Blockbuster Deals for Existing Dish Customers

[old corps]

Another BB positive, they do games too. Also for those who don't rent alot switch to the $5.99 plan after the free trial.

And they don't charge extra for Bluray. My Netflix bill with 2 discs @ a time with Bluray and streaming will go from $17.99 @ month to $23.99 @ month! That's more than a 33% increase. CRAZY! If I could get BB for 3 months free I'd have to jump ship. The only thing holding me back is my son streams NF on my account and without renting 2 discs @ a time from them you can only have one stream @ a time. Of course BB will probably be raising their rates shortly as well.

Ed

Correction: The new monthly charge will be $22.98. Still WAY too much.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

For existing customers... who knows... Santa might bring you a free 3 month Blockbuster subscription for Christmas.

Anything is possible!

 

[Ilya]

Does BB charge extra for Blu-ray?

 

[old corps]

Does BB charge extra for Blu-ray?

NO!

Ed

 

[jayiw]

Games is a huge plus. It's a great way to try out games before buying. I think I am going to go with the 3 month Dish/BB deal and keep NF for a month to make sure I like BB before dumping NF.

 

[Ghpr13]

Games is a huge plus. It's a great way to try out games before buying. I think I am going to go with the 3 month Dish/BB deal and keep NF for a month to make sure I like BB before dumping NF.

I'm thinking the same.
Ghpr13

 

[sfollenius]

The only weird thing I have noticed about BB, is the queue. Say you have a title at home and say you have Halloween in the Number one Slot. You decide you don't want that now but you want Christmas Vacation and put CV in the #1 slot. Mail your current title back, they will still mail me whatever "used" to be in the #1 slot (Halloween). I don't know the timing for this but it's odd to me, whatever is in the #1 slot when they receive you old title is what should be mailed. I do have made this change over 24 hours in advance of them receiving the old title and it still happens!

 

[Ghpr13]

The one question I have is with BB, if you have a 2 disc or greater subscription, and you send back only one disc after watching it, will they send out another disc, or do both have to be returned first?
Ghpr13

 

[old corps]

The one question I have is with BB, if you have a 2 disc or greater subscription, and you send back only one disc after watching it, will they send out another disc, or do both have to be returned first?
Ghpr13

I'm sure they're the same as NF in this regard. Send back one and they send out another.

Ed

 

[Derwin0]

Thank you for checking. I'll go with the Netflix offer of 30 days free and then $9.99.

The math looks like this for the first 12 months like you said:
Netflix Plan $9.99 x 11 months (1 free month) = $109.89
Dish Plan $11.99 x 9 months (3 free months) = $107.91

You break even in month 13 and from then on you have $2.00 per month savings.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well.

 

[Coach Knight]

Well, according to the local Blockbuster store, BB ships you the next movie in your queue as soon as they scan the one you turn in at a local store if you don't trade it, or when you turn in your exchanged disc. For my scenario this works great.

Normally we watch our DVD (we have the streaming plus one DVD) on the weekend. During the week we watch some streaming TV series. I will keep Netflix streaming and that part won't change. The advantage to me, with three Blockbusters within a few miles of my home, is that over the weekend if we watch our DVD (or now Blu Ray, YAY) we can turn it in at a local store and watch another that same weekend. This doubles the number of movies we can watch, that we really WANT to watch...not the ones on streaming we have to settle for because newer content isn't on streaming.

Same price as Netflix BR plan...$9.99...but you get the free in store exchanges (unlimited)...and no 28 day release window. Sounds like a no-brainer. I still consider Netflix to be a great value, but they are no longer a significantly better value than the competition as they once were. The playing field is leveled, or in some cases, perhaps tilted in favor of the competition now.

I will say I think the NF website (despite the recent streaming page change, which I hate) is much better than the BB one. Hopefully they will be able to update the BB website with all the new customers they will win from NF.

 

[Laddyboy]

A few years ago, the BBO service was tremendous. Not only did they allow you to trade a mailed disk for an in-store disk, they also shipped a new one from the queue. This lasted for a year or so and then they stopped shipping from the queue when you traded a mailed disk for an in-store one. Only after returning the in-store disk did they then ship another from the queue. This was still a pretty good deal afaiwc. Then they started delaying shipments. In the beginning I was serviced from St. Louis 120 miles away and disk came to and from that shipping center in 1-2 days. Then it started taking a week to 10 days for a disk turnaround. Whether they let go a bunch of people in the distro center, stopped picking up their mail daily, or were intentionally throttling to save money is anyone's guess. Needless to say I gave up after retrying them last year. I hope service has improved and hope someone that takes the deal relates his/her experiences. They also used to give customers coupons when there were unexplained delays in shipping. They stopped doing that with me as it became a weekly endeavor. I'll also add that they had opened a closer mail pickup to me by that time which should sped turnaround up, but actually extended it. I've never had problems getting disks from Netflix in a day even when they ship from centers 200 miles away (Chicago). I was averaging about 5 disks every two weeks on a 3-out plan so I wasn't a heavy user and still had problems.

 

[handiman876]

The delivery system may be an issue. I signed up for a Blockbuster account yesterday and put a group of movies on the list. I received an e-mail today telling me to expect the movie on Tuesday. I sent a Netflix movie back today. I may not need to continue my 30 day trial if I receive a replacement before the Blockbuster movie shows up.

 

[Coach Knight]

The delivery system may be an issue. I signed up for a Blockbuster account yesterday and put a group of movies on the list. I received an e-mail today telling me to expect the movie on Tuesday. I sent a Netflix movie back today. I may not need to continue my 30 day trial if I receive a replacement before the Blockbuster movie shows up.

I was also worried about the delivery time. I signed up for BB on Thursday night. Friday morning got the email that a BluRay was shipping and to expect Monday. This morning (Saturday) the disc arrives in the mail.

Same turn time as NetFlix for me (one day shipping). We'll see how it goes, but for this weekend I will get two BluRay (with in store exchange), whereas with NetFlix I will only have the one DVD. If turn times remain the same I will be extremely satisfied.

 

[Ghpr13]

The delivery system may be an issue. I signed up for a Blockbuster account yesterday and put a group of movies on the list. I received an e-mail today telling me to expect the movie on Tuesday. I sent a Netflix movie back today. I may not need to continue my 30 day trial if I receive a replacement before the Blockbuster movie shows up.

Yeah, this is what I worry about too. I remember back quite a few years ago, when Netflix was just really starting to get noticed. I had gotten a Toshiba DVD player and it had a free 30 trial for Netflix. I joined up, but in the 30 days I was only able to get 3 movies because of the long turn around time Netflix had, so I terminated after the 30 days. Now, like I said, Netflix was still cutting it's teeth, way before streaming and Blu-Rays. Now my turn around time is 2 to 3 days which I have loved.
Ghpr13

 

[bela_blasko2006]

With the Neflix increase I think Dish should look into starting a Blockbuster streaming service on their new VIP receivers. Netflix has a foothold on streaming with all the devices they have deals with but dish has what, 13 million homes who could buy the service? If they offered it at a nice price they could get some more customers away from Direct. More non premium HD and now Blockbuster streaming. Dish are you listening?

 

[satjay]

With the Neflix increase I think Dish should look into starting a Blockbuster streaming service on their new VIP receivers. Netflix has a foothold on streaming with all the devices they have deals with but dish has what, 13 million homes who could buy the service? If they offered it at a nice price they could get some more customers away from Direct. More non premium HD and now Blockbuster streaming. Dish are you listening?

I had a similar comment and Scott was saying that might be part of the future

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys!!

 

[Coach Knight]

Well, this is one of those rare lazy weekends where we have no plans so we watched the disc we received this afternoon, took it up to the local store about 5 minutes away, exchanged it for another new release not yet available on NetFlix and by the time I got to my car I had an email that showed the confirmation of the exchange on my account. According to the store employees, when I turn this exchanged disc back in, BlockBuster will ship the next movie in my queue without waiting for the other one to make it back to them.

Just thought I'd update my experience for anyone who is considering the change.

 

[smjbh5]

Do all customers qualify for the 3 free months? If so, do we have to take advantage of this right now? Nf wont start charging for the dvd only plan until 9/1. Id want to switch to bb on that date. Same question on the $9.99 bb/nf plan. Can I wait?

 

[Coach Knight]

Do all customers qualify for the 3 free months? If so, do we have to take advantage of this right now? Nf wont start charging for the dvd only plan until 9/1. Id want to switch to bb on that date. Same question on the $9.99 bb/nf plan. Can I wait?

The Blockbuster Netflix promo (30 days free...$9.99/mo afterwards) is good until Sept. 15. See this link: Press Release: Blockbuster Rescues Furious Netflix Customers « Blockbuster Blog

I have no idea about the three month promo. Maybe someone else can answer that one for you.