Return to Dave's planet! NetFlix Shipping OR - how long does it REALLY take to get your NetFlix disks? Having DVDs shipped to your place makes it convenient to watch movies on portable dvd players or with your TV at home. The million dollar question you are asking yourself is "how long does it REALLY take to get my NetFlix disks". Well my friend, that's a very interesting question, I'm glad you asked. 8 Days between DVDs - EIGHT DAYS to get each new DVD! How can that be, when NetFlix claims: Netflix reaches more than 90 percent of subscribers with generally one-day delivery. That's an interesting, if a big vague description, that I myself seem to fall into. I live right next to a NetFlix shipping center. When I drop something in the mail, NetFlix gets it tomorrow. When NetFlix mails something (from that center, once they get around to it) I get it next day. Wow! It can't get much better than that, can it? But then you have to take into account all the endless delays that NetFlix doesn't make so public. You see, it's not really in NetFlix best interest to ship tons of movies to you as fast as they possibly can. The shipping they pay, the breakage they incur, and the inventory levels they have to support all increase the faster NetFlix ships movies to you. Currently, Netflix spends about $300 million a year on postage to ship 1.4 million DVDs a day. If they could just boost that to 1.5 million DVDs a day they could spend an extra $20 million dollars a year just on shipping, without generating any additional revenue to support it. So how does NetFlix keep the numbers down? Let us count the ways 1 - Throtteling (or smoothing as NetFlix prefers to call it). NetFlix lost a class action lawsuit over this one (and still managed to turn it into a giant promotional gimmick). Since then they just changed their terms of service to make this legal. Basically if you try to get maximum throughput by returning movies as fast as you can, NetFlix bumps you to the back of the queue and makes you wait longer than everyone else. I've waited several business days after NetFlix received a DVD before they shipped a new one, and I've had DVDs sit in "Shipping Today" status for several business days before actually shipping. 2 - The post office Of my statistical sample, one DVD was lost and one took 6 days after it's estimated date to arrive. Other DVDs occasionally arrived a day late at my house or at the NetFlix receiving center. NetFlix won't allow you to report a DVD as lost until it is 6 days over due. In my statistical sampling, I counted the lost DVD when its replacement arrived. 3 - Breakage Out of my statistical sample of 25 DVDs, two DVDs arrived broken. I don't count those as having arrived until I was able to play the replacement copy. As with the lost DVD, NetFlix knows I was sitting idle with no DVD to watch, but they don't credit my account by sending out any extra DVDs. They could really improve in this area. 4 - DVDs shipped from far far away This is probably the place where NetFlix could most dramatically improve their service. They know what's coming up in everyone's queue. They know where the DVDs actually are. Why is it that one DVD after the next, time and time again they all come from far away shipping locations and take 4 days to arrive? How hard would it be for NetFlix to look ahead and move DVDs between warehouses in bulk shipments based on upcoming queues? They have no motivation to do that, this is one of the ways they slow down the rate of DVDs they have to ship and save money. So yes, while I am right next to a major shipping center, often that doesn't really do me a lot of good as far as waiting for shipments, it only really helps me out with return speed. 5 - Weekends and holidays Trying to be fair here, a large bulk of the time it takes to get a new DVD can be waiting over a weekend or holidays. Not really NetFlix fault, but it still counts in the statistics of how fast they get DVDs to me. My DVDs For this statistical experiment I setup a single DVD queue, I get 1 DVD out at a time. I receive a DVD in the mail, I watch it, and I dump it in the mail box where my postman will pick it up and it will get to the NetFlix shipping center the next day. You see below that on four separate occasions I was able to return a DVD and have a new one in 3 days, I consider these akin to winning a minor lottery play, but in the long run the odds are always in favor of the house. You see my last DVD shipped 12/22/2006, it is scheduled to arrive five days later, 12/27/2006, and it was a replacement for a broken DVD. I will mail it the morning of 12/28/2006 and have it back to NetFlix on 12/29/2006, NetFlix will probably ship me my next DVD on 12/30/2006. 8 days - right on their average target. Shipped Days since last shipment 12/22/2006 15 12/7/2006 3 12/4/2006 5 11/29/2006 14 11/15/2006 7 11/8/2006 7 11/1/2006 5 10/26/2006 7 10/19/2006 15 10/4/2006 8 9/26/2006 8 9/18/2006 6 9/12/2006 12 8/31/2006 7 8/24/2006 3 8/21/2006 5 8/16/2006 6 8/10/2006 7 8/3/2006 3 7/31/2006 13 7/18/2006 20 6/28/2006 15 6/13/2006 5 6/8/2006 3 6/5/2006 10 Total days waiting for DVDs: 209 Total DVDs received: 25 Average wait between DVDs: 8.36 Days Return to Dave's planet!