Not long after Christopher Reeve died, I wanted to watch the original Superman movie. I stopped at Blockbuster a couple of times. It was checked out both times and the third time I asked about it. Turns out, Blockbuster had changed policies so that if you wanted a movie you just keep it at home long enough and eventually they charge you for it. It was on the shelf as though it were just checked out for a couple of days, but it might be like that for a month because Blockbuster doesn't have data on whether it was coming back or not. I told the clerk that was really frustrating. I didn't like wasting my time guessing when (or if) a movie would be available. Being some teenage kid, he shrugged and basically blew it off. I've never been back.
My wife and I had used Netflix some time before this and had suspended our account because we ran out of movies we wanted to watch. Aside from some issues with scratched discs, we loved the service. It was convenient and we saw a lot of great movies at a fair price. We just needed to take a break for a bit.
After our Blockbuster experience, we resumed our subscription. That was almost 4 years ago. Right now I'm watching a BattleStar Galactica Season 4 disc I got from Netflix. The service has only gotten better:
- faster turnaround
- huge selection
- Watch Instantly*
- fewer scratched discs
Each experience can make or break a person's status as your customer, so don't blow it.
* Of course, I practically never used this until it got Mac support and would be happier yet if it also worked on Linux like Hulu and all the other Flash based video sites out there, but Watch Instantly is just gravy because I'm happy with the mail based DVD delivery.
* Of course, I practically never used this until it got Mac support and would be happier yet if it also worked on Linux like Hulu and all the other Flash based video sites out there, but Watch Instantly is just gravy because I'm happy with the mail based DVD delivery.
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