Junkies

I'm told the first step is to acknowledge the fact that you have a problem. Hello, my name is Wayward, and we're Netflix junkies. We're usually using Netflix at least 3, and sometimes 5, times a week. If we go more than 2 days without Netflix, we become anxious and begin compulsively checking the mailbox for the arrival of that next fix.

I suppose it was peer pressure that got me started. I didn't go out of my way to find Netflix. Really it was Scoob that got me started. He signed us up and he usually picks the flix, I'm just mooching from his stash.

Okay, seriously now. I don't think I can keep that up much longer, but we do love our Netflix and we do actually use it that often. I like that we can browse movies and watch the trailers online, choose what we want and the movie is delivered to us. And the no late fee thing is great. That's what kept us from renting B.N. (Before Netflix); we usually returned movies ontime to Blockbuster, but we still got nailed with late fees half the time. It became such a hassle to argue with them every time that we just stopped renting altogether.

And I can't remember the last movie I saw at a theater. Well, if I stop and think about it I can. It was Dodge Ball. But I only saw it at a theater because I was taking Dad to the movies for Father's Day. So when was that, 2004? We just watched House Bunny the other night, which is a movie I had no interest in seeing at the theater. But it was quite funny and would have been worth a matinee admission. (I made Scoob keep it so I can watch it again before we return it.)

Yeah, I'm one of those people. I can watch a movie repeatedly, even back-to-back, and enjoy it every single time. Oh, and maybe it's an OCD thing, but I also cannot not finish a movie after I've begun watching it. No matter how many times I've seen it, even if I just saw it.

I still don't understand how Netflix makes a profit. I certainly don't think they make much of a profit from us. We pay about $20 each month for unlimited movie rentals and we can have 3 movies checked out at a time. (We rent a mix of regular and Blu-ray movies.) I've read that Netflix pays first-class postage both ways, in which case about half of our monthly fee goes toward postage. But I imagine they probably get a pre-sort bulk mail discount, though I don't know what that discount is.

If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at Netflix, I ran across this photo essay the other day. I had assumed the sorting centers were much more automated than this. It looks like it takes a lot of labor to run the operation. Which is probably one of the reasons they're raising their rates again (effective April 27th), but only for the Blu-ray customers. It's an incredibly small increase when you think about it.