Friday, April 25, 2008

A Netflix bitchfest

Netflix is fucking my shit up this month. About two weeks ago I sent a disc to them on a Monday. Normally they’d get it, process the return, and send my my next disc on Tuesday. For some reason they were jacking around and didn’t process the return until Tuesday. Then, when finally decided to send me my next movie, it took them a whole day to realize that they didn’t actually have it locally, so they were going to ship it to me from the west coast on Wednesday. Of course, it took longer than one day to get it since it was now coming from Oregon, so I didn’t actually get the disc until Saturday. A week to get a disc is bullshit. I wanted to complain but could find absolutely no way to contact them via their website. All they allow you to do is report problems via radio buttons, none of which fit my circumstances.

This week I’ve been waiting for a disc that was supposed to arrive on Wednesday. It didn’t come Wednesday or Thursday, but they wouldn’t let me report it until today. I did it as soon as I got up with the hopes that they’d ship my disc out today so I’d have something to watch this weekend. They have their thumbs up their asses again, though, and won’t ship my movie until Monday. So the movie that was supposed to arrive Wednesday of this week will actually arrive Tuesday of next week. And I have to pay full price for this quality service. I’m so irritated right now that I’m considering looking into the Blockbuster equivalent. Has anyone else used that one? Do they suck less than Netflix?

4 comments:

Michelle said...

This has happened to me many times before, too. I am just like WTF? At first I thought they were punishing me since I would watch/return movies fairly quickly. I got fed up a couple of months ago, so I put my membership on hold. I also don't get how a movie that my friend and I both have on our queue - on my queue it says the film has a VERY LONG WAIT and then hers says AVAILABLE NOW...for the same movie and we live in NYC.

Trisha had a hard time contacting them about a year ago or so, and she pretty much called them out on it on how difficult it is to contact customer service. They gave her like a free month or something.

Blockbuster - I wouldn't go to them AT ALL. I had a bad experience (SLOOOW) and their foreign film selection is slim compared to Netflix.

Tori said...

Thanks for the warning about Blockbuster. I guess I'll have to stick with Netflix. :(

There was a big expose about a year ago exposing how Netflix would send their high-demand movies to the people who made them the most money, i.e., people who held onto each movie for ages. So, in essence, they were punishing you for returning things to quickly by putting you to the bottom of the list.

kk said...

Surprisingly (because I have so many overall crappy customer service experiences with online things) I've actually had pretty good overall experiences over the last 3 years or so aside from the occasional unplayable CD or delay in getting a less-common film. And I had to call customer service last month and they fixed me up right away. I did recently get two unplayable CDs in a row, but they re-sent right away.

rg said...

I haven't had any major problems with them. The only issue was having to wait three months till The Wire, season 1 disc 1, was available. Now that it's available, I'm preoccupied with the first season of Medium!