Anyone noticed that getting Blockbuster disks at home has suddenly slowed to a crawl?

[Tony S]

Until now, I have been very happy with Dish's Blockbuster offering. When I sent back a DVD disk, Blockbuster would send out another one fairly quickly. Usually, I would send a disk back, and the next day Dish would mail out a new one. Occasionally, it would take an extra day for them to mail out a new disk.

Suddenly, now this has changed. I have 16 DVDs in my queue. Almost all of them are on some kind of wait status, but 3 of them are listed as 'Available', yet Blockbuster has not mailed out a new disk for the past week or so. What is going on? Did Dish sign up so many people that they do not have enough disks to send out? Why are 3 DVDs listed as available, however nothing is being mailed out? Has anyone else noticed the slowdown?

 

[Coach Knight]

I just looked at my queue and I have 38 titles (plus 20 not yet released so I don't count those). Out of the 39 titles, I have 2 "unavailable", 2 "Very long wait", 1 "long wait" and 1 "short wait". This leaves me with 32 available now. Granted not all of these are the most recent releases within the past month or so, some go back a few years or at least a few month but they are new to me. However, I do get shipped new releases sometimes, and have never had a problem getting anything I want on the in-store exchange, and yes, I realize not everyone can use that feature. I rarely do this, but you can change the Bluray selection to DVD and get a new release shipped faster if you don't mind watching a DVD instead. Several movies showing waits were available when doing this.

I returned an in-store exchange Sunday, got the email yesterday that they were shipping a new one, and it arrived today. I have read tons of complaints on here about nothing shipping and have no reason to doubt the accuracy of those posts. But I can assure you that is not the case for me.

 

[dan188]

I noticed alot of my titles are now short wait or very long wait. How can you. Compete with netflix by mail if most of your titles have a wait or unaviable??

 

[Tony S]

Coach Knight, Yes, that is how Blockbuster worked for me up until now. As I said, out of 16 disks in my queue, 3 are listed as available however nothing has been mailed out for about a week. All my selections are DVDs (no blu-ray). Hartford Ct is the distribution center for me and mailing from Hartford is only one day. It just seems like no one is home at the Blockbuster distribution center.

EDIT: Also, I have my Blockbuster shipping preferences set to "Send my next available movie as quickly as possible", which makes me wonder why they are not shipping one of the 3 DVDs that are available now.

 

[goober]

I know they just closed a distribution center in Dallas

 

[Riah]

I noticed alot of my titles are now short wait or very long wait. How can you. Compete with netflix by mail if most of your titles have a wait or unaviable??

Same here I had one available and it took two weeks to ship that. I am considering returning to Netflix.

 

[jerryez]

Mine always ship the first day after receipt of the previous disc, which I always turn in at the local store. I have 19 out of 38 in my queue marked as available now. They do take two - four days to get to me from Atlanta and Houston(mostly two days). How many distribution centers do they have. My first disc came from the Pensacola center, which I heard closed the next week.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have given up on ordering discs from them.

 

[dangue]

Turn around time is a day slower than Netflix for me, but I haven't suffered any of the long delays reported in this and other threads.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Coach Knight, Yes, that is how Blockbuster worked for me up until now. As I said, out of 16 disks in my queue, 3 are listed as available however nothing has been mailed out for about a week. All my selections are DVDs (no blu-ray). Hartford Ct is the distribution center for me and mailing from Hartford is only one day. It just seems like no one is home at the Blockbuster distribution center.

EDIT: Also, I have my Blockbuster shipping preferences set to "Send my next available movie as quickly as possible", which makes me wonder why they are not shipping one of the 3 DVDs that are available now.

I have given up on ordering discs from them.

That's interesting, because Hartford is my distribution center also. I mailed back a movie last Monday, got the email notification on Tuesday at 8:40am that it was received, and received my top queue movie (Tower Heist, short wait) on Wednesday. Every movie has worked like this with only a couple taking an extra day. Once, I mailed back a movie on a Saturday and received the email notification that it was received, on Sunday morning....

 

[Tony S]

That's interesting, because Hartford is my distribution center also. I mailed back a movie last Monday, got the email notification on Tuesday at 8:40am that it was received, and received my top queue movie (Tower Heist, short wait) on Wednesday. Every movie has worked like this with only a couple taking an extra day. Once, I mailed back a movie on a Saturday and received the email notification that it was received, on Sunday morning....

Yes...it used to work like that for me too, until about a week ago. I wonder if Dish is starting to throttle down mailing out to customers that use over a certain amount of disks per month? I hope not!

 

[cts33fan]

My disto center is San Jose, and I live in Palmdale (north of LA), and they have slowed waaay down on me too. I am also seeing a lot of "Not Available" discs coming up in my queue (and these are old TV series) and nothing is coming to me in any order. I think I'm going to have to go back to Netflix too.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

Yes...it used to work like that for me too, until about a week ago. I wonder if Dish is starting to throttle down mailing out to customers that use over a certain amount of disks per month? I hope not!

I'll be mailing back this one soon, I'll be sure to post back the results....

 

[JayStil]

I haven't noticed any difference here. Still regularly getting Bluray titles from near the top of my queue, if not THE first selection. Got The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on release day. Haven't found the time to watch it yet. So subs like me probably don't help.

 

[dan188]

They should increase their supply. Why tell people to switch from netflix when you cant deliver

 

[MikeD-C05]

I knew the way they were going that Blockbuster was nothing more than a sales gimmick for DISH. That is why they never opened up the new Blockbuster to new customers other than DISH subs. I predict they will continue to close all physical stores and move to online only through DISH receivers only. They will lay off the rest of the Blockbuster employees a little at a time, store by store, till there's nothing left.

 

[StonesCat]

I haven't noticed any difference here. Still regularly getting Bluray titles from near the top of my queue, if not THE first selection. Got The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on release day. Haven't found the time to watch it yet. So subs like me probably don't help.

My situation exactly. If my wife and I don't watch our blu-ray on Sat or Sunday, it waits another week. We only have four or five new releases in our queue, but get everything pretty quickly. The blurays are just gravy to us anyway, we've got enough shows/movies on the DVR already. So, if others want to go back to Netflix, go, that'll open up some more movies to us even faster.

 

[Neutron]

Blockbuster worked well before DISH took over. Now it's a pile of crap with the way DISH is managing it.

 

[KAB]

Blockbuster worked well before DISH took over.

and well into bankruptcy.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

A few weeks ago I cleared out my queue at Blockbuster...

Today I got notice that one of the disc's that I had in my queue (but was removed weeks ago) has shipped.

Just going to open it up and return it since I already got it from Redbox.