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Shipped!

Seeing my first DVD shipped emails at: 9:44am-10.07a Monday gave me hope for a Tuesday delivery. I’d picked up some microwave popcorn and was planning a movie night with two bad B-quality films (which I’m embarrassed to name here).

Tuesday Mail Came

I heard the mailman outside and at the next break point in my work, walked out to check the mailbox. There was a package … does Netflix send a welcome kit ? Plus the normal Tuesday junk mail offers from AT&T and Comcast. Dumped POTS phone service in 2004 and dumped CATV in 2011/12 for OTA TV. At least there weren’t any bills.

The package was vacuum packed and turned out to be something not expected for another week. My expectations for that package was next Monday, so THAT company vastly exceeded my expectations, which is a good thing.

Sadly, Netflix and the USPS have not.

Research About Netflix and USPS Shipping

Since this was my very first shipment, it would not make sense to throttle my deliveries, at least not yet. I’ve read that netflix appears to be slowing down delivery for certain users, even if they are on the 5+ disc at a time plans.

Plus occasionally people report Netflix as misplacing a disc inside their warehouse – can’t say I don’t understand that. Even if only 10k discs go through each distribution center daily, that is huge numbers to be tracked with perfection. The same applies to the USPS – those guys are amazing considering how little mail ever gets lost.

According to this announcement the USPS changed their 1st class delivery to end next day deliveries for single pieces, even if it was possible, as a way to save money. Before the change, 1st class was delivered, on average, in 1.8 days. After the change, that becomes 2.1 days. For letters and bills, that doesn’t matter. As NF customers, we’re caught up in this decision and it makes the shipping time for most of us either 50% (from 1 to 2 days) or 33% (from 2 to 3 days) slower in each direction!

I think NF isn’t upset by this change either. It will reduce their monthly shipping costs by, let me do a little math, 20-30% without altering their prices at all or taking the blame. What business wouldn’t want that?

With the new USPS slowdown

If shipping takes 2 days and 1 day for processing, that means 1 set of requested DVDs per week. 2 days out, 1 day to watch, 2 days back and 1 day to process. That’s 6 days – thanks to the USPS working 6 days and NF working 5.

Of course, this assumes discs aren’t shipped from other distribution centers, aren’t lost and we aren’t busy the evening they arrive with other plans. The last one isn’t an issue – we have no lives on weeknights.

The lack in predictability is the real issue. It doesn’t matter that new releases take a long time to get. That can be handled by Redbox or Amazon Streaming.

Deep Catalog

Regardless of what happens, I’ll probably keep NF at a 1 disc level to access their deep catalog of movies. I’d hoped to get greater value with a 3 or 4 disc plan for the house, but with shipping taking so much longer, the value isn’t the same and other entertainment will make up the difference.

Wanted to Love Netflix

I really wanted to love Netflix and I still might. That is yet to be seen. We will keep track of shipping and the value proposition for the service. Clearly, having discs delivered to the house does make up for having to go around the corner and visit a redbox or pay $8+ for a new release from amazon streaming.

Here’s a breakdown of which DVD/Bluray NF plans make the most sense. The assumption that 9 discs can be rented in a month seems crazy based on the new shipping time frames.

First Cycle Results

Shipped 3/2 10am              Arrived 3/4 pm
Returned 3/5 9am (Local PO)   Arrived 3/6 5am
Returned 3/5 pm (house)       Arrived 3/6 5am

2 days to get discs. 1 day to return them from either my house mailbox or the local post office. Now we just need to see if NF will ship discs on the same day they were returned.

Seems that many NF customers have seen their DVD rate effectively drop by 50%. – guess I picked the wrong year to sign up with NF.

2nd Cycle Results

Friday the next 3 DVDs showed as shipped on the NF website. I held my breath hoping for a Saturday delivery that never came. Monday, they all arrived.

Did TV episodes this time which will slow down the return. Put 1 disc in the mailbox today after watching the 4 episodes last evening, NF should see it tomorrow at 5am (if history holds) and ship the next disc in my list. Seems the ideal situation is to have discs arrive on Fri or Sat (shipped Thurs) and returned Monday to allow plenty of time to watch. The mid-week disc turn-around just doesn’t work with that timetable.

It seems strange that discs shipped out from NF take 2-3 days, but discs return overnight. Ah – the magic of the USPS.

3rd Cycle

This was just strange. 2 discs shipped from the same mailbox back to NF and 1 got there overnight – the other was lost for 5 days. I hoped to have 2 discs back for the weekend and ended up with ZERO again.

Looks like 1 cycle per week is all that will be possible. That probably isn’t cost effective to continue with this service.

4th Cycle

All the returned discs caught up this cycle. 3 discs shipped out Monday AND surprise arrived on Tues! Then another disc was shipped on Tue and arrived Wed? That’s 4 discs with 1 day shipping FROM NF?!!! This could be worth while. Currently watching some early 2000s TV shows. They are as bad as I remember, but at least they are complete and without commercials.
Appears a disc I reported missing last week showed up back at NF on Sunday. Sunday? Thought they didn’t work on Sunday?

Losing Track

Keeping track of every disc probably isn’t very useful, until it is because a disc is lost. That’s the only reason I bother.

2016 Update

Netflix has been working relatively well all this time. 1-day turn-around. I’ve gotten about 3 disks that were too damaged to play and 3 disks that I’ve returned never arrived back at Netflix. I’m at a loss for why this happened. Seems to be only Mondays where the disks are lost, but they’ve been lost from my house mailbox, the local post office and from a postal box near a place I hang out weekly. The common issue is that it is

• always a single disk, never 2 (sometimes I put 2 into 1 mailer)
• always on Monday mailings.
  I can only guess that the USPS systems don’t like NF disks and that on Mondays, perhaps the workers who clear any jams are just a little busy with all the other Monday workload?
  Zero disks have been lost on their way to me, just returned disks disappear for some reason. I dunno. Is 3 disks in a year more than normal? Seems high to me, but I’ve only had snail-mail lost 3 times in my life – over 40+ yrs. Heck, even mail from overseas that I thought was lost eventually arrived 2-3 months after it was expected.

At this point, I’ve worked through pretty much all the DVDs I’m interested in viewing. Added all of Dexter to the list last week, but that really is about all that’s left. By June, I’ll probably put this subscription on-hold until sometime in the fall to catch up on new movies that have come out.

What have you seen?