Blockbuster queue woes-Anyone have this trouble?

[From MD]

I started having issues beginning of August. Blockbuster use to be very fast. if you return in store, typically a movie will ship next day or if you return early in the morning sometimes same day. I have about 50 movies in queue and they are really shipping slowly. i have the 3 out at a time plan and now they dont even get 3 out to me within a week. All my movies are returned during the weekend ready for them to ship on monday. but on tues maybe they will ship 1. then possibly nothing for the whole week. i dont know what is going on. if this continues i will cancel when my month is up and go back to renting in store. I have been a customer with blockbuster online since summer 2008 and I am in Maryland.

[Rhonda]

I've been a blockbuster customer since 2006 and never had any problems until this past month. I returned a mailer in the store and I have yet to get another movie! I've corresponded via email with them several times and was continuing to get apologies with cookie cutter responses, free coupons, and treating me like I wasn't setting up my queue correctly. Now they have finally admitted a problem with the queueing system and after 2 weeks I finally get an email that the DVD I returned in the store on 9/7 has been received? Huh? It's 9/21!!! I'm not going to keep putting up with this. Even though they're messing up I'm sure they won't have a problem billing me ON TIME. I may be going back to Netflix... I liked the convenience of being able to return the mailer at the store if I chose to and picking up another movie while I was there. Obviously if they aren't shipping me anything I don't have anything to return to take advantage of that service. They need to get it together!

[Movie Fiend in Boston]

I too am having slow shipping after months and months of fast service. I was very pleased with Blockbuster's shipping and service and thought I would never switch to Netflix. If I return the dvd to a store a new movie gets shipped out the next day if not the same day. Now two or three business days go by without a shipment. Even if they received a dvd in the mail, two or three whole business days go by without them shipping anything. At the current rate, I am lucky to receive one movie a week. So sadly I am forced to cancel soon.

[George]

What most people fail to realize is that Blockbuster Video stores (franchise and corporate) and Blockbuster Online are two very seperate entities. That is, BBI acts as a holding company and the two types of retailers are seperate from each other, with only the name being shared between them.

For this reason, Stores are usually not notified about Online TOS changes, like the ones that happened in February of 2009, nor are they responsible for technical failures on the internet. There is a troubleshooting page and toll free number for Online for just that reason. When you ask a Store employee about Online issues, they do not always know that there is a problem, and if they do they most likely do not know what the problem is specifically. They are not being evasive so much as being diplomatic. Nothing worse than being told "I don't know" by a bunch of people, right?

Often, it is user error. For instance, when customers rent BluRay discs, they are not very well informed about the device. Most buy them because they are the trendy "new" technology. They didn't read their instruction manuals before they threw them out, and failed to realize they should update their players' firmware every so often. They go back to the stores, ranting and raving about defective BD, and the first thing they are asked is if their firmware has been updated. Most of them have no clue, and assume BBV would knowingly give them defective items. This happens so much that every time a customer comes up to the counter with a BluRay title, we make sure a) that they actually have a BluRay player, and b) that the newer titles may need firmware updates, and we tell them how to update it. We figure the Online problems are much the same, where users are not clear about what they have to do.

There are technology conflicts if an Online user is operating Windows XP with Internet Explorer 8 for some reason. You might downgrade to IE7 and see if your queue functions better.

[Gary]

Blockbuster has not sent any the 20+ available DVDs at top of my queue for 3 weeks! I call every other day, and cust serv repeats they have sent numerous URGENT reports to Chic distn center, but have not recd any replies. Are they getting ready to shut down? Service has never been this bad.