Blockbuster Online Video DVD Rental Service Major Features:

• Offers many different service plans
• Most plans allow in-store exchanges
• Free shipping of the movie titles
• Convenient DVD movie rental right from home

My experience:
I signed up a few years ago. At the time they were offering 3 DVD's out at a time for $14.99 per month with two free in-store rental coupons per month. Two days after I signed up, they emailed me saying I will be charged $17.99 per month. I checked the website and sure enough they had raised their rates. I emailed them back saying they should give me 6 months at the rate I signed up for. They refused, saying their terms says they can change the terms and pricing anytime they want. Their terms do say that. I was a bit pissed off, but I decided it was still a good deal and kept the service. Things were pretty good for about 3 months. The website was easy to use and fast. Shipping turn around was 4-5 days. Then they started to not ship the DVD's. I would have to use their report a problem option. They usually responded with a free instore rental coupon. This went on for about 6 months. Then they decided to update their website and came up with the total access scheme which allowed instore exchanges. I liked that, instead of waiting for shipping, I could take the DVD movies to the store and get free in-store ones. After about 6 months of that, they decided to limit the exchanges to 2 per month. The last 3 months, the shipping turn around has been very quick. If I return a disk to the store, I get another usually within 2 days. Over time they change their plans and rates. I am currently on the unlimited one at a time plan with 2 in-store exchanges per month. Then there is the website, over time, it has been getting slower and slower with each new version of the website. The main issue is the Queue management. It is now to the point of being unusable. To view a queue with 80 DVD titles in it takes about 30 seconds before you can do anything. Then each change you make delays another 30 seconds. This happens with a decent AMD 2700+ PC and 3 megabits DSL. I have complained about it and they responded that know about it and many have the same complaint. That was 2 months ago. Another website update has been made since then and it is still just as slow. I am seriously thinking of going to Netflix.

Blockbuster Online Video Rental Service Pros:

• Fast shipping
• Good selection of DVD movie titles
• Very rare to receive a damaged or unwatchable DVD
• I have never received the wrong title
• In-store exchanges is nice (only thing keeping me from switching)

• Queue management is extremely slow
• Change of terms and pricing at their wim

Blockbuster Online Video DVD Rental Service Spot Rating:
If they would fix the poor website performance, I would be pretty happy with the service at this point and time and give them 5 spots. The poor website cost them 2 spots. It's that bad. If they don't fix it soon, I will be forced to switch.