[...] Original post by Melanie [...]

By Get out and Go! » Why girls shouldn’t rent video games on 03.29.07 7:53 pm

I don’t rent games, I buy them instead. Cause if you rent them, chances are they’re scratched up or damaged before you even try them. Where as, if you buy them brand new, then they don’t have any problems and work perfect. Something to consider.

Maybe you could visit my Gaming Community, The Video
Game Empire, and further voice this out. Our members might be able to help
you voice this.

By Duke Nukem on 03.30.07 6:47 am

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By Vamshi on 03.30.07 7:44 am

I definitely like to buy games if I know I’ll play them again. Of course, renting’s a lot cheaper than buying if I’m not sure I’ll like the game.

By Melanie on 03.30.07 11:19 pm

The protection is for YOU, not the game. The 25 cents is for each thing you rent as a kind of insurance in case it is damaged beyond repair while in your possession. More from Consumerist:

http://consumerist.com/consumer/hollywood-video/hollywood-video-dodges-taxes-on-your-dvd-dime-188897.php

By Atwater Village Newbie on 04.03.07 4:54 pm

And here’s a much better perspective on it…

By Atwater Village Newbie on 04.03.07 5:00 pm

Wow, thanks for the links. I had no idea this was such a shady thing! I’m starting to rethink renting from Hollywood Video now.

By Melanie on 04.05.07 11:24 am

On a similar subject, my biggest peeve is having to pay the post office for insurance — we are paying them in case THEY lose or damage our mail. So where is the motivation for them to handle packages carefully? At least with Hollywood Video, we are paying in case WE damage the item.

By Mom on 04.05.07 1:59 pm

Without visiting any of the links above, my theory is that physical rental stores are clawing for $$ before they’re eventually ruined by the netflix’s and gamefly’s of the cyber world.

Melanie, I’m sending you a paypal for 25 cents for insurance in case I damaged your blog with broken links.

By Kolby on 04.06.07 1:14 am

Hee hee… Thanks, Kolby!

By Melanie on 04.09.07 9:11 pm

OK, here’s another take. Off topic to some extent, but I am fascinated that no one seems to notice this…

I’ve been a netflix customer for 5 years. Lately, I’ve found that (especially older titles) movies are increasing in their ratio of damaged to playable. It used to be that maybe once per month I’d get a damaged dvd, but now it’s up to about 3. Please follow…

I am on the “two at a time” plan. When I report my movie as damaged, I don’t get that movie replaced in addition to the “two at a time”, rather it replaces the next movie in my queue. So, those three movies per month are three LESS movies I get to watch in that given month.

Here’s a situational example. Let’s say the top 4 movies in my netflix queue are Married With Children - Season 5. I receive dvd’s #1 and #2 on Monday. I watch #1 on Monday and return it Tuesday. On Tuesday I find out that dvd #2 is damaged half way through. I report it immediately to Netflix. They send out the replacement on Wednesday as per their policy. The also send out my next movie in my queue, which is Married With Children DVD #3. So (let’s say) Thursday I receive DVD #2 and DVD #3 when I should actually be (if the DVD wasn’t damaged) getting DVD’s #3 and #4.

Sounds petty doesn’t it? Not when it happens anywhere from 3-6 times per month. Multiply that by how many customers Netflix has that reports a damaged DVD and I bet that the figue would be quite large.

So in essence, I am getting less but paying the same per month due to no fault of my own (on top of the fact that how irritated I am to have to wait several days to finish watching a movie in the first place).

I understand that it’s a risk I take by agreeing to rent movies through the mail… but think about how much money Netflix saves by not sending out the damaged dvd, separate from the “limit” of how many movies you can have out at a time. Over the course of a year, that’s a lot of money we’re paying over what we should.

Here’s the simple solution in a perfect world. Regardless of how many movies you can have out at a time… if you receive a damaged dvd, it should be replaced as soon as possible and you will receive the next movies in your queue as if the “damaged” dvd never happened (instead of waiting for the same movie “again”). Or, they could charge you less at the end of the month because for every damaged dvd you received over that month, you received one less movie than you should have.

It’s almost criminal based on how many customers Netflix has and having no real competition that they can get away with this. Add up the postage and the fact that you are still paying the same amount each month and that’s a lot of money for Netflix to keep for themselves.

If it hit them in the pocket book… maybe they’d have more incentive to be sure that damaged dvd’s are a minimal problem. Maybe they’d invent some kind of technology that automatically loads returned dvd’s and scans them for errors before they go back out into circulation.

It’s to the point now, that when I receive a damaged dvd, that I don’t even report it. Manny times they have to send the title from a further location and it can take up to a week or so for delivery and because it takes the place of one of the dvd’s you can have out at a time, it’s not froogle to report it at all.

Why am I the only one (and I’ve searched google pretty good) that seems to see the “problem” with this policy?

As long as you’re paying a “set amount” per month and you receive a defective item due to no fault of your own, it should come off of your bill or the replacement should not count against the limit of how many you can have out at a time.

—————————————

If there are any attorney’s out there that want to start a class action loss-suit, here’s a really easy one. (referring to my post above) Please advertise this issue and you’d have hundreds of thousands of examples and quite a large amount of money to collect for Netflix charging for items (or items per month) not received, essentially.

If the owner of the site wants to use my email as a contact, I hereby give permission to do so if any attorneys want to hear more about this.

Yeah, I’m starting a campaign, dammit.

Geesh.

By Richard on 10.21.08 3:20 am