Posted by Bill's News on 12/02/06 17:44

root wrote:
> I recently finished free trials of both Neflix and Blockbuster
> video
> rental services. I live in the greater Los Angeles area, about
> 20
> miles from the Blockbuster center, forty miles from the
> Netflix site.
> The local Blockbuster rental store is within easy walking
> distance.
> The Netflix trial was for four weeks, the Blockbuster for two.
>
> Based upon this experience the Blockbuster service was in
> every
> way superior to that of Netflix. Netflix does not process
> orders
> on weekends or holidays, Blockbuster seems to work 24/7.
> Netflix
> requires two-way mail service for every disk, you can return
> your disks to your local Blockbuster store, have the disks
> scanned
> in, and the Blockbuster center will ship your next entry.
>
> As an example, I returned a disk to my local Blockbuster store
> on Thanksgiving day; the Blockbuster center received notice
> and shipped out a replacement that day; I received the
> replacement
> on the day after Thanksgiving.
>
> Upon returning a disk to the local Blockbuster you can take
> out
> a free rental for any disk in the store. Following on my
> Thanksgiving experience above, after I returned the disk I was
> able to take out another immediately. There is no way that
> Netflix
> can match that.
>
> If you are interested in video rental by mail I encourage you
> to
> take advantage of the Blockbuster free trial.

This is a very nice presentation of your argument favoring BB.
Some points to consider and not necessarily to contravene your
positives:

1) I'm about 40 miles south of L.A. in the greater megalopolis.
Nearest BB store is 5 miles and there are three of them in about
the same radius. None happens to be adjacent to anywhere else I
might shop, so visiting them would be the sole purpose of a trip
there.

2) The principal reason that I stopped in-store rentals with BB
was that the lengthened return policy (forced by Netflix's lower
cost strategy) caused much of the disc rental shelf space to be
empty much of the time AND that the older items had always
tended to stagnate, so that there was little of interest to be
found in the store after several years as a customer.

3) A perusal of what Netflix had available for rental when
compared with the "shopping" list I kept, the content of which I
never found in a BB store, left me no option but to switch -
Netflix had what I wanted.

4) Time has passed and BB has had more than enough time to work
out a competitive strategy - and you've done a nice job of
highlighting what it is, for those who - like yourself - live
within walking distance of a store located not too far from an
on-line-rental distribution center.

5) Every once in a while a BB promotion entices me back into any
of the nearby stores. Nothing has changed: the wall is
virtually empty; the same "old" films I'd seen too often a few
years back are still on the floor.

I've not visited BB's on-line-rental web site for quite a while,
so I will not attempt to make a comparison between it and
Netflix. However, in a few years now as a Netflix customer they
have done nothing wrong in amply fulfilling my video rental
needs - and, I've never needed to go anywhere by foot or by car
to enhance my experience with them.

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