Grr...Blockbuster...

[LingualMonkey]

Don't know where to put this, so move it if it needs a-movin'.

Anyway.

I use Blockbuster Online, and for the last year, it's been great. Then this week happened.

I've been on an old movie kick, renting stuff from the 1950s-1970s. This week, I ordered The Thomas Crowne Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway from 1968. Directed by Norman Jewison--a classic. As an added bonus, I'm covering aspects of cinematography in an intro to film class next week, and I wanted to use it as an example of split-screening, since Jewison was amazingly innovative in that respect.

What arrives? The Thomas Crowne Affair from 1999, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Inside the envelope is a note that reads, "This is not the 1968 version!" I go to the website, tell them there is a problem, and ask for the movie to be resent. With luck, I'll have it for Monday, and can still use it in class.

It showed up this afternoon. Right envelope, wrong movie again.

I can understand how this happens. After all, Pierce Brosnan and Steve McQueen are virtually identical, save for the fact that Brosnan is dark haired, British, and alive and McQueen is blonde, American, and dead.

Idiots.

[Stormraven]

Who put the note inside the envelope? It seems that someone knew what you'd ordered.

[ShadedWings]

That or someone else ordered the older version as well and sent it back with the note inside, frustrated, and they didn't look before they sent it to you. How annoying.

[LingualMonkey]

That or someone else ordered the older version as well and sent it back with the note inside, frustrated, and they didn't look before they sent it to you. How annoying.

It was this. Whomever rented it before me told them it was the wrong version, but no one paid any attention to that.

[Trayol]

I've had this happen to me LingualMonkey with my Netflix account. I had wanted to watch the original Italian Job, but I was sent the remake in the original's packaging. Luckily my first replacement was the right movie.

[tjay]

Pierce Brosnan is actually Irish, not British...

That's stupid though - once is acceptable, but to do exactly the same again?

[smileyeagle1021]

Oh Lingual Monkey, you just hit on the second biggest reason that I left Blockbuster for Netflix... several times they sent me the wrong movies... except I was having the opposite problem... I'd order the original, then order the remake, and have them send me the original again
However, that wasn't enough to get me to leave... the store that I did my in store exchanges through fruadulently charging my card though... that was enough to get me to leave.

[LingualMonkey]

So I just got back from the local Blockbuster store, which had the 1968 version of The Thomas Crowne Affair. The clerk was appropriately shamefaced, even though none of this was his fault.

It looks like the polo scene is back on the menu for class tomorrow.

I've had no problems with Blockbuster Online up to this point, so it'll take more than this to get me really angry with them. But if it starts happening again...

[Ben_Who]

The thing about Netflix is that you make the complaint on the website. I can't really see dropping a note into the envelope to be all that effective. (From the condition of the disks I get, which are running at about a 10% failure rate, it's pretty obvious that they don't do a lot of inspection at the warehouse.) The website has pushbutton complaints (disk damaged, disk lost, wrong disk) so a note just sounds like more work.

So far, I have only had one instance where the wrong item showed up in a Netflix envelope, but I would have felt a bit silly complaining about obscure stuff like this - I was on a Wagner kick at the time, and instead of the Pierre Boulez version of Gotterdammerung, which was the series I was in the middle of, they sent the Daniel Bahrenboim version instead, and as a Region 2. (My TV couldn't play it, but my computer could.) Given the content, it was probably the first time that disk had seen the light of day since Netflix took delivery of it, so I'm not all that surprised.

I watched it anyway. I didn't want the poor thing to feel unwanted. ("I'm being rented? Me? Oh, happy day!")

Love, Who?
("Kill the wabbit...")

[wolfie]

and instead of the Pierre Boulez version of Gotterdammerung, which was the series I was in the middle of, they sent the Daniel Bahrenboim version instead, and as a Region 2.

A bit off-topic, but the region 2 bit could be a serious problem. My understanding is that DVD players are required (licensing condition imposed by the movie industry) to have a limit on how many times they can switch regions (I believe it's 5 times), and after that limit is reached, they "lock" onto the region that put them at the limit. Either you switched regions manually on your computer, or it did it automatically - and you just used up 2 of your allowed region switches (to region 2, then back to your original region).