Amazon wants to get into online DVD rental biz |
Reuters is reporting that Amazon approached Blockbuster and Netflix about a possible partnership deal as opposed to launching their own competing service.
I haven’t tried any of these online DVD rental services, I guess, because I’m too impatient to appreciate snail mail to deliver the movies, though from what I’ve read these services are pretty fast. I won’t do any business with Blockbuster ever again (bad customer experiences) but I might be willing to try Netflix someday.
If any readers use these online DVD rental services, what are the pros and cons? Is this a good market for Amazon to move into? What do you think?
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I’ve got no real opinion on Amazon getting involved, but I’ve been _quite_ happy with Netflix’ service since I signed up. They’ve got a distribution center in Tacoma, so at its best, it’s only a three day process between sending out a movie and getting the next one (I’m in downtown Seattle — drop one I’ve watched in the mailbox on day one, it’s processed and the next one is sent out on day two, arrival in my mailbox on day three).
The one downside to this is that there’s a “throttling” mechanism in place for their higher-use customers. If I’m on a movie-watching kick and going through as fast as I can, after a couple weeks that three day turnaround suddenly slows to 5-7 days. It can be a little frustrating, but at the same time, they do this in order to make sure that there’s always a good amount of stock available for everyone — including those people who don’t watch as much or as fast. So, while it can be a bit frustrating to know that I _could_ be getting things faster and I’ve just been “throttled” down a bit, it’s bearable (and, really, often clues me in that I’ve been spending a bit too much time vegging in front of movies instead of interacting with the world).
End result is that I can easily recommend Netflix.
Comment by Michael Hanscom — April 16, 2005 @ 9:48 pm PST
Don’t use Netflix myself, would rather purchase what I want. Since many of our theatre employees are transient and with us for 3, 6, 9, 12 month stays in company housing, all their mail comes to our office for distribution. Many of them use Netflix and mail pickup each morning sees at least a handful of Netflix envelopes. They all seem very satisfied with the process.
Comment by Warner Crocke — April 17, 2005 @ 10:41 am PST
Sometimes I just don’t catch the proofing when I’m inking. This post is just to correct the name misspelling in the previous one.
Comment by Warner Crocker — April 17, 2005 @ 10:42 am PST