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Wal-Mart Enters NetFlix's Business
wcbrown writes "AP reports that Wal-Mart is entering into the online DVD rental arena, currently dominated by Netflix. Wal-Mart is starting out with 13,000 titles, six distribution centers, and competitive pricing. With a seriously tremendous infrastructure and expansive will, Wal-Mart stands poised to overtake Netflix. To say the least, that's not going to be good for business."
For the UK, I've been using dvdsontap.com for more than half a year now and I must say I'm quite pleased with their service.
Private At Home
Wantedlist.com
X4Rent
SugarDVD.com
Video Takeout
DVD Climax
Bedroom DVDs
And then there is RentFlixxx.com, but they are down at the moment.
Anyway, I was bored, and know about google, so I figured I would give you a hand...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Forget NetFlix and Walmart!!! Support your local videostores, or indie startups like
Greencine that give you other choices besides MPAA-approved Hollywood pablum!
You, my friend, do not have young children. "Hey, let's go get a movie" turns into a two-hour ordeal of car-seats, crying, dropped ice-cream, potty breaks and/or diaper changes, and so on...
The reality is that you give up a little spontaneity for a lot of convenience. You don't find hopping over to the video store for a movie all that troublesome, but there are plenty of people who do. Having a movie you want to see, right at hand, when you find yourself with a couple of hours of peace is a luxury to a lot of people.
I work with a guy whose family lives in Alaska. The one video store in town has a pitiful selection. Netflix provides something they simply can't get otherwise.
As far as movies go, there is a high psychological threshold that has to be reached in order to go rent a movie. Why? Because you have to go, pay on the spot, and are committed to going back within a few days to a week to return the movie. You are less likely to rent something wierd or experiement with different tastes because, well, because, that's just how most people are. But clicking on a movie on the site is low-threshold, and I find myself putting all sorts of odd movies on my netflix list that I would almost certainly never go through the effort to rent at Blockbuster.
According to this article in Slate, Wal-Mart, with $244 billion in revenues last year, represents nearly 2.5 percent of the U.S. economy. Worldwide, they employ 1.38 million.
I had one of those on my college campus...it was an overpriced piece of shit. Perhaps Walmart updates the titles more often, but I'd much rather drive to the nearest Blockbuster or rent from Netflix than fiddle with that cursed machine.
When I tried Walmart dvd rentals a few months back the selection seemed about the same as NetFlix, but the quantity wasn't there. Just about every title I wanted to rent was a 'long wait', whereas on NetFlix very few titles have any wait whatsoever.
Walmart needs to get a greater quantity of titles before they steal significant market from NetFlix. I would also like to see Walmart enable returns/check-ins at stores (stores could bulk-main discs back to distribution sites).
Wal-Mart pulled Cosmo because people were complaining about it, especially since they generally stocked it right at the checkout stands where everyone had to see it. There is an important distinction here, they stocked the product until enough people complained about it. At which point they probably did a cost/benefit analysis of their Cosmo sales and realized that they weren't selling enough to justify a group of people getting pissed at them.
They still stock virtually all recent movies and a decent selection of older things (like I said in another post, I recently purchased Scarface from them, unedited). I would imagine an online store would be even less likely to screen their movies as they would in-store.
"They pay their employees shit"
No, they pay their employees what the work is actually worth.
"as well as busting unions and various other unscrupulous practices"
There is nothing unscrupulous about protecting workers by not forcing them to join unions (this is hardly "union busting").
"The result is uneven distribution of wealth, and a weaker local economy (b/c all the money is going elsewhere)."
No, it is not. The money is also going to the employees, and also to local charitable efforts and contributions.
"Small businesses, on the other hand, in general pay their employees better, and the owners themselves are local, so basically all of their profit is going back into the local economy."
This is a wild and unfounded assumption, destroyed as soon as the local pharmacy owner spends his profits on a cottage "up north" or orders a $1200 TV set from "Sharper Image".
"But, shopping at walmart damages the community, which in turn hurts the individual "
No, it does not in any way.
"and therefore has no reason to stop shopping there."
Yes, there is no reason to stop shopping there.
I currently subscribe to Netflix, and at the rate they are either lost or stolen while in route back to the Netflix warehouse, I wouldn't want to be paying that for each one! Netflix has yet to charge me for those and state they won't unless it becomes frequent.
Anyway, I'll be sticking to Netflix...
I live to gib...
It looks like the first innovation Wal-Mart made was shifting the liability for lost/stolen DVDs to the consumer. With NetFlix, as long as it doesn't happen often, you don't get penalized for having one lost in the mail, with Wal-Mart, it costs you $17.88 (see here).
In Israel (at least, some places in Tel Aviv) you can walk up to a vending machine on the street and rent DVD *porn*.
I tried the Wal-Mart service earlier in the year, and unless they drastically can improve their delivery times, Netflix doesn't have anything to worry about for quite a while. I had used Netflix for about 2 years, and generally was decently satisfied with their service, although their constant changing of rates was annoying and off putting. As an example, if I rented a DVD from NetFlix that had immediate availability, I would recieve the DVD approximately 2 days later. Not a bad turn around. Contrast that to Wal-Mart, which first, must have a drastically smaller inventory (or not as friendly of a reservation system to new buyers as Netflix) because almost all DVD's had a long wait. On movies that were available now, the EARLIEST I ever recieved a DVD was 5 days after I had ordered. Now I realize that proximity to distribution centers probobly greatly affects transit time, but for myself the inventory of Netflix coupled with quicker deliver time made me switch back.
It's in their blood, though. Wal-mart has been convicted of dropping prices below cost at individual stores to kill the local mom'n'pop competition. Then they would jack the prices back up when they became the only game in town.
It was pretty popular for Wal-mart when opening new stores in small towns, before they were busted for it.
I went to college for this?...
One reason I won't be switching to Wal-Mart's service is the total lack of any gay-themed movies. And, I don't expect they will attempt to reach this market. NetFlix did some cleaning a year ago and removed all the softcore stuff, but left behind the hard-to-find gay-themed movies, some of which are quite good. "Metrosexuality" was great... short films series... none to be found at Wal-Mart. I admit, I'm gay so my judgement on this is slanted, but at the same time, isn't Wal-Mart's? If they judge this kind of movie wrong to offer, what else are they keeping from the public? Remember, Wal-Mart is the same company that refuses to sell certain games for PC / PS2, etc and even some movies due to content. Hell... the Drudge Report said the other day that Wal-Mart was going to start covering up some women's magazines due to obscene content! Hey, the word "SEX" was on a cover with Jennifer Anniston - I've been OBSCENED!!! Thank goodness Wal-Mart is around to protect us all. Praise be to Sam.
look like philanthropists. When Nike abandons a plant because of safety concerns, Wal-Mart negotiates a rent decrease and moves in...
I have been a netflix fan for a long time now, and Wal-Mart would have to pay ME to buy ANYTHING from them...
Just check out www.corpwatch.org and search on WalMart, there's plenty to read...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I grew up in a small town, as did many of my friends. In nearly every town, a Wal*Mart has moved in and crushed all the local businesses. I know, capitalism, best for the consumer, etc. and all that. But it is turning every place in the US into a McTown, all with exactly the same things in them.
I'm currently a NetFlix subscriber, but I churn 20 movies a month. They lose money big time on me. I'm going to move to Wal*Mart, and if they don't try to throttle me somehow, I'll be more than happy to have them lose money on me.
I dropped my subscription to NetFlix sometime last year and replaced it with GreenCine, even though they were slightly more expensive and took longer to ship to me. Why? Selection.
I liked getting anime DVDs from Netflix, but the way they kept buying only the first two or three DVDs of a six- or eight-disc series annoyed the frick out of me. I found GreenCine after a short search at Yahoo, and the site promised a greater selection of independent and anime rentals -- and they were absolutely right.
My point is, the real advantage of the online rental market should be greater selection of eclectic titles. Have you ever shopped for movies at Wal-Mart? Mainstream stuff all the way. Their CD selection is even worse. I started buying books and CDs from Amazon.com not for the prices, but because their selection was that much better, even if I lost the advantage of immediate gratification.
If people want to rent mainstream videos, then they'll always do it at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, where they're promised "guaranteed in stock" even if they only keep it for two nights. Immediacy is more important than "keep it as long as you like" in most consumers' minds; if it weren't, we wouldn't have movie channels on cable TV at all.
So kudos to Wal-Mart for entering a new arena (for them), and may NetFlix be driven to excel even more because of it. But until they both realize the real advantages of what they're doing and offer a wider and more complete selection, I'll happily ignore them both.
Interesting contrast between this:
Where I am, Walmart doesn't really have a great reputation ... I find Walmart a pain in the ass to shop in ... My mother and father HATED going there ... Walmart customer service?? Pain, in, the, ass.
and this:
Long lines ... A couple of months ago, I once stopped in to grab a snack and soda, it being late at night and they were open 24/7 and I was passing by. Tired, I wasn't thinking. I walked out, fuming, 45 minutes later with a 2L and a bag of chips.
If Wal-Mart is so bad, why are they *always* extremely busy, even very late at night?
I must have a better local Wal-Mart. Lines are rarely long, the couple of times I've dealt with customer service have been extremely smooth. The stores are big, which sometimes makes stuff hard to find. OTOH, their prices are generally good, and I love the fact that they force bands to edit their CDs (I have young children and a taste for heavy music that typically comes with nasty lyrics).
The biggest problem I see is that the place is always so busy that you end up parking a quarter mile from the store!
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I tried their DVD service for a month late last winter. I've used Netflix for a year or so, and thought it worth a try.
What a disapointment. The UI is terrible, making it awkward to browse titles. They had none of Netflix's 5-star rating functionality. I've found that to be one of the best features, since it makes decent recommendations to me based on my preferences (much like Tivo), and it also lets you view highly rated users. At Walmart you're on your own.
They also had terrible stocking problems, although presumably they will fix that. Lots of "long wait" movies, compared to Netflix where that's quite rare.
Plus the movies took longer to go round trip. In Chicago, the nearest center is in Minnesota, and I get 4-6 day turnaround. Walmart was consistantly several days longer. This varies according to your distance from distribution centers, but friends in other places also have gotten snappy turnaround from Netflix.
Anyway, give it a try for the trial period, but also try Netflix. Walmart has a long way to go to catch up.
Walmart was the third most searched for retailer last year (via Google). People are certainly willing and able to find Walmart on the internet.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
I am a Netflix subscriber and am familiar with their prices/selection/service. I thought I'd check out the Walmart page to see how much cheaper they were.
Guess what I found out? For the plan I'm on, they aren't cheaper at all. Walmart offers 3 packages, the cheapest being $15.54/month for 2 movies. Netflix offers 2 movies at a time for only $13.99/month. Now at the standard plan (3 movies), Walmart is $18.76 whereas Netflix is $19.99. To say that this $1.23 is going to quash Netflix is somewhat ridiculous. Add to that the fact that Netflix is still cheaper in the lower category and it becomes even more ridiculous.