James Delahunty
8 Mar 2007 17:10
It appears that some subscribers to Blockbuster's online DVD rental service are reporting problems with the service in recent weeks. In cases, customers are claiming to not have received movies from their queues for two weeks or more. One customer told Ars that after repeated fruitless calls to customer service, one rep told him the DVD rental system was shut down and the issue would be fixed shortly.
"We've been continually shipping product," a spokesperson originally told Ars. "If a customer feels like they are not getting a movie, they should follow up with our customer service. But in terms of product being allocated and shipped, there has been no interruption." However, users of many sites are complaining about similar problems.
"My experience is similar," said Mike, a customer from Texas. "I have the 3 at a time plan. I turned my three movies in to the store 8 days ago and they still haven't shipped me any new movies although I have about 30 available in my queue. The customer service reps keep giving me a story about a technical glitch. The only thing this company can do competently is charge my credit card for the monthly fee. I will be canceling my membership before my next renewal."
After the story was run on Arstechnica.com, a spokesperson contacted the site confirming this time, that some users are in fact, experiencing problems. "By and large these customers all have one thing in common," the spokesperson said. "They selected the 'Report a DVD Issue' button for a returned DVD which not yet cleared their rental queue, and this may have inadvertently caused a delay in receiving their next movie."
Blockbuster announced that it reached over 2 million subscribers for the service in January, but that figure is still way behind the 6 million subscribers that Netflix touts.
Source:
Arstechnica