I’m a Blockbuster Online customer, and I generally enjoy the service. I like being able to order movies online and then exchange them for new movies in the local store. I’m on a plan in which I can exchange five movies every month.
What bothers me, though, is that when I pull up a list of New Releases on Blockbuster Online, it shows me a very limited selection. For example, right now, I can go to my local Blockbuster store and find the following new releases sitting on the shelf:
- Pineapple Express
- Righteous Kill
- Babylon A.D.
- Burn After Reading
- Bangkok Dangerous
When I pull up a list of New Releases on Blockbuster Online, however, I see not one of those movies.
My guess is that Blockbuster wants to limit the online demand for the most popular movies, so it doesn’t have to order so many copies. I dunno. At this point, I can only guess.
Right now, my workaround is to go to another movie site, like MovieFone, look up a list of new releases there, and then go back to Blockbuster Online to search for them by title. Forcing customers to rely on such convoluted workarounds to find the movies they want to rent just seems dopey to me.
Does anybody out there know why Blockbuster Online makes it so inconvenient for customers to find the most popular new releases? I’m going to email this question to Blockbuster. When I hear back from them, I’ll post their response.
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I’ve been with Netflix for many years and have noticed that they do the same thing. I’ve always wondered why, and have thought in my own mind the same as you have: that they want to limit demand for new releases. Be interesting to know for sure though.
Just received a reply from Goldwynne at Blockbuster. (My guess is that Goldwynne is some clever phony name derived from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.) As expected, the reply completed avoided my question:
I dutifully followed the instuctions only to be greeted by a What’s New page that displays a list of “Monkey Movies” and links to other “Recent Lists,” none of which contains what I’m looking for.
I replied back letting Goldwynne know that the answer did not resolve my issue. I’ll let you know what I hear, but don’t hold your breath.
I’ve just signed up for blockbuster total access tonight, and this was the first thing I noticed (and came to your blog via google search on the subject). This is very annoying indeed… do you know if NetFlix is the same way?