Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
When you submit a concern to the BB support site, it tells you that your concern will be responded to within four hours. Here we are on the next day and an email arrived in my inbox.
Hello Brian,
Thanks for contacting BLOCKBUSTER Online Customer Care.
I’m sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. I know that you are still waiting for your movie “West Wing: The Complete Second Season – Disc 1 (2000).” This movie is still in “short wait” status. “Short Wait” means the title currently has more requests than copies available for shipment. We anticipate that we should be able to ship you the title within the next few weeks, provided a distribution center near your has a copy in stock. Please keep in mind that due to the constant change in availability factors, even if it has the highest priority in your queue, we can’t guarantee that the title will be shipped within the estimated timeframe.
Unfortunately, we cannot shipped the movie “West Wing: The Complete Second Season – Disc 1 (2000).” Still this movie is not available.
I hope this information helps, Brian. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.
Always here to help,
Glenda
Customer Care Associate
BLOCKBUSTER Online
Ok. Take note of how they clearly have some database with the movie title in it so they can press a button in their form letter and it will say “West Wing: The Complete Second Season – Disc 1 (2000).”…just like you’d say it casual conversation.
One of my favorite movies from the 80’s has got to be “Back to the Future: Disc 1 of 1 (1985)”
Here we go. My response:
Glenda,
Yes, I do understand that limited supply of discs results in a waiting period and that “the next few weeks” can be over six weeks for a disc that can’t possibly be in high demand. (As I said in my first letter.)
However, you proved my point straight out: “provided a distribution center near your has a copy in stock”. What you *should* do, as a DVD powerhouse, is go to another distribution center to get discs that are out of stock at my local center. 1) Call it a “short wait” 2) After two weeks, if it still hasn’t shipped, **be proactive in keeping your customers happy** and find a copy somewhere in your nationwide network of stores and distribution centers. Unless Blockbuster only owns a single copy of The West Wing, Season 2, disc 1…
What’s even lamer is that disc 3 arrived first, then a few weeks later, disc 2…you’d think that if there is an order to the discs, that the customer would want to watch them in order! (This happens with TV shows I get from you all the time…so frustrating!)
Hopefully you can see past the standard “you’ll have to wait” responses and realize how silly this all is, and why more and more people are bailing from your “Totally Limited Access” plan to go with the big N. I don’t have a business degree, but I do know that keeping customers generates more revenue than losing them.
I’m one-foot out the door already.
brian
Totally Dissatisfied w/Access
And then they sent me a survey. Nice.
