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so close, Netflix

netflix rant Technology

I like Netflix. I think they’re a great service, reasonably priced, and they have completely replaced cable television for me. However, I have found one problem. According to Netflix:


If you are renting a series or seasons, we will ship the DVDs in order. That means:

* If there is a wait for a particular DVD in a series, will we wait until we ship you that DVD until we ship the next DVD in that series.


Which is great. If I add, say, Excel Saga to my queue, I can be certain that I will get disc 1 first, followed by disc 2 and 3. Under no circumstances will I have to worry about getting, say, disc 4 before disc 2. Right?

Well, in theory. In practice, some TV series (notably, Excel Saga) have discs missing completely. These discs go into your “Saved DVDs” list instead of your queue, and they aren’t considered to be discs with a “wait”. As a result, they get skipped over completely, and you get the next disc in the series that isn’t missing.

Why am I complaining here instead of directly to Netflix? Because Netflix doesn’t have any reasonable way that I can find to open a bug report or provide feedback. And I wanted to vent a little.