I am a long time (since the beginning) subscriber to Blockbuster Online. This was absolutely necessary. What was really happening was that you would bring a sealed enveloped containing the disc/sleeve to the store to exchange. However, they would scan the envelope, not the sleeve inside. So they would ship the next movie based on receiving the movie indicated by the barcode on the envelope. Then when the envelope arrived at the facility, they would check in the movie based on the sleeve/disc... if they did'nt match, it would look to their system like you shipped back 2 movies. The one at the store would be marked "returned at store", and the next in queue shipped, and the one at the factory would be received, and the next on your queue shipped. This means as long as you returned to the store movies in a (correct dvd/sleeve combo) but different envelope in which it came, you could get 2 movies back in the mail (plus the one in store) for each movie you returned. I have the 3 out plan... and at one point I had 10 movies out, not counting the in-store exchange rentals. I think they could have made like a window on the envelope or something so they could scan the sleeve barcode instead though. Either way it was a big problem because how often do people bother to make sure the envelope and the sleeve barcodes matched.
Very interesting information there. Netflix has the window deal on their envelopes, but then it's up to the customer to insert the sleeve proper at that point.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kevin @ Mar 23rd 2009 10:11AM
I am a long time (since the beginning) subscriber to Blockbuster Online. This was absolutely necessary.
What was really happening was that you would bring a sealed enveloped containing the disc/sleeve to the store to exchange. However, they would scan the envelope, not the sleeve inside. So they would ship the next movie based on receiving the movie indicated by the barcode on the envelope. Then when the envelope arrived at the facility, they would check in the movie based on the sleeve/disc... if they did'nt match, it would look to their system like you shipped back 2 movies. The one at the store would be marked "returned at store", and the next in queue shipped, and the one at the factory would be received, and the next on your queue shipped.
This means as long as you returned to the store movies in a (correct dvd/sleeve combo) but different envelope in which it came, you could get 2 movies back in the mail (plus the one in store) for each movie you returned. I have the 3 out plan... and at one point I had 10 movies out, not counting the in-store exchange rentals.
I think they could have made like a window on the envelope or something so they could scan the sleeve barcode instead though. Either way it was a big problem because how often do people bother to make sure the envelope and the sleeve barcodes matched.
DeadPlasmaCell @ Mar 23rd 2009 3:57PM
Very interesting information there. Netflix has the window deal on their envelopes, but then it's up to the customer to insert the sleeve proper at that point.