succjah fedrick mariley
Tracee Hsiang
Red Netflix envelopes sit in a bin of mail at the U.S. Post Office sort center March 30, 2010 in San Francisco, California. The company is ending its DVD mailing service with a promotion. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption
"Netflix is doing everything that they can to help people watch as many films that are in their queue as possible before the shutdown," said Long, a self-described film buff in North Carolina who told NPR there are 500 movies in his queue right now.
An FAQ section on Netflix's website states the company will accept returns through Oct. 27. But Netflix's promotional email doesn't explicitly tell customers what to do with those discs. This is causing confusion among customers, and debate among the members of online communities like Reddit.
"It appeared to me that at the end of their time shipping these DVDs out that they're yours to keep," North Carolina-based Netflix DVD subscriber Leslie Lowdermilk told NPR. "Because after all, what are they gonna do with them?"
"The filmmakers and property rights owners give Netflix a license, and then they can sub-license it to their subscribers," Spiller said. "But they can't give anybody ownership. They don't have it themselves."
"They really should have made it clear whether this was a rental and what the return period is, versus whether people were getting to hold onto these things," Gerbi said. "I do hope that perhaps they could find a way to get them into viewers' hands permanently, or maybe get them into libraries or someplace where they're not just going to waste."
The two most visible parts of the Netflix enterprise are the red mailing envelopes and the Web site. The patented envelope is essentially an ordinary mailing envelope with an extra long, removable flap. This extra length of paper is what lets DVDs make the round trip from the Netflix distribution center to your home in just one envelope. When the envelope travels to you, the flap displays your address while covering up the shipping center's return address. You remove the flap when you seal the envelope to return it to Netflix, so only the shipping center's address remains.
The Netflix Web site has been through numerous revisions as well. The company has made major changes to the site as often as every two weeks, constantly evaluating how the changes affect the business. Numerous features have come and gone, but for the most part, the site has looked a lot like other online retail stores. The available movies appear as thumbnail images, sometimes in conjunction with a brief description. When you hold your mouse pointer over a selection, the site pulls a lengthier description from a database and displays it on the screen. This description includes information about the movie's plot, cast and MPAA rating. Clicking on a title takes you to a separate page with cast and crew information, technical specifications. Rating information from Common Sense Media, a separate company with its own Web site, is also displayed.
You can browse the section by genre, check out the Critic's Picks and Award Winners, or use the Netflix Top 100 to decide which movies you want to see. You can also use the Friends feature to see what your friends are watching and compare which movies you like. When you find a movie you want to see, you add it to either your DVD or your Instant queue. If you want to see a movie that Netflix doesn't have in its inventory yet, you can save it for later. Netflix ships DVDs in the order in which they appear in your DVD queue, and you can change the order or remove items in your queues as often as you want.
As you browse, you have three options for each movie you see on the site. You can give it a star rating, add it to one of your queues or tell Netflix that you're not interested in it. The choices you make dramatically affect which movies Netflix features on the site when you visit. Next, we'll take a look at the Netflix recommendation engine and how it works.
I sell DVDs and blu-rays as discs by themselves in a simple envelope sent standard USPS delivery. These letters are NOT considered rigid; they ARE machinable letters. USPS has specific guidelines to send a single disc as a machinable letter for only a single forever stamp. This is the same way the Netflix used to send discs by mail.
Unfortunately, these letters are the foundation of my store and they are not provided with USPS tracking. Instead, I use a deterrent for scammers called LetterTrack, but their tracking system is not allowed for eBay tracking updates. Even though I track these myself and see the letter make the delivery, I still have the occasional scammer saying it didn't show and I have to refund them.
Low and behold the "eBay standard envelope"! The guidelines for this delivery method are nearly identical to the guidelines for USPS's single-disc machinable letter, i.e. same size & weight restrictions. The eBay standard envelope is only offered for certain categories like Trading Cards, Coins & Paper Money, and Postcards and Stamps. However, this method would be precisely ideal for "Disc Only" sellers like myself.
If eBay shipping heads and the powers that be see this post, I have a few ideas to make this happen. Create a completely new category for disc only sellers; "Books, Movies & Music > DVDs & Blu-ray Discs > Disc Only". Offer the eBay standard envelopes for this new category. EBay will make a LOT more money due to the amount of these types of sellers and these sellers have tracking for their items. Win-Win. Easy as pie. Please get the ball rolling on this idea. It would make my year. Thank you.
Did you see the part about "mailers must submit 5 sample mailpieces and a written request to the local postmaster or business mail entry manager for submission to the Pricing and Classification Service Center (PCSC)."
A lot of big media sellers use logistics services like UPS Mail Innovations that pre-sort the mail for USPS. Those wouldn't be subject to the non-machinable surcharge but it doesn't change the fact that it's not machinable.
An envelope weighing no more than one ounce with one enclosed standard optical disc no larger than 12 centimeters in diameter, that is mailed to or from a subscriber as part of a round-trip mailing under 233.2.8 and 505.1.0 (or 507.1.0), is not subject to the nonmachinable surcharge
No. USPS just waved the charge under a "sweetheart" deal. Since Netflix DVDs were returned the round trip some how allowed it. The postal service was and still is really best suited to machinable flats IE letters. All the packages require more handling. Trouble is no one is sending letters much anymore. More and more bill are paid direct deposit or on line. With the cost of a postage stamp they should see why.
For several semesters at the School of Visual Arts, I took the post office to task. I asked every student to mail me a letter and to make the address as illegible as possible and yet still be able to be delivered by the post office. I also instructed them to make the return address perfectly legible so that they would be returned to the students. After these envelopes were returned, I originally anticipated having a long discussion on how form follows function and the importance of legibility within a specific context. However, the post office did not cooperate. They made every attempt to deliver the mail, beyond all expectations. They went so far as to color in with markers, colored pencils and graphite areas that were nearly impossible to read. They interpreted the undecipherable, decoded the unintelligible, analyzed the unrecognizable and delivered the mail. True to their motto, they employed unconventional techniques to reach their goals. The classroom discussions became one of simple amazement and appreciation of the lengths a bureaucracy was willing to go to complete their job and serve the public. It forced us to reevaluate exactly what legibility is.
The plastic disc's light weight and small size would make it cheap and easy to send through the mail, letting him create a cross between Blockbuster (Research) and Amazon.com (Research). By taking advantage of the U.S. Postal Service, it could send rental DVDs to customers through the mail - and accept returns the same way.
But before Netflix (Research) became a dotcom darling with millions of subscribers, it had to figure out the details of how to mail DVDs cheaply and economically. Learning the ins and outs of the post office's operations was key: Every ounce of weight in the mailer added to postage costs - but if the mailer was too flimsy, DVDs broke in the mail.
Years of experimentation went into creating the perfect DVD envelope. In 1999, Netflix started out with a heavy cardboard mailer. With only 100,000 subscribers, costs weren't a concern yet. Then the company experimented with plastic envelopes, which proved not to be recyclable, and padding, which added too much to postage costs. Both top-loading and side-loading envelopes made an appearance.
Seven years of tweaking have paid off: Netflix's low-cost mailers have helped it fend off competition from Wal-Mart (Research) and Blockbuster. How well those iconic red envelopes will help the company fend off the newest threat - video-on-demand - remains to be seen. For a gallery illustrating how the envelope evolved over the years, click here.
You've seen the comical ads on TV, you've picked up the ticket-stubshaped flyers in Best Buy, and you probably already know a friend,relative or co-worker who uses it. What I am talking about is Netflix,the DVD-by-mail order service where you can "Rent up to 3 DVD's at a timefor $20.00 a month, keep them as long as you want, no late fees, ever !!" This part is true, however, Netflix is not as great at the ads make it outto be.
I subscribed to Netflix over a year ago and was immediately impressedwith the quantity of movies and the quality of the service. I found outthere was a distribution center 45 minutes away from my house, so shippingwould be a next day turnaround. In fact, I was amazed when I got an emailwith a TDS of 8:00am notifying me that Netflix had received a movie thatI'd sent back 8:00pm the night earlier, via regular mail. Two hours later,I got another e-mail stating that the next movie in my queue would beshipped that afternoon, --and there it was in my mailbox by noon thefollowing day. I thought that Netflix was all that, and then some. During the ensuing weeks I incessantly raved to Jerichoabout how wonderful Netflix was and nagged him to sign up for the servicehimself and get Attrition listed as a referrer. He refused to sign up;citing that going to the mailbox would expose him to excessive sunlight,but he did agree to sign up the site as a referrer, which I will talkabout later.
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