...so I don't end up receiving at least 2 broken discs each month. It's gotten to be such a problem that we replaced our mailbox (not kidding) to eliminate the potential that it was our mailman jamming the things into our box that was responsible. We don't dare to report every one that arrives broken, for fear that Netflix is going to cut us off...I'd say we report half as received broken, and send the other half back to Netflix hoping that they'll chalk the damage up to something that happened on the way between us and them.

This cannot be good for their bottom line, and I can't be the only person who receives so many fractured discs.

Would putting a little bit of cardboard in the mailers seriously be more expensive than replacing thousands of broken discs each month?

...and unwatchable. Almost nothing makes my blood boil as much as eagerly anticipating the arrival of a movie I want to see and then not being able to watch it. Grrrrr...

I tried to create a web business in this space and found a conspiracy of circumstances aligned to benefit some (big) businesses and to be detrimental to small start up businesses. Netflix has a deal with the motion picture industry (collusion, monopoly, price fixing etc...) that allows them to revenue share with the industry. They don't pay market price for the DVDs they send to consumers. They pay anything for the DVDs. The DVDs are provided to them free by the industry. That is why they don't care if they get beat up in the mail. They have been given a sweetheart deal with the post office. They do not pay full rate for their mailer, and are given special handling privileges by the post office. My attempts to start a similar but much smaller business resulted in a 75% broken disc rate, and also higher mailing fees per unit. When I tried to get the same handling and shipping cost deal as Netflix I was basically treated as a standard customer and told to pay standard rates and to improve the break rate by shipping in expensive bubble wrap packages. If you have millions in capital, can lobby the postal service (a public service), and can make back room deals with the entertainment industry...you can have a disc through the mail business. Anyone else, forget it. These types of business collusions stymie the ideas of a free and fair market and result in big businesses controlling a market space from the get go. Netflix is not an example of tiny company making it big, they had millions in capital and friendly deals with the industry from the beginning. Judging from their revenue sharing deals with the industry, you could say they are nothing more than a for profit marketing and distribution arm of the industry itself. Look who is in this space: Netflix, Blockbuster, and Walmart.

I've been a NetFlix customer for going on 4 years. In that time I've had a total of 2 disks delivered in an unwatchable state. I wonder what the deal is with others who've had so many problems.

Voice of Reason, why do you think your breakage rate was 75% when NetFlix rate is much lower? Does the USPS handle their mailers differently from how they handled yours?

That seems like it would be a really easy fix. Just rotate the return address printing on the envelopes 180 degrees. Now the leading edge is the disk again, not the floppy side. Dang. I should patent that idea, hold on a second...

Anecdotally, I've been a Netflix customer for at least 3 years, and have only had 2 or 3 disks arrive unplayable, and those tended to be titles that would be attractive to families with small children. I've generally figured it was poor handling by kids that caused most of the problems I've had.

If you're getting 2 bad disks a month, perhaps it's not the mailers' fault. Maybe you've got a postal sorters who are mad their supervisors make them hand-sort the mailers, and take it out on the disks.

The postal system needs companies like Netflix and web retail to stay afloat. Electronic forms of personal mail and billing are really cutting into their traditional income sources.

I've always hated those mailers. What idiot puts a damageable disc in the mail in a flimsy paper envelope? It's a stupid idea from the beginning, and as much as I enjoy the service, the design of the mailers proves that the company cares less about its customers' satisfaction than about making the service as cheap as possible to run, even if it means pissed off customers. (See the whole throttling scandal for more proof.)

And Mister Marker: those discs do not arrive scratched because of the Post Office. If the mailer's intact, then the discs haven't been touched during shipping. You can blame all those scratched, unreadable discs on asshole CUSTOMERS who refuse to take care of them. I saw the exact same thing when I worked in a video store - people tend to think DVDs are indestructible, so they toss them around, don't clean them, and generally treat them like shit. So be kind to your discs, and help pass the good karma around!

I'm a former Postal Service and UPS employee, and the amount of waste generated by Netflix is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else the USPS does day in and day out. It's the world's least efficient bureaucracy.

Given that everything other than first class mail can be legally delivered by private companies, I can't help but wonder why the federal government is still in the mail business at all.

The private carriers pay better, treat their people better, and are more efficient from pickup to delivery. Why is the government in competition with private companies?

Because we can't depend on private companies to do things which hurt their bottom line. Driving to millions upon millions of homes six days a week is the antithesis of "efficiency", especially when gas is $3+ a gallon.

At some point a private co will decide it's inefficient to deliver mail to the middle of nowhere or a new exurb or a "dangerous" neighborhood, and stop doing it.

Now if you want to discuss raising junk mail rate,s and not having the USPS be beholden to those business interests, that's another matter. If our two-cat, no-kid household gets a kid's toy/cloting catalog every day, it is defacto too cheap to send that crap out.