Thursday, February 1, 2007

De-throttle your Netflix bottleneck

I'm a Netflix customer. I signed up because of the "unlimited 2-at-a-time" offering, and because they have a considerable library (although they don't carry "The Road Warrior" - what's up with that?), so when I started noticing that my movies weren't coming in as regularly as before I became a little *suspicious*.
Netflix engages in throttling, which basically means that if you rent a lot of movies they'll constrict your shipment of rentals in your queue. They do this because heavy renters eat away at their bottom line. Sorry Netflix, don't make such an attractive offer to your customer and then poison the relationship with introducing a bottleneck to your product. It's not exactly making us a stronger, better, and healthier couple. Aren't you committed to us? [note: the altered graphic above contains improper use of the word "your", as it's meant to be the contraction "you're" - yes, I am a grammar nazi].

Yet, all is not lost thanks to the awesome power of the Internet community. An individual conducted an informal study comparing Netflix and Blockbuster. It looks like Blockbuster won across the board. However, if you don't want to make the switch to another provider, and you find yourself being throttled with Netflix, try crossing out the address and barcode on the envelope. Long story short, this causes the envelope to be delivered to the actual nearest Netflix facility instead of rerouting it to another inventory drop point.
I tried this yesterday: shipped two movies back on Wednesday, and Netflix notified receipt today. I also received notification that my next two movies are shipping today. Everything's coming up Milhouse.

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