RentMyDVD going downhill (1 Viewer)

[Qui-Gon John]

Regarding availability. More and more titles are coming up HIGH DEMAND and I never get them. I have had CADENCE in my Wish List for a couple of months now. I recently added a few other movies and all but one has come up HIGH DEMAND and has not shipped. Has anyone else been seeing this. I'm thinking of making this my last month with them. Current suggestions for a replacement service?

 

[Michael Reuben]

I'm seeing the same thing. It appears to be a repetition of what happened at Netflix: As their customer base expands, your chance of getting a particular title (especially a recent or popular one) drops to near zero. You end up in the position of the customer who gets to Blockbuster one minute before closing time on a Saturday night; all that remains is the stuff that no one wants to see.
I'm currently conducting an experiment with RentMyDVD. For one month, I've stepped up to their 10-discs-at-a-time plan. At the same time, I eliminated every "maginal" title from my wishlist. I wanted to see how long it would take them to ship me 6 additional discs from a wishlist that contained only the discs I really want. The results have been interesting.
I'm about 11 days into my experiment, and so far they've never had more than 7 discs checked out to me at one time. Every day they owe me more titles, but most of the ones on my list remain unavailable -- or else they show up very briefly as "available" and then are sent to someone else. What this tells me is that the likelihood of my ever seeing those titles from RentMyDVD is negligible. At the end of the 30-day period, I suspect that I too will be looking for a new rental source.
M.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Yeah and the 4 on my list are not what someone would think are super popular or new releases. CADENCE, THE EVENING STAR, DELIVERANCE & ROOTS DISK 1.

 

[Michael Reuben]

My experiment may be working out after all. Today they're shipping me four titles, including several that have been on my wishlist for months. When those ship, I'll have 10 discs checked out to me (with one already en route back). But it took 12 days.

M.

 

[ScottH]

I've been having slightly better luck with NumberSlate, but I'm not sure that I can give them my full endorsement. They have a great selection, and I've been pretty lucky with new releases being available, but the titles seem to take longer to arrive (longer than they take to get back to them - interestingly). The website is also piss-poor. If you want a new release, you better know which one(s) you want, because browsing new releases is horrible. They only seem to list the titles that are actually in stock. You can find other titles, but you have to enter them in the search.

This whole online DVD rental thing is really frustrating. It's such a great concept, but for some reason no one seems to be able to get it right. I've now tried 5 different services (actually 4 that have unlimited programs) and none of them seem to be stepping up to the plate. I don't know, maybe I'm just too demanding, but to me it would seem that this would be the perfect opportunity for one of these companies to step up and dominate the market. Netflix had that chance, being the first major one to offer the unlimited rental service, but they got too big for their own good and lost a lot of customers. The demand is obviously there, but perhaps they're just not generating enough revenue.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Or mis-managing it, ala Enron. But seriously, it also seems that as these companies start out with the unlimited program they are very good, and then after a while they start to seriously degrade. I was in Netflix before RMD. At first it was great. Any movie I picked, they usually had it and sent it right away. A rare one that was out, usually showed up within a few days. Then they went downhill. Suddenly almost every movie I picked was not available and stayed that way for weeks on end. Bye-bye Netflix, hello RMD. Same results, great at first, then a major drop in availability and service.

 

[Michael Reuben]

The demand is obviously there, but perhaps they're just not generating enough revenue.

I suspect it's the opposite, and that our difficulties in getting the movies we want is a sign of success -- more and more people signing up to pay a monthly fee, resulting in longer and longer wait times. The demanding customers like us may leave, but as long as most folks are willing to sign up and take whatever titles happen to be available, the companies should prosper. The long waits indicate that they're keeping their inventory shallow and capping their costs for stock and storage space, and their business model provides a steady revenue stream instead of the hit-and-miss of pay-as-you-go.
Netflix says they're doing well, and I'll bet RMD is too.
M.