Has anyone here suffered from NetFlix throttling?

[Poiuyt]

They are taking longer and longer to acknowledge receipt of returned DVDs and longer and longer to ship them (and longer in transit too). I know they punish their high volume users this way. I'm wondering if it would help to discontinue my membership and then rejoin a couple of weeks later.

BTW, the reason I like NetFlix is because of their inventory. I rarely rent recent big releases, rather more obscure discs that are hard to find. Going to the local video store would not be a good solution for me.

[Deja Q]

1. I had. Got so angry I canceled my account.

If I want to watch an old show and it's not on TV, I'll buy the DVD release. One tv show season set per month. Same cost in the end...

[WFF]

2. I cancelled my account too

It would be interesting to see if canceling and then resubscribing would work

[LostinVA]

15. It does

[dropkickpa]

3. Never had a problem

and I am definitely a high volume customer (7 at-a-time with 1-2 full turnovers a week). The only problems I've had are directly attributable to the world's worst mailman AKA MINE (doesn't come to the house everyday, preferring to "save up" stuff, sometimes forgets to take stuff when he does come up to the house, etc etc). I cancelled once, but that was just to change the billing date to the beginning of the month instead of the end.

[Courtesy Flush]

4. The rumor mill says

that they're toying with the idea of streaming movies. That would be awesome.

[bridgit]

5. nope, but we live within a couple miles of their warehouse hub so...

:shrug:

[KenHodson]

6. I don't know where you live, but hasn't 3/4's

of the entire country been in some state of blizzard condition the last few weeks?

[jobycom]

7. Might not be throttling...

They have several distribution warehouses, but if you are ordering a lot of obscure discs, you might be hitting their limits. They have fewer copies of smaller and/or older releases, and not all warehouses may have the copy you want. So if you are, say, in Austin, and order a smaller release, they may have to ship it from Oregon, thus taking longer. If they were simply out of stock at that moment, they'd skip over your first request to the one they had in stock. But if they have it in stock at a distant warehouse, they will send yo that instead of skipping to the more quick ship.

I know throttling is part of their game, and I'm not saying that's not happening, but back when I had Netflix it often took longer for an obscure title to reach me than for a big release. I got overnight turnaround on big titles, but it took several days on smaller ones.

As for the returns, I'm not sure, but maybe they are being routed back to the original warehouse instead of the local one. Not sure on that.

[China_cat]

12. Lately we've been getting a notice when a movie is coming

from someplace other than our closest hub.

[HoneyBee]

8. Yeah... the "honeymoon" was awesome, but they are slowing down

In one case, I sent 3 movies back on the same day - dopped in same mailbox. They acknowledged receipt: 4 days later, 5 days later and TEN days later?!?? WTF?

[L A Woman]

9. Yep - It has nothing to do with weather or mail carriers

...or how close you live to the distribution center. It's their common practice - the more frequently you rent, the longer they suddenly take to acknowledge receipt of your movies. It's frustrating, to be sure. I cancel and restart my account occasionally and it helps a little. Unfortunately, Blockbuster is even worse.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11262292/

[HoneyBee]

10. The first 2 weeks... I was SHOCKED at how quickly they arrived!!

I guess that's their "schtick". But, I am not sure how they identify the new customers from the old when processing disks in. Weird.

[China_cat]

11. Don't quit. We experienced the same thing but decided to

just let it go. The throttling lasted about 6 weeks and now we're back to really fast service. (I returned 3 movies Monday and got 3 in the mail today, for instance.) It really felt like some kind of dumb test, but I guess we passed.

[LeftyMom]

13. I was.

Eventually I canceled my account when they started losing movies I'd sent back as well.

[LostinVA]

14. Yup

And, I've done what you were saying: I quit for about a month, then go back. It's better for a little while. Also, putting about 300 movies in your queue helps a little.

[underpants]

16. Never had a problem

they get us the next movie the next day.