The Bottom of the Netflix Totem Pole

Wondering why you never get the movie you want?

Published: February, 2006

I became a Netlix member in 2002, just a few months after the service began. Over the years I’ve let it wax and wane but recently I’ve actively started watching again.(1) And now, my family has a running joke about me…. they say that I’m the only one in America who’s never ordered a decent DVD on NetFlix. I’m starting to think that they might be right. I never see much that interests me on the Netflix new release page, and I check fairly often.

Others Neftlix users tell me to just search for the movies I want to see, but my already cluttered brain goes numb when faced with a blank movie search field. So for me, Neflix has been a place to turn for the obscure documentary and otherwise unattainable foreign films.

A guy named Frank Chavez got me thinking about my predicament again. Last month he won a Class Action suit against NetFlix. Now he, and others, are eligible for a one-time, limited-time service upgrade. (After the two year fight Chavez was awarded $2,000 for his time, while the lawyers settled for their $2.5 million fee, but that’s another story.)

My Netflix new releases page a few weeks before the Oscars.

As I started poking around to find out more about the settlement I ran stumbled across quite a few rants from longtime users talking about being “throttled” by Netflix. Throttling means that NetFlix is slowing down your delivery or not delivering what you’ve expected on purpose. One theory is that they do this to satisfy new trial subscription users by giving them fastest access to the newest release.

As a little experiment I signed my husband up as a new user to see if he’d be presented with better choices of movies and/or better availability. He did get Wedding Crashers on his new release offer, and I didn’t but other than that it’s hard to see that he’d receive movies before me.

Here’s a comment and a question:

A: I’m a happy Netflix user. Yes, sometimes the movies take longer to get to me than 1 day, but Neflix has been great about letting me slide when disks break or get lost in shipping.

B: Now, about this throttling. I have no idea what to believe. Is Netflix really putting me at the bottom of the list? Is this because I’m a longtimer? Here’s what Neflix says in their FAQ: “endeavor to ship to you the movies listed highest in your queue; however when availability is limited, we may ship you movies lower on your queue.”

Anyone else out there having their share of rental problems? Be sure to let me know.

(1) Disclosure: it is a free account from my days when I covered it regularly.