Each month, Netflix provides movie entertainment to more than 2,000,000 satisfied customers.
Do this many people actually pay $19.95 a month ($21.99 effective on June 15, 2004) to rent as many DVDs as they want? You can only have 3 titles on your rotating list at a time. When you add shipping time you might have 1 DVD in your possession at a time because you’ll be in the process of sending one back and waiting for one to arrive. Depending on shipping and processing times, you might at a max, get 10 movies if you are lucky and I bet that is pushing it. How many people actually watch 10 movies in the course of a month?
Even if you do get 10 movies a month, that comes out to $2 a flick. Add in the hassle of shipping them back to the company and waiting for a new movie to arrive and it doesn’t seem worth it at all! I rent movies from Hollywood Video for the whopping cost of 99 cents for 5 days including new releases. Hmm…it’s cheaper per movie, no waiting, no shipping back. So where’s the advantage with Netflix? Seriously…
I see free trials at Best Buy, Circuit City, on numberous websites, and everywhere else. I’m curious to hear from anyone that has a subscription…why?
Nick Momrik 
my wife and I use netflix frequently. We’ve been busy lately so we’ve only been doing about 10-12 movies/month, but when we weren’t so busy we could get 25 movies a month, by just watching one every night and mailing it back the next day. Sundays were the only day the mail didn’t run, and it’s about 1 day each way for us, since we live in the metropolitan area as one of their 24 shipping centers. It’s fantastic, and well worth the price. I’d gladly talk more about it if you want to drop me a note 🙂
LikeLike
That’s interesting that you could get that many movies in a month. I’d be interested to see how long it takes for someone further from a shipping center. So you’re saying that you ship one out, it takes a day to get there, they process it the return, get the new DVD ready, and a day to ship it back for a 2-3 day turn around? I can see where that would be worth it. Do you keep the subscription year ’round or just for the winter months? I don’t think I’d ever have the time to watch enough movies for it to be worth it for me (maybe in the cold Michigan winter), but I’m definitely interested to hear about others’ experiences.
LikeLike
Just had a thought…
If I bought a DVD burner, Netflix would be awesome!
LikeLike
Bingo!
LikeLike
Although I probably don’t get my “money’s worth” because I don’t watch enough movies, I love the convenience that Netflix provides. You mentioned “the hassle” of shipping movies back. Actually, it’s really easy. Each movie comes in a little envelope that you use to mail the movie back. Just put it in the envelope and drop it in the mail. Because I’m so lazy, I hate having to go to Hollywood or Blockbuster and walk up and down the aisles until I find something I want to see. I’d rather just browse online, “que” up the movie on Netflix, and have them send it to me, and then I don’t need to worry about getting my butt in the car to go take it back! Anyway, I guess that convenience is what I pay for, because like I said, I’d definitely spend less money going to the store to rent one at a time. But at the same time, b/c I’m so lazy, I’m sure I’d see even less movies without Netflix just because I’d say, “screw it, I don’t want to go out to the store.”
As for distribution time, it’s really good for me, but as you alluded to, I’m very close to a mailing center. I don’t know how long it would take if I wasn’t. Hope that helps!
LikeLike
The convenience issue would definitely be a plus. There are a lot of movies that I’d like to see, but just haven’t because of either being too lazy to go the video store or because something else caught my eye. I think I’d watch a lot more movies than I do now if I had a subsciption.
I wonder why they are increasing the monthly fee if they have so many customers. Postal rates increasing? More people receiving “their fair share” of movies?
LikeLike
Netflix was worth it for me just for the fact that I’m an Anime and foreign film dork and none of my local video stores have any anime on DVD and a crappy foreign film selection on DVD (we don’t have a VCR that’s worth a damn).
My girlfriend and I also rent a lot more movies now because we’ll adapt the ‘what the hell’ mentality and add stuff to our queue since we’ve already paid ahead of time for it. We go through around twenty movies a month, and have had a few same day turn around times (shipped out from work in the morning, picked up at home after work). I have no problem with the price increase as it’s supposed to go towards more movies and more copies of movies.
LikeLike
I use walmart and get 4 movie rotation for about the same price as flix. I absolutly love it. Of course I live in the nomadic wasteland of Alaska. Number one reason I save money: no late fees. I love that I can return the movies when I walk past the mailbox on my way to work. (On base housing so I walk nearly everyday.) The turn around up here where EVERYTHING ships slow is exactly a week. 12 -14 dvds/ month for us. Beats the local store, especially with late fees. Also the don’t carry Sportsnite reruns at the local place. I also like the catagorical listings online. Very easy to find older movies that I haven’t seen before. Just watched “The Player” the other day. Pretty good. Thinking about doing the PS2 rentals the same way. That would save me a bundle…they’re $5 for 3 days up here.
LikeLike
Oh…by the way +100″/yr of rain up here.
Don’t need to get out any more than I already do.
LikeLike
Hmmm…I didn’t know Walmart had a service like this or that there are services similar for video games. Now a service that combined video games and movies, I would definitely go for!
LikeLike
I found a site similar to Netflix, but for video games.
DeepShark
LikeLike