Why Blockbuster has it over Netflix

vs
When Netflix first came on the scene I jumped right on and loved it.  I used the surface for about a year and thought it was great because I could get some lesser known movies that I couldn’t find at the local rental places.  Plus, not having to go any farther than my mailbox really appealed to my lazy side.  After about a year I need that money for other things more than I needed it for movies so I cancelled my service.

Fast forward several years and now I am married with a young child and my wife and I decided it might be time to try Netflix again.  Once again I am pleased with the selection, the price, and the fact that I don’t have to go any further than my mailbox to get my movies.  However, this time we were painfully aware that the promise of fast turnovers in movie titles was not to be fulfilled for us.  We often would mail in a movie on a Friday or Saturday and not get the next movie until the following Thursday or Friday.  Needless to say, this didn’t do it for us, so we decided that we weren’t going to get our money’s worth out of this arrangement and decided to cancel our service.

Luckily, about that time we saw the ads for the new Blockbuster service, so we decided to give it a try.  Boy, are we ever glad we did.  We decided to go for the 2 out at a time, unlimited rentals per month, just like we did with Netflix.  The cost was about the same, so we don’t lose anything for trying.  The greatest part of the deal is that once we have watched a movie, we can just take it to our local Blockbuster store and exchange it for a FREE in-store rental.  Plus, as soon as they scan the movie in that we are returning, the online system is notified and our next movie is processed and mailed out to us the next day.  Now, we get a movie (usually 2) on Wednesday, watch it, take it to the store on Friday or Saturday, get another movie, and then our next movie from the online service arrives the next Wednesday.  No more waiting a week for our movies.  We truly get to take advantage of the unlimited part of our service now.

Another great benefit is Blockbuster often sends free rental coupons for games and movies with the movies they mail.  We also get some online that we can print out from time to time.

So, I guess the moral to the story is, Blockbuster, in addition to being a great new service, should soon become a Netflix buster.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Effective Time Saver Series, Part 1

In the two jobs I worked at before my current job I worked close enough to home that I could go home everyday for lunch. Besides being a great way to get away from work and relax, it was also a great time saver for me. The reason this is true is because I love television. I could sit and watch from sunrise to sunset if given the opportunity. However, with a job, a wife, and a young child I don’t really get that opportunity very often, so I need to maximize the time I do get. That’s where my beloved VCR (no, I don’t have TiVo, yet) comes into play.

Here’s what I did. Whenever something was coming on that I really wanted to watch without interuption, or was in the same time slot as something my wife wanted to watch, I simply taped it. Then, when I went home for lunch, I just watched the show I taped, fast-forwarding through the commercials. I could usually watch an hour show in about 35 to 40 minutes. Saving me time and arguments with my wife about what to watch if our shows were in competition.

You might be asking, how does this help me save time? Well, imagine you really like TV, but you are really busy. If you have a show that comes on at 7pm and 8pm but you are too busy to watch, simply tape them and take care of the other business you have. After that, you can watch your taped programs without the commercials in less time that if you had stopped what you were doing and watched the shows. Let’s face it, there’s no way to be productive during commercials.