Blockbuster, once the ubiquitous neighborhood movie rental shop, is going the way of the dodo and the Woolworths. In an effort to cut costs, Blockbuster has shuttered video stores across the nation, including several in my neighborhood. Then, to make itself more competitive, it launched an online video rental service much like its competitor, Netflix.
Just like Netflix, Blockbuster lets you purchase a movie rental plan and ships you DVDs directly to your house. When you are done watching the movie, you put it back into its prepaid mailing envelope and send it back to Blockbuster. When they receive it, they ship you the next movie on your video wish list.
Because it depends so much on the mail, the speed of getting your DVDs returned-and thus getting your next movie shipped to you-is of the greatest importance. I used to subscribe to Netflix, which mailed me my next movie TWO DAYS after I sent it in. Then I decided to switch to Blockbuster, which took a whopping five to six days to send me my next movie. You can guess the result: I switched back to Netflix.
I decided to investigate why there was such a difference in movie rental turnaround between Netflix and Blockbuster. That’s when I realized, by looking at the return evenlopes, that Netflix had a distribution center in Honolulu, Hawaii, while Blockbuster required me to mail my DVDs to California.
In other words, when I returned a DVD to Netflix, they got it the next day at their Hawaii warehouse and mailed me my DVD immediately. Blockbuster took a lot longer because my DVD had to cross the Pacific Ocean, get processed in their mainland warehouse, and then get sent all the way back to me.
Because of this, Blockbuster understandably suffered among its Hawaii customers. In an effort to reinvigorate its market share and become more competitive in the Hawaii market, Blockbuster has just announced that it has opened a Hawaii movie distribution center.
In an exclusive email sent out to members of its email mailing list, Blockbuster says that its Honolulu movie distribution center has just opened, pushing Blockbuster’s collective amount of distribution centers across the nation to almost 40.
Blockbuster promises “[e]ven faster delivery. We know that receiving DVDs quickly is important to you. It’s important to us, too.” This made me very happy to read. But that’s not all! “Now,” the exclusive email reads, “DVDs shipped to you from our Honolulu distribution center can arrive in your mailbox even more quickly than before. Plus, your returns will be processed in Honolulu – so you can receive the next DVD in your Queue even sooner!”
“I’m really glad that they made this change so that their shipments are expedited,” says Jeremy, one Hawaii resident. Now, Blockbuster can finally compete equally with Netflix for the Hawaii movie rental business.
