Friday, February 23, 2007
Blockbuster Total Access
Posted by Chris Gohlke in "ARTICLE" @ 06:00 AM
A few years back, Blockbuster followed on the success of Netflix with their own DVD rental-by-mail service. The original service did not leverage the value of Blockbuster’s numerous bricks and mortar locations. Blockbuster upped the ante and introduced Blockbuster Total Access in the later part of 2006.
"BLOCKBUSTER Total Access gives online customers the option of returning their DVDs through the mail or exchanging them at a participating BLOCKBUSTER store for free in-store movie rentals. For each online rental exchanged in the store, customers can receive a free in-store movie rental, essentially allowing them to double the number of movies they can access each month. BLOCKBUSTER Total Access allows subscribers to generally get their online movie(s) a day faster than if they had dropped the return movies in the mail, because when subscribers return their online rentals to a participating BLOCKBUSTER store in their return envelope, the store check-in automatically initiates the process of shipping the next available movie(s) in the subscriber's rental queue."
This sounds like a pretty good deal. So, after the break we will take a look to see if Blockbuster can live up to the promise of Total Access.
I’ve been a Blockbuster user since mid-2005. For this review, Blockbuster set me up with a separate account to test their services without impacting my normal rental pattern.
Registering for the service and finding movies is pretty simple. They say that they currently have over 65,000 movies and for the most part, I’ve been able to find most of the movies I’ve looked for. There have been a few instances of movies I could not find (“Red Sonja” and “How I Got Into College” come to mind). Also, while renting the Andromeda TV series, I noted that while they had all of the seasons, there were some disks missing from the latter seasons. I’m guessing that these disks were either damaged or lost and have not been replaced by Blockbuster. I did find this kind of frustrating since I had watched through a good part of the series and then had to skip some episodes that were part of a story arc.
With any rental service, delivery time is a big concern, so I thought I would put the service to a speed test to see how many movies a person could get in a one month period. All movies were returned directly to a Blockbuster store. Below is the queue I set up and my results.
The telling numbers are the average mail time (3.12 days) and the average turnaround time (2.59 days). Movies had to travel nearly 250 miles to reach me, so while next day service would be ideal, I can understand that they take a bit longer, but averaging over 3 days seems a bit excessive. Additionally, there seems to be no reason why the turnaround time is so long. It appears that new movies were often not shipped until they received the old movie back to their shipping center rather than when I returned it to the local store. Based on my experience using the service, it appears no quicker to return the movies to the store compared to mailing them back. That said, you get a free in-store rental for each movie returned to the store, so it does make the wait more bearable. I also noticed that movies were not necessarily shipped in the order they fell in my queue, even though they showed as available. I’ve also observed these same issues during my normal usage of the service.
All disks received during my test were in good condition, but in the past, I have received a handful of disks that were either scratched or broken. Also, I’d be making better use of the free game coupons if my store had a better selection of games that I was interested in. My store only has Ice Age and Far Cry for the Wii.
While I don’t think they quite live up to their promises, I think Blockbuster provides an excellent value. For $17.99 I could have watched 34 movies during my test. This is a fantastic deal, in fact, when I signed up for Blockbuster, I cancelled all my Comcast movie channels and ended up saving over $20 per month. You can sign up for Blockbuster Total access at www.blockbuster.com.
Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.
"BLOCKBUSTER Total Access gives online customers the option of returning their DVDs through the mail or exchanging them at a participating BLOCKBUSTER store for free in-store movie rentals. For each online rental exchanged in the store, customers can receive a free in-store movie rental, essentially allowing them to double the number of movies they can access each month. BLOCKBUSTER Total Access allows subscribers to generally get their online movie(s) a day faster than if they had dropped the return movies in the mail, because when subscribers return their online rentals to a participating BLOCKBUSTER store in their return envelope, the store check-in automatically initiates the process of shipping the next available movie(s) in the subscriber's rental queue."
This sounds like a pretty good deal. So, after the break we will take a look to see if Blockbuster can live up to the promise of Total Access.
I’ve been a Blockbuster user since mid-2005. For this review, Blockbuster set me up with a separate account to test their services without impacting my normal rental pattern.
Registering for the service and finding movies is pretty simple. They say that they currently have over 65,000 movies and for the most part, I’ve been able to find most of the movies I’ve looked for. There have been a few instances of movies I could not find (“Red Sonja” and “How I Got Into College” come to mind). Also, while renting the Andromeda TV series, I noted that while they had all of the seasons, there were some disks missing from the latter seasons. I’m guessing that these disks were either damaged or lost and have not been replaced by Blockbuster. I did find this kind of frustrating since I had watched through a good part of the series and then had to skip some episodes that were part of a story arc.
With any rental service, delivery time is a big concern, so I thought I would put the service to a speed test to see how many movies a person could get in a one month period. All movies were returned directly to a Blockbuster store. Below is the queue I set up and my results.
The telling numbers are the average mail time (3.12 days) and the average turnaround time (2.59 days). Movies had to travel nearly 250 miles to reach me, so while next day service would be ideal, I can understand that they take a bit longer, but averaging over 3 days seems a bit excessive. Additionally, there seems to be no reason why the turnaround time is so long. It appears that new movies were often not shipped until they received the old movie back to their shipping center rather than when I returned it to the local store. Based on my experience using the service, it appears no quicker to return the movies to the store compared to mailing them back. That said, you get a free in-store rental for each movie returned to the store, so it does make the wait more bearable. I also noticed that movies were not necessarily shipped in the order they fell in my queue, even though they showed as available. I’ve also observed these same issues during my normal usage of the service.
All disks received during my test were in good condition, but in the past, I have received a handful of disks that were either scratched or broken. Also, I’d be making better use of the free game coupons if my store had a better selection of games that I was interested in. My store only has Ice Age and Far Cry for the Wii.
While I don’t think they quite live up to their promises, I think Blockbuster provides an excellent value. For $17.99 I could have watched 34 movies during my test. This is a fantastic deal, in fact, when I signed up for Blockbuster, I cancelled all my Comcast movie channels and ended up saving over $20 per month. You can sign up for Blockbuster Total access at www.blockbuster.com.
Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.
