Well, we have the 5-at-a-time and there's been zero price drops in the nearly 2 years we've had Netflix. Which is alright I suppose, but a few dollars drop would be nice.

@Observer2121: At first they do, until a company starts driving down their own price and they have no other place to cut corners but on things like customer service, and here you are getting a product for way less than it was originally intended with no service to back it up.

*now* do you still think Consumers win?

Eventually it all ends up a big mess.

I got that both E-mail notices(like the one above) so I'm glad I'll be saving 2$ a month now.

OTOH I'm disappointed that Netflix felt the need to "Snail Mail" me an additional post card alerting me to the new low price. Its wasteful and stupid. If we have netflix...then we have E-mail....E-mail notices are fine....They better not send me ANOTHER post card in the mail about this latest price drop.

/I'm In Michigan
//Besides the postcards NetFlix rocks
/// I'll never go back to BB-Online

I have the following plan:

BLOCKBUSTER Total Access Premium $17.99 / month (plus taxes)
4 at-a-time, unlimited mailings
unlimited in-store free movie/discounted game exchanges
+1 FREE bonus Movie or Game Rental E-Coupon / Month

I've been using it for several months - getting ~7-8 movies between the B&M and mail. I have occasionally received the wrong disc or a scratched disc, but Blockbuster sends out a new copy as soon as you report it, and of course each one is good for a free in-store rental. I'd love to pay less, but I have to say I'm pretty satisfied with how things are right now.

@pinkbunnyslippers:

Actually consumers win in a price war.

@g-dog: maybe you're mailman was trying to discourage you from getting netflix. Then when they saw the blockbuster envelopes they just gave up.

Blockbuster's pricing is more likely to rise than fall. Right now their losing money on their Total Access subscribers in an attempt to gain market share. They can only eat these losses for so long.

This happens right after Blockbuster raises the price for Total Access on new customers and removes features on existing customers.

We've been using the $5.99 plan for 1 DVD at a time, two a month for a while now. Since we return them to the store, we get two free rentals, and four movies a month is what we typically watch. With the changes last month we lost the free game rental coupon though, which makes me a lot less excited about the whole plan.

I have to say that I don't like the smaller selection that blockbuster has, or how un-organized it all is (try to find the entire series of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Comples - Second Gig) but what's the point of using a mail service when 90% of you months subscription is spent waiting for your scratched movies to be replaced.

Moving on to the good: I get my movies (on average) a day faster than my parents who have netflix. Oh wait, but that's when I MAIL them in (which I almost never do) because I can take my movies to my local Blockbuster store...and they give me a free rental for every movie I take back. Do you know how great it feels to get 6 movies a week from your local blockbuster and never spend a penny? It's downright empowering.

I'm not bashing Netflix in any way. They're good, they started this whole market (or at least made it popular) and they seem to be good at what they do. I'm just saying $24 a year wouldn't make up the difference to me.

\/\/

I have Netflix's 3-at-a-time plan, and the last time a price-drop was announced here, I got it a week or two later. So they probably won't do everyone at the same time, but I'm sure they will extend the savings to everyone eventually.

No rate reduction, yet, for us in Southern California. Still $16.99.

@hebearmcghee:

I'm a longtime GreenCine subscriber, and agree their delivery times can get sketchy if you're not in the Bay Area. But they have plans to open an east coast distribution center in a few months, so stay tuned!

- "Hey Reed, do you think consumers like lower prices?"
- "I don't really know, Sam. What do you say we do some research?"
- "Good idea. How about we give the existing customers that are already happy paying $16.99 an instant $1 discount and see if they become... more... customers? More existing? More happy? More more?"
- "Well, I don't know what will happen, but if it has the word research in it, it must be a winner! Let's do it!"

[biz.yahoo.com]

Evidently this is not an across-the-board rate reduction.

@muddgirl: I guess the same could be said of Netflix's initial anti-consumer position. Raising rates every few months, no customer service available until three years after launch and even then the service # had limited hours and was only seen when you were log off of your account. Netflix has always been looking out for the consumer, since day one.

I once had an old professor say "NOBODY wins in a price war". It's for good reason too.

Never had any problems with Blockbuster, and been an online customer since 2004. This is good for Netflix consumers, competition is a good thing.

I hope they don't "Low-price" themselves out of business!

I must say this is a great and exciting trend. I would love to see it spill over into other sectors, like cell phones for instance...

Don't know about it being some areas though, I'm in the D.C. metro area.