"A Christmas Miracle" or "How BBMP made Netflix even better!"

Coach Knight

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
May 25, 2010
326
3
Wake Forest, NC
Once upon a time, there was a very happy camper (let's call him Coach);), who had just subscribed to Dish Network coming from Time Warner Cable. He could not believe the significant improvement in nearly every area, from more channels, much better picture quality, and lower price. He also was a very happy Netflix subscriber who had 3 discs out at a time plus streaming. He wasn't one of those "power-users" who turned around every disc the day he received it, he simply liked having the movies available for whenever he had the time and inclination to watch them. He had the Platinum package from Dish Network for $10 and the 3 out plus streaming from Netflix for $16.99, for a total of $26.99 per month and felt it was a superb value for all those options.

Then, Netflix raised their prices and since he sometimes went more than a week without watching a single disc, much less three, he lowered his subscription with Netflix to one disc at a time. Everything was still going pretty smoothly although at times he did miss the three discs at a time, especially when he had a slow weekend. Then in a Grinch-stole-Christmas kind of way, Netflix announced they were separating the DVD and streaming portions of his service and he'd have to pay almost as much for one disc plus streaming as he used to pay for streaming and 3 discs! Not long after that Netflix, who must have been early into the heavily-spiked eggnog, announced they were splitting up the company and making it even more complex to manage his queue and see movies he wanted to see. (Side note: Eventually Netflix did sober up and back off that decision, possibly after some time in the Betty Ford Clinic, but I digress...)

During this time Dish announced the new Blockbuster Movie Pass (BBMP) and how one disc out would be free to those who already were paying the $10 per month for the former Platinum channels. This was a tremendous added value for free. However, the real present under the tree was that BBMP with three out was only $10 more. Knowing that he needed to keep Netflix streaming but also wanted the discs, he began to calculate. And here was the real Christmas miracle! Dish Network, with this new addition, had given him back everything he had previously had with Netflix...and MORE! And for virtually the same exact price as he had been paying nearly two years earlier!

Old Plan:
$10.00 Platinum Channels
$16.99 Netflix streaming plus 3 discs (DVD only) at a time, no in-store exchange

$26.99 Total Price

New Plan:
$20.00 Platinum Channels, BBMP streaming, 3 discs (any format, DVD/Bluray/Games) at a time, plus in-store exchanges
$ 7.99 Netflix streaming

$27.99 Total Price


So to summarize, for only $1 more, he was given Bluray and games, no wait period on new releases, another streaming option (which works perfectly for him so far) and in-store exchanges which virtually double the amount of movies he can watch on a weekend, which is when most of his viewing is done. He still has Netflix streaming and 3 discs at a time with BB for virtually the same price, and has all these added benefits. And this, my friends, is how BBMP made Netflix even better (and saved Christmas :D)!

P.S. Dish Network feel free to contact me regarding the movie rights to the above story. :rolleyes::popcorn
 
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We must be in the same campground. Same story here except I haven't upped my BB by mail beyond the standard 1 @ a time. Another plus for me is that BB does now have a FEW Bluray 3D rentals available and NF has NONE.

Ed
 
I'm glad someone is getting to utilize the new BBMP, I sure wasn't able to.

I was a longtime Blockbuster customer until they went into bankruptcy. Their service went down the tubes when they went into bankruptcy. If you didn't get a new video shipped to you on the day of its release, you wouldn't get it for a month or more. I figured if I was going to wait for a DVD, I might as well move over to Netflix. After the switch to Netfix I realized that the service was 100% better then Blockbuster. I used the streaming video a couple of times but there wasn't enough content that I was interested in make me a hardcore user. I primarily used Blockbuster and Netflix for new releases. The extra 28 day wait for some new releases with Netfix was a pain, but when it was released, I was shipped a copy.

When Dish moved in and bought Blockbuster from the bankruptcy court, they must have thrown some money to Blockbuster because they started to turn Blockbuster around. Not willing to start throwing my hard earned dollars at an unproven service, one of the Dish agents out here in the forums gave me three free months of Blockbuster by Mail to test out the improved system. I kept both Blockbuster & Netflix to compare the two and believe it or not, Blockbuster service was back to the way it was in their heyday. When Netflix announced their splitting of the streaming and by mail services and price increase, I didn't think twice about dropping Netflix and signing up for Blockbuster by Mail. Life was starting to return to normal. I was getting a new release in the mail on Tuesday (same day they were available in the stores) and after watching it, I would either mail it back if the next title in my queue wasn't released yet, or do an in-store exchange if it was.

Then came Blockbuster Movie Pass, better known as BBMP. I, like a lot of Dish subscribers who had both Dish and Blockbuster switched to BBMP to save money. Life as I knew it stopped. Service slowed down (no shock here when you add few million new customers over night to Blockbuster system that was just getting back on its feet) to where sometimes I would get a new release sent to me when it was released, and other times it would be days or weeks before I would see it. I emailed Blockbuster to complain but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. Standard response was to keep more older titles in my queue. The few times I received a title by mail, I did an in-store exchange for a movie that was in my queue. Please note here that I had my queue setup so the system would automatically remove titles from my queue that I rented at a store and set to speed so they would ship me the next available title. When I checked my queue, the title would be gone. Then two days after I returned the title to the store, Blockbuster would mail me a new DVD, problem was, it was the same title I got at the store four days earlier.

This week, with no titles out, one title in my queue on 'very long wait', and two new titles scheduled to release on Tuesday, I expected that they they would ship me one of the new titles. When I checked my queue Tuesday night, I had no tiles out, one title on 'long wait', and the two new titles that released that day, were both on 'very long wait'. Got to love it. Emailed Blockbuster a couple of times to find out what the heck was going on but didn't get a response. On Wednesday I email a couple of more times and asked them to respond to my questions by 5pm local time and said that if I didn't receive a response by the deadline I would be cancelling BBMP. At 6pm I removed all titles from my queue and cancelled BBMP. Then went over to Netflix, reactivated my DVD only account and loaded all of the titles in my queue.

Here's the killer. Around lunch time today, I finally received an email response to my question on why I wasn't shipped one of the new releases and was told the reason I wasn't shipped anything was because I didn't have any titles in my queue. What idiots! To make it worst, at around 2pm today I got an email notice from Blockbuster that they shipped one of the titles, the one that was in my queue from two weeks ago.

I live in the Phoenix area and the group running that distribution center have to be clueless because the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Oh, by the way, Netflix sent me notice that they shipped the first two titles in my queue.
 
Hemway-Sorry for your troubles with BB. I'd be pi**ed too. You aren't the 1st one to post of major problems with BB out of the Phoenix area. For me, the service has greatly improved in the last several weeks and matches (actually surpasses when you consider the immediate availablity of new releases & no upcharge for BR) the service I received from NF. Another plus for me is that they have a few 3D blurays and NF has none. I just received my 1st yesterday. Hope the service here stays at the present level!

Ed
 
Hemway, I'm just curious from your story, how many titles do you have in your queue total? From what you wrote it sounded like you only had a few titles. Perhaps I am interpreting that incorrectly. I tend to keep 40 to 50 titles minimum in my queue and I've never had a delay in shipping a disc immediately once I return my in-store exchange.
 
So to summarize, for only $1 more, he was given Bluray and games, no wait period on new releases, another streaming option (which works perfectly for him so far) and in-store exchanges which virtually double the amount of movies he can watch on a weekend, which is when most of his viewing is done. He still has Netflix streaming and 3 discs at a time with BB for virtually the same price, and has all these added benefits. And this, my friends, is how BBMP made Netflix even better (and saved Christmas :D)!

P.S. Dish Network feel free to contact me regarding the movie rights to the above story. :rolleyes::popcorn

Coach, glad to hear streaming is working well for you, and a great story BTW. It would be nice if there was a sticky instruction thread or FAQ of some kind on the BB streaming as it seems a lot of people are not doing so well with it. Thanks for sharing.
 
Coach, glad to hear streaming is working well for you, and a great story BTW. It would be nice if there was a sticky instruction thread or FAQ of some kind on the BB streaming as it seems a lot of people are not doing so well with it. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, David. I hear ya about the guide/FAQ for streaming...and I know a lot of people are having issues with it. I admit I don't use it nearly as much as the Netflix streaming but the movies I have streamed have started virtually instantly and played without an issue. All in HD, by the way. One movie had to buffer for about 5 seconds 20 or so minutes in, but that was all. The FFW/REW is much better than on Netflix streaming. I can't tell anyone how to correct any issues they are having as I am not that tech-savvy, but I just know that for me it works like it is supposed to work. For that I am grateful. ;)
 
The SD movies I've watched are much MUCH better than they are via sat. They may even be DVD quality, though I have no way of knowing that.

Good info, thanks! I haven't tried any SD yet. Of course I am still amazed how much better Dish's SD is vs. Time Warner (which was almost unwatchable). I'll have to try an SD title at some point to see the quality.
 
Coach, we only used BBMP for the DVD service and only watched the new releases. Very rarely did we request an old title. As movies were release at the theater, we would add them to our queue. When we cancelled, we had about 45 tiles in our queue. Three of them were on either long or very long wait and the reset were waiting for their release date. Didn't have the Platinum plan because the extra channels were of not interest to us and never used the streaming because at best, the interface sucked. So that's $10 a month less Dish will be getting from me.

Short of getting the service free for a year, I figure it's going to take them that long to build up their infrastructure, I'll stick with Netflix.
 
Hemway, thanks for the follow up. I agree Netflix is like clockwork whereas BB has a few issues with shipping consistently, although I have noticed improvements in the last few weeks vs. back in October. As a consumer, any choice that makes us happy is the right choice, so I think you made the right choice.

I stand by what I said in another thread on here somewhere, but if new releases are all that people use a subscription service for, I think they'd be much better served by either using Redbox or a local video store, and not a subscription service of any kind (Netflix or BB).

Personally I never understood the whole fuss about only watching new releases...since if I haven't watched a movie before it is new to me no matter when it was made. And quite honestly a lot of the older stuff is much better than the crap they are making today. Just my opinion of course. :)
 
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