I totally agree. I miss going to rental stores and physically having the copy in hand and reading the back. I loved the old stores with just walls and walls of movies.
:)

I will never miss actually going to video stores. And I'll trade the serendipity of browsing for the convenience of reading something online having something catch my eye (such as a compilation of Roger Ebert's Top 10 lists from the '70s) and being able to put it immediately in my queue so I can't forget to actually watch the film (though with my queue it may be a few years later before I actually do so).

But then, in a video store there is never enough information provided about a movie to determine if some weird looking movie is worth watching or just a weird bad movie.

As for lost movies it has been quite a while since that happened but early on I had a huge problem with it. About 30% of the movies shipped in the first six months I was a member never showed up. I suspect that someone at Mailboxes, Etc. (Netflix envelopes didn't fit in my dinky apartment mailbox) was stealing them. Netflix has a pretty painless system for reporting discs missing and will just send another copy of the same movie or the next on your queue depending on your preference. They will eventually suspend your account if enough go missing but in the years since my initial problems I've probably had to report 2 or 3 discs a year and not heard a peep from them.

On playability I do seem lucky (or just have a really forgiving DVD player) and had only a four or five discs out of the many hundreds received that had difficulty playing and all but one of those was resolved wth some cleaning.

Nephythys, once they put it in the mail it is in the hands of the USPS so things can't be completely guaranteed. I recently returned 4 movies at the same time. They all cleared Netflix within a few minutes of each other and the next four discs all went out at the same time. The next day I received 3 of them and the fourth didn't arrive for two more days.

I blame Alex for my Netflix woes.

:D

Yeah, I'm stealing the good end of the customer service curve, leaving everybody with the crappy end of the stick.

That and you got me addicted in the first place.
:D

Yeah- I get the whole postal service thing. I guess I just think that the bells and whistles of one day delivery start to ring a little hollow when it doesn't actually work that way.

Who cared if the video store movie was crappy?! That was half the point! The routine was that we would get one semi-serious movie -- like an actual in the mainstream theatres movie, and one absolute load of crap we'd never heard of. Who cared what the box blurb was?! It was all about the cover picture. Bad sci-fi, bad campy horror, bad pseudo-serious horror, bad softcore masquerading as edgy art film... Of course, when one video store near me went out of business I did get a chance to purchase a few of my favorites from the stock. But it's just not the same as a walk-by browse.

Does Netflix ship out via first class USPS?

It's bulk rate first class, yes.

I thought bulk rate and first class were mutually exclusive categories.

I was considering doing the Net Flix thing (my local rental store is still closed - no staff) - but I can't do it if it's not first class - the mail is still too unreliable, and I live in the area where I CAN get all classes of service, including magazines (many zip codes in Orleans Parish are still without magazines)