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Posted by Derek Janssen on 02/17/06 04:23
Jim wrote:
>
> We have been Netflix customers from about two months now. and we have
> noticed something curious about the service. We live in Hawaii, and at
> first the Netflix DVDs would arrive in a return envelope that said it
> was from "Nearest Netflix center" with a Honolulu address. Very nice.
> And yes, the service was fast.
>
> And then today we returned the latest DVD that we watched last
> night, and guess what????? Surprise!!! The return address for the DVD
> was "Nearest Netflix center" in COLORADO. Not the nearest, seems to me.
Well, don't feel bad--
I go through the Worcester, MA center, and recently got a documentary
with a Honolulu mailer.
Not surprisingly, it was an obscure title from a small company, and less
likely to be stocked at every regional center.
> There are a number of possibilities here:
>
> 1. The DVD had to come from (and be returned to) the Colorado center
> because it was the only place it was available. Possibly, it might not
> have been a very popular selection.
Yyyyyep:
Secret #1 to Increased Availability through regional centers--Importing
less frequently rented titles to lower-end users, allowing more
sub-centers to stock their own catalogs.
> 2. Netflix is now letting the USPS throttle things down by
> deliberately routing the requests to Netflix processing centers that are
> far enough away so that it is guaranteed to take an extra day or two.
> If we see a lot more of our Netflix DVDs from faraway places, then that
> is probably the case.
>
> 3. Even Machaivelli says not to suspect a conspiracy when
> incompetence is obvious, but I think that this is not one of those
> cases. Netflix seems to be pretty well organized so that if they are
> using a routing algorithm that automatically delays things this way, it
> is probably on purpose.
2 - Weak red-herring suspect; 3 - Non-parsimonious supposition.
Best advice given is, unless you're renting "Cheaper By the Dozen 2", or
some such Blockbuster-fodder, check your return-envelope mailer to make
sure which address it's returning to (nine times out of ten, it'll be
local, BUT)--And if it's from Out of Town, keep mailer and disk readily
near each other to avoid confusion with your local rentals.
It won't speed the rental loop *too* noticeably, but it will save a
happy nameless Colorado customer from your disk getting an extra day or
two in Hawaii by mistake....And yes, my Honolulu copy went straight home
direct.
Derek Janssen (it's the new equivalent of "Be Kind, Rewind")
ejanss@comcast.net
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