9.99 a month" type thing going on. I loved the service -- until they started charging my credit card "$14.95" a month because they were a little optimistic during the whole:
1. Send out unlimited DVD's for 10 bucks a month and let the user keep 4 at any time -- for any length of time (pick up all shipping costs).
2. ???
3. Profit
I was burned that the price kept going up -- and I don't take nicely to automated withdrawls from my accounts going up anytime the source decides to reinvent their business logic. I should either have to sign up again at the higher price, or sign a document authorizing the higher price.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Do you part to help Netflix today. Sign up for a new account, rent for a month, then cancel the account. Repeat. Watch Netflix valuation go through the roof as the number of new subscribers rockets.
Look, there are only a certain amount of DVDs to go around. In the article, it states that the priority is based solely on the LAST billing cycle. So, if you have a bad month getting the movies you want, you'll have a good month the next time, then bad, then good.
It's not a perfect system, but given limited resources, it's the fairest thing they can do and still keep prices reasonble.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
I had a similar experience with Netflix. A bunch of current releases were listed as long wait or very long wait. I complained to Netflix and amazingly that day the status changed from long wait to short or available now. Coincidence? I thought so originally but this report sort of sheds new light on things.
What? This is no first. I am first. I am the leader of this board now. Taxes will come soon.
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
NetFlix does'nt seem like a very viable business option,especially when there are umpteen Blockbuster/Hollywood Videos abounding in your neighbourhood.I would like to know how much of a success is this netflix thing? As an aside, If u r in Schaumburg,IL,check out the Schaumburg District Library,Schaumburg Library. They have a great collection of videos/DVD including the latest ones.
This seems normal.. Companies often need that initial capital so they will promise a lot upfront, give you your movies for awhile then make you wait once they have you "hooked".
And hopefully you won't notice this since your first couple weeks of subscription, you had excellent response times.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
1) They are "punishing" the people that make the most use of their service, rewarding those that make the least use. Considering they charge the same amount of money either way, it sounds like a good idea to me.
2) They are catering to two entirely different clientel: Set A) that watch a ton of movies, Set B) That watch only a few movies. Set A pays the same as set B but gets more quantity at the cost of less quality.
Either way, it sounds like a GOOD, FAIR, business plan to me.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I just recently cancelled all my cable movie channels and got two library cards (this town and the next town over). I check one or two DVDs out from the library every other day. Sure, they are crappy old movies, but it sounds like that's the bulk of what you get on Netflix and on most of the cable channels anyway. Your taxes already pay for it. Be an old fogey and use the library! It's civic!
I, for one, thing it is *appalling* that NetFlix would discriminate against the elderly and the fat-assed.
m.
Photography, technology, and my dog Scout - http://mattstratton.com
I wonder what this does to their retention figures. Even if people don't know the bait and switch is going on, are people going to get frustrated about how the movies they want aren't available anymore, and quit? I also wonder how good the market really is for this. I mean, when I rent movies it tends to be a spur of the moment thing. Some friends and I want to get together, and we rent a movie. Netflix pretty obviously doesn't accomodate that. Also, I imagine Netflix suffers from the same problem I had with Red Octane when I was renting games from them. I'd make a list of ten things I wanted, and the first two or three would be things I was dying to have. 4-10 would be stuff that, eh, I was sorta interested in. Inevitably, I'd get things off of 4-10, and never touch my top games, until eventually I decided to just go to Blockbuster and rent one of those top games. Then I'd either love it, and buy it, or hate it. Either way, it would get removed from my Red Octane list, leaving me witha list of games that I was pretty much only sorta interested in playing. Likewise, I imagine if I really want to see a movie, and it doesn't get sent out to me soon, I'll shrug my shoulders, and go to Blockbuster. Which would take Netflix to the point of just sending me mediocre stuff over and over again until I cancelled. Especially if that were aggravated by the fact that my rental priority was lower.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Now go dismantle that toaster..
The Evil new account is in an IE browser, and the poor abused old account is in a NN window.
Of course, I really only use Netflix for the weird, obscure stuff I want to watch. If I'm looking to see the crazy popular blockbuster that was released last week, I go to my Blockbuster. If I want something that the majority of the dvd watching population has no interest in or hasn't ever heard of, I go to Netflix.
Oddly, I never have to compete with other subscribers for those dvd's.
Netflix had a big spread in Wired several months back... the business model of the company is such that they are only profitable on accounts which rent 5 or less movies a month. This jives with the linear availability chart at the end of the linked article. When the account had 5 or less rentals in the previous billing cycle, availability of movies in the current cycle is 0-1. But once you pass 5, it decreases.
In other words, as long as your account is 5 or less and you are profitable for them, you will get movies quickly. If you are renting more than 5, it seems they slow you down in an effort to limit you to the 5 through delay tactics.. rather than just saying "up to 5"
Kinda sneaky to pitch unlimited rentals and then use false availability numbers to limit your customers to a preset amount.
I think I will just stick with the local video store. I can rent 4 or 5 movies there for 20 bucks a month without the waiting time OR lies about availability.
The thing that kills me is that Netflix apparently doesn't take into account the number of movies you can check out at a time (it costs more $/month to get more movies at one time). So as this clever analysis points out, if you pay more to get 5 movies at a time, then you are more likely to never get popular movies.
It seems that a better algorithm would normalize the number of movies rented in each billing cycle by the number paid to be rented at one time.
I think the article is pretty good, however in my own playing around with my rental queue, I am convinced that queue length is somehow a factor.
When I joined Netflix, I got my shipments in two days from the Santa Ana facility, and I almost always got the top three on my list. Now it seems like they take three days at least. (Get shipping email on Monday, DVD arrives on Thursday.)
Now that I've been a member for six months or so, the top of my list has aggegated together about six movies that are all "Very Long Wait" and to be quite honest, I've never seen them anything other than that. I don't think I will ever get them.
FWIW, I do beleive the article is essentially correct and various service levels with Netflix decrease over time.
It also would not surprise me in the least if they analyze your viewing habits to determine if you are likely to stop using the Netflix service. It would probably be called the Geek Regression.
And just for kicks, the list of movies I will never see from Netflix: Solaris (Original 1970's version), Trees Lounge, Raging Bull, 24 Disc 1, Sopranos Disc 1. Has anyone gotten these?
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
I know this may be slightly off topic but there is a company in the UK which runs a similar service to NetFlix, called dvdsontap.com I;ve used them for about 6 moths and they have been very good, including not giving me any hastle when a dvd they said the had send did not turn up.
Alos as far as I am aware the dvd queues are the same for all users, so you may wait a bit for new relases but most other stuff comes as soon as it gets to the head of your rental queue.
If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
... it can hurt your sex life !!!
I mean.... you crap all over your good, old established customers in order to attract new ones... seems to me the old customers should get the preferential treatment and the new ones should get to sit and spin for awhile. Whatever happened to loyalty?
It's fascinating to see how short sighted a company can become. To forsake the long term customer for short term profit. Of course what if the long term goal is market testing and demographic harvesting, what if Netflix is just a temporary entity that was/is designed to eventually fail while handing it's data over to a new company. Wouldn't be the first time that a company was designed to fail and still serve a purpose.
Then again....what if I'm stupid.
Probably so, i'll go take my medicine now
This would seem (at first glance) to be a (rather effective) method to control costs... If you view a bunch of movies one month, they slow you down the next by limiting the availability on the movies in your queue.
Since you sign up for a fixed amount, and every movie they rent you costs them $0.75 in postage, if you rent 15 movies they don't make much money from you, where if you rent 4, they make a lot.
I can understand the motivation, I just have a hard time believing that a company would stoop to this level. It's making me consider cancelling my NetFlix account.
----------
Don't Sweat the Petty Things, and Don't Pet the Sweaty Things
This sort of thing makes no sense to me. The cost to gain a new customer is MUCH greater than keeping an existing customer - and when you have a monthly payment going it seems silly to me to just let your existing customers flounder.
To me it makes no sense.
All the business monkeys at my school tell me the first rule of good business is to cater to your existing customer base; seeking out new customers should be of lower priority.
This could make for a good Business 101 case study by seeing how soon/if Netflix drops dead.
I wonder if the size of one's queue affects availability. If you have a great number of movies in your queue, you probably would not care as much if a specific movie was not available versus someone with just a few movies listed in their queue. This may also explain why a new user would have greater access to movies since their queue would not have grown so much.
Don't OS schedulers give cycles to processes
that most need it. They typically keep a "score"
of the CPU a process has received an reward those
needing more.
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over a year. I'm on the 5 at a time plan because we have four people in my family adding movies to the rental queue.
For the most part we get everything that we ask for amazingly fast. It's very rare that anything hangs up on the queue with a long wait. Even highly popular and newly released items arrive quickly. And since we are in the Bay Area not far from Netflix central the turnaround time is often just two or three days.
I'm very happy with Netflix. In a good month we'll easily get 20 or more DVDs for an average rental price of under $1.50 delivered right to our door.
Netflix has to have some scheme to assign priority (assuming his analysis is correct). Is this unfair? I don't hear anyone complaining about promotions where the first x months of a service are free or discounted. How is preferential queuing any different?
Anyway, based on my own experience with Netflix I don't see such a pattern. We go through a couple of DVDs a week and currently have 88 movies in queue (both old and new movies). The only waits I have are:
- Space 1999: Vol 1 (short)
- Run Silent, Run Deep (short)
- From Dusk Til Dawn (long)
- The Story of O (very long...heh)
- Metropolis (short)
You trash Undercover Brother then mention *wanting* to watch Sweet Home Alabama. Wow.
Rich
Tried Netflix for about 3 months. We never had problems getting movies we wanted sent to us. Our problem was that 1/4 to 1/3 of the movies arrived BROKEN, and we constantly had hassles with their customer service about it, because they did not believe that we received them that way.
If you want to avoid the waiting lists I've always found that to rent a movie in high demand it helps it you rent it on the day it comes out. You can almost always get the movie no matter what it is if you have a movie returned on the day (or day before) it is officially released. You have to always keep track of whats coming out, and try to manage to get a movie returned on the correct day, but it saves alot of frustration.
The problem I have is that the allocation scheme is not documented and not uniform. More the undocumented part. When I was researching this on USENET people indicated that Netflix customer reps told them the allocation method was completey random . I have not contacted Netflix myself. It is far from that.
Solaris (Original 1970's version)
How can that be when Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982?
"It's so convenient that the average Netflix customer watches five movies a month. Some subscribers rent twenty or more. (Which is a problem: Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.)"
So, if this is true (and hopefully Wired has become more trustworth as a "news source" in recent years...), then obviously they want to discourage people from renting more than 5 per month.
The method above seems like a pretty good way to do it!
I've been a NetFlix subscriber since 8/2000, and only once have I been sent an alternate title instead of the next item on my queue. Maybe I don't rent enough Hollywood Mega-BlockBuster Films and new releases for this to matter.
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
When the sole distribution center was in the west coast, I had no trouble getting new films, but I only got 5-6 in a month because of east-west coast mailing time. Once Netflix put a distribution center in my city & I could rent 12 in a month with a short turnover, I stopped getting my high priority new releases at the top of my list and started getting the dreck down at the bottom of my list. It got so frustrating I quit. It just goes to show you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Netflix is not going to hold Trees Lounge until you return something else. It's going to ship right away. So they really can't make queues for each film.
Of course, if a movie you really want to see is at the top of your list, and it shows as available "now" all of a sudden, you could always up your plan to the next level for a month in the vain hope they might ship it to you. Or if you are evil, you could report one of your movies "Lost in the mail" so they would ship another. (I do not recommend fibbing -it's bad karma, but you could do it, I suppose!)
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
I've been a customer of theirs for years (I signed up as soon as they openned shop) and many of my movies also have very long waits.
So this is bad enough for me to leave. Are there any other alternatives like Netflix but who value their customers more?
Always Garunteed in stock and I can get the movie the day it comes out. Plus it is on the way home from work.
No Allocation system used, First come first served.
.. half the movies my girlfriend picked out have "Very long wait" which means that it's just that much longer that I won't have to suffer through watching "Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood."
;)
As a prize, I got "I'm gonna git you, sucka!" nice and early.
I hardly think that having to wait for a movie is a bait and switch tactic.
Were they to show you an ad saying that if you clicked right now, you would be able to rent 80 movies a month for a low price of $14/month - and then you clicked that link and it said that you were just too late for that offer, but they will gladly sell you a great deal of 3 movies per month for $20/month.... THAT would be a bait and switch.
Or if they told you that you would be getting a brand new car every month, and instead DVDs showed up.
The "study" that this user did was too small to draw any conclusive proof from, so your anger over the "bait and switch" (in quotes because it is your words and not a real bait and switch) - he even notes it at the end of the article.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
You can't sue somebody for giving away trade secrets if those secrets were deduced using reverse engineering. There is no IP protection for trade secrets unless the secret is stolen, or given out in violation of a NDA (which is equivalent to stealing it).
Besides the fact that despite the analysis he could still be WRONG. It is only conjecture based on the set of evidence that's been compiled.
I was a Netflix subscriber for a few months. My experience matches the study - there was a slow buildup of "long waits" in my queue. Eventually, when all the movies I wanted to see were "long waits", I cancelled.
In general, I find that I'm getting a lot more aggressive with cancelling subscriptions or services, especially if these services involve new technology. Cancellation is the only message that is received - all others fall on deaf ears. Sprint PCS, for example, has an customer service voice recognition system that will route you to a service agent if you say "I want to cancel". Any other message is handled by an automated, worthless system. I was able to negotiate a much better rate with them by using those four magic words.
Why is the Slashdot crowd even discussing these spammers? They are a prime example of a company that has a syndicate program that encourages *EVIL* spam. I thought we were all supposed to boycott those who feed the spammers. Netflix is the source of money to many a spammer.
Next, we'll be discussing why people aren't getting their Viagra shipments and penis enlargers fast enough. Sheesh.
OK. Now when you all rush out to cancel your Netflix accounts, remember to tell them that you are cancelling because they spam. Who's with me! (**runs out of room, no one follows**). Typical.
The article was very interesting but the negative spin slashdot posters put on everything they read gets tiresome.
I'm a very happy netflix customer. One thing I didn't see addressed in the original article was what weight, if any, having a "long wait" movie at the top of your queue has. I would expect that the "prior month's rentals" is only one factor and that "long wait" movies at the top of your queue gradually change to "available" as time passes.
Remember, netflix sends you some other movie you asked for when they are not ready to give you the "long wait" movie yet. I love netflix for the following reasons:
So go on, keep whining that some netflix customer who views only a few films a month gets scarce movies before you do. I'll just enjoy my excellent netflix service.
Have fun standing in line at Blockbuster renting some movie you didn't really want because they didn't have the one you wanted in stock.
However, what's upsetting about this is that it's not made public by NetFlix. They advertise "unlimited rentals," but penalize you for renting a lot. They encourage you to keep a large buffer of movies so that if your first choice isn't avaliable, you'll get a second, third, fourth, or lower choice, but they don't tell you that this will decrease your priority. That second point, in particular, is rather infuriating, because they're telling you to do something that is directly against your best interest if you want that first choice movie at some point!
If NetFlix can't make money from people who rent 20 movies a month, they need to set an upper limit, or charge a per movie cost. If the business model of a mail order rental place is inherently unsustainable, then they need to admit that, liquidate their company, and cash out. Being deceptive about the priority in which movies are rented is simply unacceptable.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Base the selection alogirthm on the length of time the movie has been in your queue and possibly the average position within the queue. Thus someone who has had Trees Lounge in their queue for a month has priority over someone who just added it.
Netflix already has a couple account options:
h p/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=141
1. $20 a month for 3 movies out at a time, unlimited rentals
2. $30 a month for 5 movies out at a time, unlimited rentals
3. $40 a month for 8 movies at a time, unlimited rentals
4. $14 a month for 4 rentals a month
So if you want extra special "I always get the movies first on my list" account, get 2 $20 a month accounts and let one lie fallow (i.e. don't use it) every other month. You'll always get the exact movies you want, and you'll also be able to keep 6 out at a time. Depending on how many you watch in a month, you possibly could get by with two $14 a month accounts.
source: http://netflix.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/netflix.cfg/p
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Netflix are spammers, they abuse their most frequent customers by not shipping them DVDs, and I can go down to Blockbuster and rent DVDs RIGHT NOW.
Remind me again, why would I do business with Netflix?
www.eFax.com are spammers
It is an interesting theory but there is no mention in the story about how the location of distribution centers affect the waiting period. Or the actual waiting period versus the one listed. I have been using NetFlix for a couple years now and have never experienced this problem. I live in Atlanta, GA where there is a distribution center for NetFlix and receive my next movie within five days of sending in a movie. I average six movies a month, which according to an article in Wired, makes my account a loss for NetFlix [wired.com] because of shipping charges. "It's so convenient that the average Netflix customer watches five movies a month. Some subscribers rent twenty or more. (Which is a problem: Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.)"
...my main problem with Netflix is that I can't trust my postal worker (or someone else in the chain) from grabbing movies after I drop them in the mailbox and before they get marked as "returned" in the Netflix database. Twice we have returned movies only to find that they never made it all the way back.
So we had to cancel our service, only because the value of the "intellectual property" was too high and the packaging was too conspicuous -- too tempting for people that we trust to return the movies safely.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This is quite a piece of work this guy has put together. Here are a few other things to fuel the discussion some. Netflix doesn't pay for their movies, they are on profit sharing with the major studios. Presumably one of the following is the way the movie studios get paid.
1. Per DVD shipment. (i.e. netflix has 100,000 copies of a movie, and those copies result in 225,000 shipments in month 1, 165,000 shipments in month 2, etc. & the movies studio gets $1 per shipment or something of the like)
2. Per Day a DVD is out on "rental" (i.e. Same 100k copies, they spend about 2.75M days out on "rental" in month 1 & 2 and the studios get $0.25 per day)
3. Some combination of the previous 2
Now lets also look at their physical costs per shipment. Outbound Postage $0.34 (These numbers could be off by as much as $0.10 since netflix is a national account of the USPS) Inbound postage $0.37 (most mailers could not receive a discount on High-Volume Business Reply Mailer, but again they are a national account so they might get a break) Envelopes run about $.16 in large volume. I'm not even going to look at labor, loss, theft, damage, marketing, warehousing, and other expenses.
If you add up what I did go into it is $0.87 per shipment, lets subtract out for postage discounts and call it $0.75 Now you pay $20/mo for their service. If you rent 10 movies a month they pay $7.50 in real costs, plus all their overhead, PLUS what the movie studio makes. Which probably leaves a little bit of profit.
other rentailers are charging about $4 per rental, and they of course have time limits and aren't as convenient (most people would agree) as Netflix. So if you are seeing 5 or more movies a month you are ahead of the game, but if you are watching more than 10 movies you are costing Netflix money.
When you look at it like that you realize why customers in the "profit" zone of 5-10 rentals per month get equal and reasonable treatment, customers that are overly profitable get special offers not to cancel, and customers who cost them money get motivated to slow down their rentals or cancel.
My Point. They are in business to make money, and they are doing what they can to modify their customers habits to those ends.
P
Just My $0.02
I was on Net-Flix up to a few months ago. I canceled it when I got layed-off. We've been renting and watching TV (or nothing, even better)for the last few months. I've had a job for a while but just haven't gotten around to signing back up.
I never had trouble when I was signed on. My movie list was about 50-70 deep when I quit. I put every movie I ever wanted to watch, plus a bunch that looked interesting any time I surfed IMDB.
There was no way they could ever say EVERY movie on my list was out. And they never did. I always got a movie within a couple of days of sending one in.
=Shreak
"Look, there are only a certain amount of DVDs to go around. In the article, it states that the priority is based solely on the LAST billing cycle. So, if you have a bad month getting the movies you want, you'll have a good month the next time, then bad, then good."
Not true: If you have a number of DVDs in your rental queue, and have them listed in order of priority, what you find is that the New Releases, which may be at the top of your priority list, seem to enter a perpetual status of "Long Wait" or "Very Long Wait," while you continue to receive a rapid-fire selection of the lower priority rentals. Thus, your rental volume remains high each month, whereas your satisfaction drops increasingly each month as you continue to wait for the movies that you really want to see.
I feel horribly betrayed by Netflix's rental practices.
Erin Harold, Seattle, WA
My wife and I used to rent 10+ movies a month on the standard 3-out plan. But then we got busier and started watching less and less. Lately we've been lucky to watch 2 or 3 movies in a month, and a few recent months have only seen one. We switched to the 2-out plan sometime last year to save money. I later realized that this plan is not normally offered - our account got flagged and we were offered the plan based on our rental history. Netflix kept a customer and we stayed happy by paying less.
My sister-in-law's story is even more phenomenal. Her financial situation dictated that she cancel completely, which she did. Netflix came begging to get her back, and ultimately agreed to keep her on for a mere $7/month! (I thought it was $7 for 6 months, but this sounds more likely) She's a damn good haggler, so I don't know if this would be common at all; I imagine if they did it too much, they would lose money.
I've always been impressed by the fact that we've been able to get just released movies very quickly. I suppose maybe that's one reason we haven't canceled despite not getting as much out of the service lately. When we do use it, it's always top notch, so Netflix still gets our money. I don't recall having major problems even when we were renting a lot more, but I suppose Netflix has grown considerably since then. I always assumed they kept the service good by expanding to meet customer demand. It'll be interesting to read more comments and see how other people's experiences relate to the study's results. I'd love to see the same thing conducted again with a larger sample size.
Say hello to zMac.
Since they use a fixed time window for their client history, it is easy to cheat this allocation scheme. Get 2 accounts and alternate which account is used each billing cycle. The "active" account will always have rented 0 movies the previous billing cycle and you'll be able to get your movies fast. The following month, you'll switch back. They really need to move to finer grain model that uses exponential decay over a longer time period if they want to prevent "cheating". Note that this form of cheating is exactly what the author of the article did to prove his hypothesis about their allocation scheme.
So this is what people do while they are unemployed instead of job hunting...ahhh...so much free time, must be nice.
I haven't tried it, or know anyone who has, but walmart seems to have a service very similar to netflix. It is a little cheaper and seems to have about the same selection. If anyone uses this and wants to post a review the karma gods would smile on you.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
I see a lot of people saying they rent mostly obscure / non-hollywood type films from Netflix. If you're into anime/foreign/art/horror/exploitation/noir/etc films, check out http://www.greencine.com/ - a similar deal to Netflix but they cater to those who don't want to watch the latest Titanic or Castaway. They've got lots of movies you're probably wanting to rent and they donate to arts associations.
Also, those living near Blockbuster (as much as I hate them, I'm a member) may want to take note of their unadvertised Blockbuster Rewards program (at least it seems that way).. $10/year and you get 1 free movie a month, rent 5 get one free and Monday-Wednesday rent a new, get an old. Since their 5-day rentals are now weekly, it is no problem to keep a mon-wed renting schedule, and if/when you do go on the weekend w/ friends or whatever you can snag one with your free rental..
Of course, the banner ads at the top of the page are all for Netflix as I type this..
If this is Heaven I'm bailin out! I cant tolerate this ol tin-tub, so fulla trash and rats...
Imagine if they did this at an all you can eat restaraunt. Treating it like the all you can rent Netflix.
Patron: *Reaches for the piping hot roast beef*
Restaraunt owner: "I'm sorry, last time you were here you ate over 2 pounds of meat. This is not profitable for us, so this time you may only eat rice or jello. Thank you..."
-Nitar
I'm not sure if they still do it, but Blockbuster video was offering a "DVD Freedom Pass" for $19.99 a month for a while. The pass is valid for 30 days and allows you 2 DVDs checked out at a time and you can return them and rent more anytime you want.
So why would you rely on mailorder, when you can get the same deal locally? And not have to deal with netflix availability problems. It sounds to me almost as if they did this to compete directly with netflix, or perhaps they were afraid of losing market share to all you can rent mailorder rental places.
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
From time to time, you may see some movies in your queue with a wait status. A wait status is an indication that customer requests have exceeded our inventory levels. We recommend that you keep your movies in the order you would like to view them regardless of the availability status, as it helps us measure the demand for a particular movie.
Below are the three possibilities:
Short Wait: We don't have quite enough copies of this movie to meet all current demand, so we're unlikely to be able to ship it to you right now. We should have enough copies in the near future. The wait for this movie is generally less than 14 days.
Long Wait: There's considerably more demand than available copies for this movie. It's unlikely that we'll be able to send you this movie in the next week or two. The wait for this movie is generally less than 30 days.
Very Long Wait: There is extremely high demand, limited availability and/or a very long wait for this movie. The wait for this movie is generally less than 4 months, but could be longer.
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
That could be a problem, but I think its solvable through hardware. Only burn on serial-numbered media, dial up an mpaa server and log every transaction, and require employee ID codes be entered prior to each transaction.
There are plenty of posts on this board that are upset with the Netflix policy but I say it is the lesser of 2 evils. Blockbuster (I don't know about Hollywood Video) has had a policy of screwing their customers, assessing late fees on the hapless movie renter, people like our moms who would rather just pay the fine and avoid the confrontation. Anybody remember the class action lawsuit? Not to mention that Blockbuster carries special "family friendly" versions of major films, force feeding us their own version of morality. And yes, they do have their films guaranteed, all 50 that they carry and god forbid you want anything interesting, but of course their name covers that topic, maybe they should be "Blockbusters Only." If you don't like Netflix (which I believe has been one of the greatest online services yet), support your local mom and pop video stores and stop supporting the extortion and cencorship of Blockbuster, the true evil empire. And yes, I am bitter (but not hapless).
Maybe I'm just too new of a user (in my 2nd month).
I am turning 20 movies a month, and I'm getting stuff off the top of my list all the time. Of course, I'm renting bizarre, non-mainstream stuff like old Kurosawa films, John Wayne movies, 3 year old Disney films for the kids, etc. When I push something like an out-of-print bond film to the top, it can be 2 or 3 cycles before I'll get it. But it says "long wait" so I'm not holding my breath for it anyway.
Also, I don't really care what they ship me as long as it's something off the top 20 or so films on my list (my queue is standing at 160 discs right now).
Two identical twins both die, and meet St. Peter at the gate in front of Heaven. But St. Peter tells them there's a problem. Nobody can tell the difference between the two of them. Worse still, only one of them is allowed to spend eternity in heaven; the other has to go to hell. St. Peter leaves for a few minutes to discuss it with The Guy Upstairs and returns to the two of them. "It's all figured out," he tells them. "You," (he points to the first twin) "can spend three weeks up here a month. And you -" (he points to the other twin) "can spend the remaining week each month here." "That's not fair!" cries the second twin. "Oh, but it is," St. Peter replies. "In the long run it works out the same.
The point is, just because it all evens out in the long term doesn't make it fair.
You have wayyyy too much time on your hands
To your first point, how responsible do you feel NetFlix is to publicize the underpinnings to their business? When you go to the "All You Can Eat Ribs" place, should the sign read
All Ewe Can Eat Ribs
(But don't actually eat too many, because then we lose money on you)
IMO, that answer is No.
w/r/t your second point, I still don't see how you extrapolated from the article that keeping a large buffer of movies works *against* you. Seems to me, if you keep movies you want in your buffer, that buffers you against having no movies at all (should the movies at the head of your queue be Waited). The data used in the article point out that what works against you is renting a high quantity of popular movies.
Finally, it is very important to note cancellation is always an option (no contract was the reason I've given it a try).
Excellent article, btw. A related point I'd be interested in hearing about is if and how NetFlix trys to "Save A Customer:" i.e. If I say I want to cancel, do they, and how do they, sweeten the pot to keep me aboard? Anyone experience this?
I think this system seems to make everybody at happy. Think about it: if you are very religious about sending movies back quickly, you're always getting something new. You've always got a position in the "One In" queue. So you have more chances to get that hard-to-find movie.
People like me, who hold a disk for a long time because they like to intone every scene into memory (or are just lazy), aren't going to get more than one or two chances per month to get that must-have film. To keep it fair, and to keep the probability that either me or my diligent friend will get the movie about equal odds, you've got to weight my chances.
Yeah, it's partly to increase the probability that people who are thinking of quitting will stay on, but even so it's the only way to make things statistically fair.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"Solaris (Original 1970's version)
How can that be when Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 [sun.com]?"
jebus. RTF... ANYTHING, man. i mean... jeez.
you even went through the trouble of using the italics tags and hrefing a link. i bet you thought you were, like, +500 badass when really you're +1000 hilarious at best, and +10^100 dumb at worst.
still, one of the funniest things i've read here today.
that someone has too much time on their hands trying to expose Netflix for being as i might say prejudice to heavy renters. I see no problem with limiting someone who rents a ton of movies in a previous month, to what is availiable in the next. They are being fair to their customer base who does not rent a lot. O and if you have that much time to research something to that extent, please go see what it's like to see the sun...
Kazaa is not an app to be used to distribute pirated porn, movies and music.
Most users of Kazaa distribute music from local bands looking for exposure and to distribute open-source apps. Everybody these days is getting the latest kernel releases from Kazaa!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> The DVD burners currently available can't copy a full-length movie.
I think these folks would beg to differ. I've used this software, and although somewhat buggy, it seems to be the easiest and best solution out there. Of the movies I've tried so far, about one-third fit the entire movie on a DVD+R disc, about half fit the movie only without extras, and the remaining required two discs (very rough estimate).
> You have to rip the original movie, and increase the compression
I must be hillicnating then as I look at the backups of my DVD collection that are in uncompressed MPEG2 format. Perhaps I should take my dose of LSD in the evening instead of the morning...
I've had one DVD lost when it was sent to me, and one that I thought was lost but showed up about two weeks after it was supposed to arrive.
I feel kind of bad that I'm losing Netflix money, though. IMHO it's a great service, if only for the availability of movies and for no late fees.
If the consequence of having many DVD's per month is not long waits, then maybe it's not getting movies requested through their request form. I've asked for Ben (197?) and Willard (197?), but who knows what criteria they use.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
This seems to be an additional factor that was ignored in the analysis. Availability of movies is also going to be a factor of how many people are competing for the same limited pool of rental titles.
When you have movies in your list that are, shall we say, not in heavy competition, you are going to be more likely to get them in short order than you are popular movies.
Even the heavy renter can be made happy by timely shipment of Sword-Fist of the Dragon-Nuns...};^)
What were you expecting?
just cancel your account and create a new one every year or so. Make it a part of your spring cleaning.
Software Wars
This is just plain and simple COMMUNISM..
There is no other explanation.
Who ever designed this is a communist..
How was DeCSS discovered? It was my understanding that it came about through reverse engineering. Plenty of folks were sued over it.
I started reading this with some interest as I just gone and added two movies to my list.
I have had an account for over two years (3/28/01) and have rented over a hundred movies. Recently, in the last six months, I have started to watch/return 2/3 a week sometimes more. And as I look at my list now of 47, I have 1 movie that is a "short wait" which is "Inherit the Wind (1960)".
"About A Boy" is on the list and available now and I was just shipped three new releases.
I also checked with a friend who has a faster return rate than I do and with 97 on his list only 4 are rated "Short Wait", 3 are Korisawa films
the other is a korean war film from 1959.
It is an interesting study, but I am not sure it 100% accurate of the way Netflix does business.
BZ
If you want a better chance at getting the good movies, take the crappy movies out of your queue. It seems pretty simple.
If my local grocery store can rent DVD's for 87 cents and make a profit I think a huge company like Blockbuster can charge a little less than four dollars.
I am probably going to hate myself for exposing this, but this delay tactic that Netflix uses has one hole you can exploit. Titles that are new releases are not effected by this as far as I can tell.
/. readers are going to be competing with me for the same movies.
A title is a new release if it shows "Release on DVD..." under availability. These titles are available for shipment the date specified (usual a Tuesday). If you can make it so your return arrives on that day then you have a good chance of getting the new release no matter how many items you rented in the previous month.
A couple of tips:
1) Netflix will ship the day before release too (usually Monday).
2) Netflix doesn't process mail on Saturday so you can have the DVD show up on that day and get the new release.
3) New releases are NEVER shown in any browse links on Netflix. You have to search for them by name. There are quite a few sites on the Internet that list when movies come out on DVD. Netflix will usually have them as they release unless the title is from an independant (i.e. Bowling for Columbine).
Of course, now all these
I'm not sure if this is a nationwide thing, but I know where I live Blockbuster has the same sort of program as Netflix. It's something like $20 a month and you can have up to 2 rentals out at a time (I think). Not only can you get a lot more movies because you don't have to deal with the mail, but you don't have to worry about these kind of schemes done by NetFlix.
We usually sign up for a one month pass every few months and play catch up on some of the movies we missed. We don't rent enough movies on a normal monthly basis to sign up for the regularly charged version which is a couple of bucks less a month I believe.
Anyone else seen this offer? Does it still exist? Last time we did it was in December of last year.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
You are mistaking copyright protection mechanisms with trade secrets, which are not the same thing.
The only thing that protects trade secrets (other than what I've outlined above) is the fact that you don't tell anyone. A famous example of a trade secret is the formula for Coke. If you can reverse-engineer the formula for coke, you are free to make and sell your own copycat product, assuming you can prove to a court of law that you didn't steal the formula. A lot of companies have done this, in fact, and the main thing that keeps Coke on top is brand recognition.
Copyright is a different story. Thanks to the DMCA, copyright is further protected in that if you have in place a protection mechanism (e.g. encryption) on your copyrighted material, it is illegal to reverse-engineer the protection mechanism, with a few exceptions.
Of course if the USPS were losing the movies one could expect losses in both directions. I asked a one-time ex-deputy Director of the FBI about such shenanigans (ooh, my mighty network) and he said that US Postal inspectors would LOVE to hear about such "losses" and to investigate such a matter.
Being a good and right consumer, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and settled with cancelling my subscription. I was paranoid/concerned that Netflix was purposely "losing" (read "not processing") my returned DVDs in order to slow up my queue. I had been renting about 12-15 movies a month. Once my returned DVDs began getting "lost," my rental rate went down to 4-5 DVDs per month because I had to wait about a week before I could really report them as "lost".
Maybe one day I'll sign up again and ask the Feds to investigate the mysterious disappearance of DVDs in the US Mail.
Netflix? Nutflicks (ouch!) is more like it.
blog
If you're watching movies, you won't be listening to music
Bull. Movie studios that use popular recorded songs in their movies have to pay both the songwriter's publisher and the record label. Besides, some movies are just commercials for a soundtrack *cough*8 Mile*cough*. To top it off, three movie studios (Sony, Warner, Universal) also own record labels.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The idea that they might lure people into thinking that there low wait times when they first sign up and then swith later seems to fit with the "character" of the company.
I was a netflix customer early on, when you paid per movie and had just a week to watch them. Good service, and living in San Jose right near their headquarters ( the only shiping point at the time ) meant I could sometimes order a movie on the weekend and have it arrive Monday.
Then they paid spammers to increase their "market share". Not "opt-in" list guys, but the ones who sent to anyname@domain.com. I complained, they replied that they only dealt with opt-in spammers. I told them that I'd have remembered if I'd ever created an account with the email address "HowieIsAGayFuck@mydomain.com". They replied that out millions of spams sent, I was the only one who complained. No apology, never mentioned they'd stop dealing with the offending spam flingers.
So after 2 or 3 years with them I did the only thing in my power, I walked. I'd been getting DVDs every month, told all my friends, heck, even was in on a couple customer focus groups at their offices.
Me, I'm hoping blockbuster and Walmart with their new DVD by mail services squash them like a bug. The idea of a company doing well based on vile spam doesnt' sit well with me.
Is this a physical problem with current burners? or is it the lack of double layer dvd-r media?
Both. It's a limitation in the DVD-R and DVD+R technology. There's no known way that a laser aimed at one layer won't also affect the other layer. So because most major-studio DVD Video titles are dual-layer, there would be no way for Blockbuster or Netflix to burn DVDs on demand even if it could negotiate with the movie studios.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not sure how you equate priority queueing as being unfair. Since account age, but rather account activity is the key factor you really only "crap" over those who are saving the most money compared to traditional rental.
Personally, I average between 9 and 13 Netflix discs per month and have 300+ in my queue. I don't care which ones they send me so long as they keep coming.
Isn't the classic scheduling algorithm in Unix similiar to this, where processes which use the CPU a lot will be slowly penalized so that other processes will not be starved?
Maybe a solution will be to have a dutch auction for movies: the highest bidder for a given title-instance gets it.
You probably can't use the same browser to have multiple simultaneous sessions.
Yes you can. All you have to do in BSD, Linux, NT, or any other multiuser operating system is create another user on the same machine, and run the second browser as the other user. Different users get different profiles and different sets of cookies.
Or are the majority of people still running non-multiuser-capable Windows 9x as opposed to NT or Linux?
Will I retire or break 10K?
our copyrighted allocation scheme
The movies are copyrighted, but according to 17 USC 102(b), methods cannot be copyrighted.
Will I retire or break 10K?
they also make less money off people who rent more. since netflix pays shipping for most, if not all, of the rental plans (i don't keep track), they'd probably rather have people pay them $20 to watch one movie a month than $20 to watch 3+ movies a week.
i'm one of the high-volume renters. i just offset the problem with a massive rental queue, so there's always SOMETHING available, even if i lose a "tie" for the latest sopranos or buffy the vampire slayer. i've suspected them of doing this for months and i just don't care --it's still a great service.
it's nice to know that i'm not insane and they really do "punish" frequent renters, but i'm not getting my bun in a knot over it. as it is i still wouldn't trade it for having to go to the video store.
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
... is fucking depressing. I mean, I love the guy and all. Great actor. But geezus. Took me days to recover from the depression.
Better be hyped up on caffeine for the original Solaris. Or buy some toothpicks for your eyes.
I long suspected that Netflix only had 1 copy each of these DVDs. They've been at the top of my queue for moths now.
/.ers to watch and return Phantom Cuticle as soon as you can. Thanks!
Now I know better. I should have watched "Lodoss War" first and "The Sopranos" second.
In any case, I'd like to ask any of you
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
So if this is how things work, then the solution is easy, as long as you have a friend who is also a member and lives nearby. One month, you place all your orders (yours + hers) through your account; hers is idle. Next month, your availability stinks, hers is great. So you place all your orders through her account, and leave yours idle. The following month, her availability will stink, but yours will be great. Repeat ad infinitum.
I've been a member for a rather long time (almost 3 years) but I don't watch movies very promptly (their records show that I've only watched and returned 11 films in the past 3 months). So I guess I fall into "we like thi$ cu$tomer" category.
;)
I just checked and I have 59 movies in my rental queue, and every single one of them is listed as "Now" availability. Granted, most of them are uncommon foreign and indie films so I'm not in competition with all those folks trying to get the latest "Austin Powers" movie or something, but still, having 59 flicks all sitting there at my disposal is probably indicative of some favoritism.
But back to the subject of shipping times. Personally I'm amazed at how quickly turnaround times are for me. I frequently will drop a disc in the mail on a Saturday afternoon, see it register with Netflix on Monday, and have my next disc by Tuesday or Wednesday. I never checked to see which center mine go to but I'm in Vancouver, WA if anyone knows off the top of their head..
So I don't think it decreases with time (length of membership).. I think it's more to do with the original hypothesis of number of films rented. I'm probably paying $6-7 bucks for each of mine now, but given the fact that I have a toddler and my wife and I both work, we're willing to pay that for the convenience. (I only make it out to the theaters a couple times each year).
I just did a quick test and stuck Solaris(1972) in my queue. Availability = "now". That's sad. Want me to rent it and send it to ya? As a new service emerges: scalping Netflix films...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
I don't see any value in paying $20 a month for rentals. Who watches the 7 movies a month you'd have to rent to make it worthwhile? DVDOvernight.com is a pay-per-rental solution. Much better.
Hmm, I was waiting for Solaris too. The original DVD release was out of print by the time the remake was announced, so I imagine Netflix found themselves with way too much demand.
Anyway, a friend bought me the Criterion Collection remastered special edition, so I don't care any more.
I also don't care about the Netflix allocation algorithm much. I have about 60 movies in my queue, and so long as they send me something from the queue whenever I send back a disc I really don't care too much what it is.
(The only exception is that we've been trying to watch every single Bond movie in sequence... but now we're stalled because "Live and Let Die" is unavailable, as in not even in Netflix' database.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...4 movies a month is *kinda* unlimited... :-p
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I am experiencing great turnaround with Netflix. My first rule is that I never keep a movie for more than one night, and I send them back the next day even if I did not have a chance to see it. Overall it works really well and I get to see at least 15 movies per month.
My second rule is that I keep at least 100 movies in my wish list, you just never know when demand changes.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
The main reason I signed up with Netflix was that they had every movie I wanted available during the trial period. Now, if I rent a bunch of movies each month I don't get the new releases?
I have a constant queue of about 50 moves. Some new, some old, some good, some crap. My usage will always be high because I expect to have new movies every couple of days. I will *settle* for getting the shitty movies under the assumption that the wait for new releases will be short. This assumption was established over my trial period and the first month that I've been using it.
However, using Netflix, it appears that I'll never be eligible for new releases because I'm content to settle for crap movies to fill the time! "Don't rent the crap movies" you say. Then I don't get my monies worth from the service. If things get bad enough, I may be back at DVD Barn. They might've had more waits but at least they're honest and fair about it.
Now if Netflix's policy was to weigh new releases or movies with people enqueued when determining your wait time for new releases, that would be understandable. You couldn't go in and rent every new release every month. But, when I'm renting ST:TNG seasons and B-rate horror flicks to tide the time until something good comes along and being punished for it... bullshit.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
...apparently hasn't occurred to the author.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I've been a Netflix customer for quite some time and I've enjoyed the service immensely. But I wonder...
Why do you keep sending me "Free Trial" offers on the inside flap of each envelope? Why do you keep preaching to the choir?
Even if I had 100 friends, they'd be so sick of me handing them "Free Trial" coupons that they'd stop talking to me. Why not subsidize some of MY rental fee or the number of movies I can rent by offering your PREMIUM advertising space to companies like Best Buy or Circuit City. Or, let the advertisers offset the cost of purchasing a larger quantity of DVDs and remove LONG and SHORT waits altogether.
It seems so obvious to me that the envelop flap should be used for advertising - ANYTHING OTHER THAN A NETFLIX product. I would love to see a coupon for $2.00 off any DVD with the purchase of any other. How about $2.00 off a pizza? How about $2.00 off a movie ticket? Why not co-op the envelope space and sell to local area grocery stores or whatever? Use your imagination!
Use the back of the envelop flap for something that is going to benefit the CUSTOMER. Advertisers are constantly looking for new places to advertise. Here you go, a perfect space.
And when you're all done absorbing this idea, you can send me a check or a job offer. I'm a simple man.
Sincerely,
Andrew
I used to get great picks.. now it seems like everything is on a long wait. Even when its on the top of my list for months!
but, I never have the problem of long wait times.
I've been a member since 2/2000 when it was 4-out for $15. They grandfathered me for many months but finally raised my price to $20, but still 4-out.
In this time I've rotated movies very quickly and only seen any kind of wait time just once or twice.
I did notice that following 9-11 the deliveries slowed to a crawl. Suddenly, the deliveries came the next day...and I noticed the return address very close to home. Now days, it's never more than 3 days turn-around to swap one movie for another.
But, here's the thing that might save me from the long waits. Possibly they use algorithms such as described, and possibly the algorithms don't affect me because of this... of our 4-out I only rotate 3 quickly. The other 1 is always something my wife wants to see, and she'll be busy and not get around to seeing it for a month or two. That one might throw off their trick.
Whatever... anything is better than Blockbuster...
I would agree that this is "bait and switch" if, after renting more and more DVDs, they started sending you VHS tapes and/or offered you "enhanced service" to get top picks more quickly for an additional fee. This is not the case.
Using your analogy, even, I have a hard time faulting the restaurant who brought me skinnier ribs: Unless they told me beforehand that I'll be getting the same, meaty ribs throughout the duration of my stay, I'd have a hard time working up a lather about it. And it would not be, even possibly, illegal. (Now, if they started with meaty ribs and wound up with chicken necks or Rocky Mountain Oysters, you'd have a case ...)
w/r/t your belief that "if people knew about it, they'd all just cancel at the end of every month and start up again at the beginning of the next," my guess would be that it's a small minority of customers who would be willing to lose their queue, their ratings, fill out the same forms every month, etc. so that they could be first in line for "Agent Cody Banks."
now why would a moderator waste a mod point to mod this down??? I can only think of 3 posts out of a hundred or so that I have ever modded down, and 2 were trolls and one was something else...
I would say this one was Funny at best, not funny but on topic at worst. I personally think it's funny. I can't see why it would be modded -1, Offtopic...
//FIXME: Bad
... many of us here are Hackers, right?
So here is the key.
Open two accounts. One for you, one for your friend down the street. Then take turns getting "big months" and "bad months" and you'll get all of the movies you want and you'll get to watch them with a friend.
Of course this costs you twice as much, so its not like you are stealing... you are just manipulating the system.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
As an aside, Serving Sara and Undercover Brother are, in my humble opinion, terrible movies and I'm just a little embarrassed they were in my queue above. Not that Sweet Home Alabama is Oscar worthy, but who can't smile at Reese Witherspoon?
Who can't smile at Denise Richards? Hell, UB is worth it just to look at the DVD cover!
"Mmmmm. 'Wild Things'...."
....is this even legal? I can't find anything disclosed by Netflix. I have been wondering about their priority system lately while waiting for Dune (2000) to get mailed out so my fiancee can watch. 3 weeks and counting.... Let's say I go into Blockbuster to rent a new release, only to get up to the counter and have them tell me "Sorry...customer X wants us to hold this movie for them, and since they are a better (read: more profitable) customer, you are going to have to wait". How well do you think this customer model would hold up? NFL! I am a 2nd time Netflix user. I am on the 3 DVD plan and almost always send back the next day, resulting in about 10-12 per month. I have hundreds in my queue...but the reason I have some at the top is obviously because I want to see them first! Dozens of them are in a waiting status and some have been that way for some time. Some change for the better or worse, but because I have many others available now, a different one gets shipped out instead of waiting for the next available copy. Many are NOT new releases, some are several years old. Putting a movie in your queue on opening day does little good. I had Spirited Away and Red Dragon way up my list with the other 'waiting' titles, but did not get one and now it's already in a Long Wait. I'm tempted to cancel as well...I've been using my library in parallel lately anyways, they have approx 1500 DVD titles between all branches.
i bet you thought you were, like, +500 badass when really you're +1000 hilarious at best, and +10^100 dumb at worst.
Nope. Just going for funny.
Thanks, but I wouldn't say "hilarious"
Your library has Atari 2600 games? WOOT!
>
That's because BB have revenue share deals for vhs, so the studios supply BB for peanuts - compared to a $50+ list price during the rental window.
But when the studios decided to pump prime the dvd market and release straight to retail at retail prices, BB opted to buy outright.
Although they make higher margins this way becaue they don't have to share revenue, it does cost them more to replace a dvd.
However, Netflix now claim to have revenue share deals on dvd's. So why aren't popular dvd's easily available regardless of how frequently you turn them round ?
"dvd_rent_test"'s analysis does imply Netflix are using satisfaction as a way of 'training' users towards 'reasonable' behaviour. Pavlov lives.
"Congress - the best democracy money can buy"
A friend of mine has caught neighborhood kids stealing NetFlix discs out of her mailbox several times. She returns them from work now.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Based on the number of replies it would seem they are quite popular. For whatever reason I've never heard of them before.
Pretty much everyone I know buys DVDs or rents them from a local video store.
Considering I can often get new DVDs of classics or used DVDs of new releases for less than $10 it makes more sense to buy than renting for $4.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
i'm not an anony-mouse poster by choice but below is text that i sent to Netflix. change it to fit your account details and send it off. we demand service dammit!
l ?tid=97_ ___
http://www.netflix.com/ContactCustService
---------
To: Netflix Customer Service
the short text below describes the past 2 months with my Netflix 8-DVD-A-Month rental account.
please send a personal response to this email.
"Netflix uses the number of movies you have previously rented to determine your priority in getting movies. The more movies you rented during your last billing cycle, the less chance you have of receiving a movie versus an individual who has rented fewer movies. This is why new users have great success getting their movies and older or heavy users have a difficult time getting some movies."
the above text describes my last 2 months w/ Netflix.
i used to receive new/popular movies quickly and now, since signing on to pay $40 dollars a month, i receive almost nothing new - despite keeping on top of my rental queue.
please respond personally. i'm now questioning your company that i told my friends about.
thanks
link to the article/comments by Netflix customers:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/23/130257.shtm
_____________________
_________________
"Netflix says: Your Request Has Been Sent
Your concerns are important to us. We will contact you as quickly as possible."
lets see
I'm a heavy NetFlix user, and I do indeed have a lot of discs stuck in "long wait" mode. However, I've found that it is still very easy for me to get brand new releases so long as I have a disc being returned to the center on the day of the release. However, if I miss the release date, the movie almost immediately goes to "long wait" mode.
Some days when I return a movie to Netflix, I noticed that it seems to take quite a long time to get back to them. My center is in MD and when the center was first out, I would have my movies checked back in after only 2 days. Now it seems to take 4. My post office service has only gotten better over the years and this seems a little strange. I was thinking about asking for a return receipt on the next couple of movies to see exactly when they receive the item back and when they send me the e-mail stating that they have the movie back. For all we know, they could hold the movie out for 24 hours or more and we wouldn't have a clue!
Genj
I have been a member since August 2002. In that time, I have received three empty envelopes -- no sleeve or DVD. In each case, it was easy enough to figure out what movie it should have been. The last two were received unsealed at my local (podunk sized) post office. The postmaster says Netflix is well known among postmasters for sending out unsealed enveloped, the sleeves and DVDs fall out in bins, are collected, and periodically sent back to Netflix.
I don't believe the post office is stealing these. It would be so much simpler to steal the entire enveope rather than just the DVD and sleeve.
What really annoys me about this is that the shipping problems form has no choice for receiving an empty sleeve. If you report it missing and never arrived, they tell you to wait a few days and report it again. If you report it as scratced and unplayable, so they will send out a replacement immediately, they expect you to send the scratched DVD back.
Infuriate left and right
Hmmm... two business model questions: If a movie is in demand, why do they preferentially give it to people who will take the longest to return it? And, since frequent renters presumably have a full queue, they save no money on mailing costs; I know I'll get SOMETHING, just maybe not what's first on my list. It is not clear to me this is a well thought out policy. It's the anti-frequent-flyer program; if you never fly our airline, we'll give you a free flight and an upgrade! Lufthansa and Quantas owe me big!
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
Based on some excellent feedback I updated the document. Changes are marked in yellow.
By the way, there's another long multi-part review of Netflix from a usability/customer-experience perspective here:
http://www.nettle.com/subj-netflix.html
...quit Netflix, subscribe to Greencine!
They RAWK! - Especially if you love anime.
The key part of the article is this quote:
Note that he specifically selected movies that weren't available. That does not mean that all movies are unavailable. Nor does it mean that popular movies are unavailable. If you look at the list of the top rentals of the past week and compare the list to the movies he checked, you'll notice very few movies that are in both lists.By focusing on unavailable movies, the author was able to hypothesize the criteria used by Netflix to determine who should get the next copy of a movie. However, some /.ers are extrapolating that data to mean that long time subscribers never get the movie they want to see, as if a person wanted to rent Harry Potter, but is stuck watching Manos, the Hands of Fate (the worst movie of all-time, according to IMDB). That is not the case, if your top movie is unavailable, the next movie in your queue, a movie you specifically picked as being one you want to watch, is sent to you.
I've often wondered the exact same thing. It would be nice to have my loyalty rewarded in some way other than decreased availability of popular movies :)
There are, after all, competing services popping up a lot lately.
Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
the trick is to be consistant with your returns. some one with a movie every other week seems to be ok - where someone who gets 3 or 4 and turns them around in a clot, seems to get delayed.
I've also found that returning from a main post office cuts down some of the transit time.
And i'm usually not trying to get the "hot new releases", so i'd bet the odds are good that i'll get something whenever anything comes in...
And they do tell you to keep 15-20 things in the queue to be sure that something will be available any time you return one.
I mean come on, I'd get my left nut to be "taken advantage" of by these guys. Netflix rocks.
The formula for Coca Cola isn't hard to deduce, but that won't help you make an identically tasting beverage unless you can obtain the ingredients. And decocainized coca extract isn't exactly easy to acquire.
Peace and love, y'all
You arrive in the middle of lunch hour, and you see they've got good pizza with the styles and toppings you want, so you pay and settle in... then about 10 minutes later, when you're ready to go back for more (remember these are small plates), you realize the ones your eally wanted are gone, and you're left with something that has wilted jalepenos and dehydrated pineapple on it, and a bunch of sugar-coated bread. You ask them to make a pizza of a kind you like, and even though nobody in the place is buying pizzas, and it only takes them 10-15 minutes to slap one together and heat it, and maybe even other people ask for the same pizza, you wait for 1/2 an hour. Then you grab 3 or 4 slices of that pizza, and someone else walks in and sees it, and the others who have been waiting see it...
Get off my launchpad!
If I am understanding this its the fact I rent "good" movies that effects my ability to keep getting "good" movies. Wouldnt it then make sense for everyone to stop ranking movies. I have ranked about 15 out of the 50 or so I have rented, but if there using that to determine a popular movie and thus short end advid users. But w/o a doubt my service went from rock'n to ok since I first signed up 3 months ago. I was getting almost 5 movies a week on a 3 dvd plan when I first signed up, now I wait about 2-3 days longer for movies even though my habits have not changed. I'll give it a bit more time but theres something fishy going on over there no doubt.
Added summary of the state of my queue ("A") before I began my tests. Added section guessing why Netflix might be doing this and suggestions for improvement. Added additional warnings about what I was not testing.
I was a member for more than a year around 2000-2001. At first I was receiving the discs at home, and one would not show up every two or three months. After 3 DVDs didn't arrive I switched to receiving them at work and only one failed to arrive there after 4~ months of usage with the different address. Never had any problems with DVDs going missing on their way back to Netflix.
Excerpt of an email from Netflix:
"When demand temporarily is greater than supply we ship to customers who rent fewer movies because they have fewer opportunities to get a particular movie. We do this to give the best experience to as many members as possible. "
http://dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/