Netflix Woes Mean a Gap In Shipments

Loopback writes "It appears that I'm not the only one waiting for my NetFlix movies. It seems they are being bitten in the rear by their home-grown proprietary inventory management system. 'Netflix has been facing shipping delays and outages in its distribution centers for the last two days and is fumbling to find a fix. The tab is roughly $1.8 million to $3.6 million in revenue a day.'"

DVDs arrived, but no notice

I shipped back two DVDs on Tuesday then got the notice they were received on Wednesday. Today (Thursday) I got the notice from Netflix that shipments might be delayed, but I also received two DVDs in the mail (the correct DVDs that were next in my queue). What I did not get was the normal notice from Netflix that they had shipped me anything.

Good timing

Actually this is the best time to have this problem. I haven't even watched the movies I have at home due to the Olympics.

Re:Good timing

I haven't even watched the movies I have at home due to the Olympics.

Yeah, those 13 year old gymnasts are really hot.

I don't see a problem

Their inventory seems fine to me - I got Roadhouse, Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot, and Battlefield Earth right on time.

Bravo for their honest, upfront disclosure

I first learned about this an hour ago. I read a good review of Trumbo and logged on to added it to my Saved list... I hit this great big conspicuous notice saying "IMPORTANT: Your DVD Shipments Have Likely Been Delayed."

My first thought was that it was a sales pitch to upsell me to a higher-tiered plan, but no, it was a straightforward notice and apology.

I for one really appreciate this approach. Most companies' SOP would be to say nothing... wait for you to call.. make an individual apology to you without happening to mention that it was affecting thousands of others... and hope you don't read newspapers or Slashdot.

We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed

Dear xxxxxxxx,

Our shipping system is unexpectedly down. We received a DVD back from you and should have shipped you a DVD, but we likely have not. Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible, and we will keep you posted on the status of your DVD shipments.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. If your DVD shipment is delayed, we will be issuing a credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. The credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement.

Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.

-The Netflix Team

Re:We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed

Sorry to disappoint you, but it's a grid on a whiteboard.

A great big whiteboard.

With Expo markers - the good kind, that smell.

Re:Fist Prose

Most Netflix users are mindless fat slobs who wouldn't notice a few days of delay.

Hey, some of us aren't fat!

Re:Fist Prose

I'll admit fat slob, but not mindless.

Re:Fist Prose

FTFA:

Members who should have been shipped a DVD today will automatically receive a credit to their accounts, which we will communicate in personal emails.

RTFA.

On a related note, I think it's fantastic that a company decided to 'do the right thing' though they were not obligated to do so. Pre-emptively issuing credits to subscribers whose shipments were delayed? Awesome for the customers, and a nice CR move by Netflix. There are many companies out there who would not take the same stance.

This is in addition to Netflix not getting rid of multiple profiles per account, after a vocal minority of subscribers complained.

Is it really possible that Netflix is a company that actually understands that making their customers happy and loyal is a good business strategy? I wasn't sure there were many of those around anymore.

Re:Fist Prose

They're even cooler than just that.

I've been using them a long time with the 3 disk unlimited plan. One day my girl broke a dvd. Her response: "Let's just mark it as never arrived."

Being all into personal accountability and shit I told her "no, we'll say we broke it and pay for it. We did in fact break it."

Their response: "Do you want us to send a replacement?"

No charge for disk. Nothing. I guess if you don't abuse the shit they overlook the occasional accident.

Re:Fist Prose

We've also had a few disks disappear in the mail, they either never got to us or they never arrived at Netflix after we definitely posted them. It was never a problem, you just mark the disk as missing and that's it. One or two of them actually re-appeared later, not sure if they were found in the back of a truck or if Netflix lost them. I guess they'll cancel your account if you "lose" a disk per month, but they deal well with the occasional problem.

Re:Fist Prose

One or two of them actually re-appeared later, not sure if they were found in the back of a truck or if Netflix lost them.

There have been a couple instances now where postal workers were investigated and found to have stolen hundreds of random DVDs from their routes. I also heard of one instance where kids were going through the mailboxes in a neighborhood. Since these incidents are detected, I suspect NetFlix and the post office share data about who loses DVDs and what postal worker's route they are on.

Re:Fist Prose

IIRC, after you've lost a few, they start charging you for each one you "lose", but refund you if you find 'em and send 'em back later.

Re:Fist Prose

Living in Texas, I have more than a few discs that are full of bullet holes, I assume due to the drunk-sober cycles. And also, many movies just deserve it.

It has been like that since the beginning of time.

Re:Fist Prose

Netflix has the biggest volunteer distributed backup system on the planet. If they were smart they could have planned for this outage and had their customers supply backup disks to other customers who were not getting shipments on time.

Re:Fist Prose

Actually, how long before they offer a discount if you opt into a "direct handoff" network? When you return a movie, instead of shipping it back to netflix, you print out a label for the next member and slap it on the mailer.

Sure, there's a ton of problems, but it could cut their overhead by up to 60%: they spend half as much on postage and the disks are in flight for one day instead of two each transaction. The savings aren't so much in postage as in inventory reduction: for a popular movie that stays out two days at a time, you cut the postal overhead from 50% to 33%.

Re:Fist Prose

And how are they going to guarantee that I'm not going to send the wrong movie (intentionally or not)?

This kind of option could turn out really bad...

Can you imagine if a sick bastard rents Madagascar 2 and sends pron instead of a kid's movie?

Re:How?

They've promised to credit user accounts for the interruption in service.

rj

Re:How?

Redundant?? Really? Check some timestamps, you foolish mod.

According to the moderator's guidelines, a question asked that is answered by TFA deserves to be modded redundant. So sayeth /. !!!

Re:Not impressed by my trial.

Redbox is a really good service. Recently We've canceled out netflix and gone to useing redbox exclusivly...HOWEVER we did this for one main reasons. - We were'nt returning movies to netflx fast enough to make it worthwhile...we'd get the movie and delay watching it until at least the weekened...sometimes the next. If you turn over your movies fast enough netflix is still a better deal. Redbox is nice if all your looking to see is fairly new releases...but you can't beat netflix when it comes to talking with someone and reliseing they've never seen $clasiccult_movie , you log in put it on your list and soon you be edjumacating them on some fine point of movie history they have missed out on. Also the ability to rent series and have them send you the next episode disks is kinda nice. My wife had always wanted to watch the show farscape, but neither of us had really follwed it. for the next two monthes or so we had netflix send them all to us and we watched it from begining to end. -You can't do that with redbox.

Re:Not impressed by my trial.

Make a separate queue for the kids then you can put a restriction on it for G/PG -- I've got that set up for mine and it works like a champ. They can only see and rent G/PG movies (and they get to control their list themselves....of course, I can view their queue as well at any time and make edits :)

Re:Not impressed by my trial.

If I were you, I'd be disappointed in my post office...my Netflix rental history shows 52 DVDs in the last 90 days.

If I drop a disk in the mail on Monday, it goes into "Returned" status on Tuesday, or if I use a box at the post office before about 10 AM, it goes to Returned the same day, thanks to their special handling contract with the USPS. The next disk arrives within two days of that, often the next day. Weekends are the exception: they apparently do processing only Monday-Friday.

In the last couple of years I've received no more than two unplayable disks, not counting one that arrived broken.

rj

Re:Netflix sucks if you use linux

how do you watch movies live?, aren't movies kinda, you know, taped?

Re:that's definitely the problem

No, the problem is that outside of their company, no one has any idea of how the thing works. They can't bring in a consultant, and there isn't anyone to turn to for advice. Even if they hired a small team of talented professionals to help them, that team would still need plenty of time to get up to speed on the whole system.