Much like their sister site, Gothamist, Laist occasionally dabbles in that which they do not really specialize in, and often the results are hilarious. This time is no different.

A little background. Recently, I switched from Netflix to Blockbuster Online. Why? Because Netflix all but said they have no intention of supporting the Mac with their new streaming offering. My thinking was, “if you’re not going to support me, why should I support you?” Blockbuster has been a complete pleasure since, and the shipping center for Blockbuster is located in the same area as Netflix (at least for my area).

Anyway, Laist decided to post why they “fall short of being a good service.” On many of their points, however, Laist is full of crap.

First, we never received the movies we wanted from the top of our queue. The first movie on our list at the beginning of the month was Amores Perros. The first movie at the top of our list at the end of the month was Amores Perros. The entire month its status was “A short wait”. Well, we’re done waiting.

Oh, and Netflix is any better? Aside from the fact that this hasn’t happened to myself or anyone I know using Blockbuster, Netflix throttles customers who rent a lot of movies. In other words, if you return your movies quickly, they’re available in the system, and you’re waiting, you still won’t get the movie at a regular speed because they’re protecting their profits. Lovely. I guess you guys aren’t renting enough movies to get throttled. Hopefully it doesn’t happen to you.

Blockbuster Online acquired an unanticipated 2 million subscribers last quarter, and has failed to keep up with the demand. We were roped in by the Total Access program, which supposedly never leaves you empty-handed since you get free new release rentals in-store. When you actually go to the store however, everything is checked out and you end up wandering around looking for anything to rent. I don’t want to rent a Steven Seagal movie or American Pie 5. What the hell is the point of free in-store rentals when there is jack shit available in the store? Garbage.

Not for nothing, but if you can’t find anything in Blockbuster, how much better is any online service going to be anyway? Either way, the fact that movies are hard to get in the store is the reason you joined an online service to begin with. The whole point of the in-store rental is that you don’t have to wait for another movie, not that you’ll be able to get exactly the movie you want, dope.

Third, it took forever to receive our movies. From where I live they get mailed from a distro center in Santa Ana, so it takes around 2 days to receive your movies… usually. One week we didn’t even receive any movies. Netflix’s turnaround is 1 day, not 2. In theory, Blockbuster never leaves you without movies. Wrong. In practice, Netflix kicks Blockbuster’s ass.

Where the hell do you live? Area 51? I joined on Wednesday and had my first movies on Friday. I sent two back on Monday and had new ones on Wednesday. How much faster do you need? If you didn’t get a movie for a week, call ‘em. They’ll extend your billing cycle. You may also wanna call your postmaster, though, as it sounds like your problem is mail-related, not Blockbuster related.

Fourth, the recommendation system is a joke in comparison to Netflix. We have no idea what type of algorithm they are using over at Blockbuster for their recommendation system but it is useless. We took the time to tediously rate 493 movies in their system, which then recommended 200 movies back to us. And by a shot in the dark, we were interested in seeing 6 out of those 200 recommendations (which were added to our queue). We’d like to think that if anyone randomly named 200 movies, we would be interested in more than only 6 of the ones he or she mentioned.

Okay. Whatever. Who knew online recommendation systems weren’t perfect? For the record, Netflix isn’t any better. On numerous occasions, I’ve had movies I’ve already rated recommended to me.

Let me repeat that.

I’ve had movies that I’ve already rated appear in my section telling me what I should see.

If you go by any recommendation system, you probably don’t have a mind of your own enough to care anyway. They’re guidance, not religion.

Fifth, the way in which you search for movies is lacking. You can only search by movie name or actor. How about date range, movie studio, genre? Nope. You can of course, use their categories to browse movies (80’s, horror, etc). But the movies listed under each category are pathetic. Most of the movies are so far from worth watching that it feels like you’re wading through the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart.

Stop it. On Netflix, you can’t even pick what you search by, you just get a search box that returns movie names or actor names. Oh, and genre names and Popular matches. So let’s say you search for Universal, you get Universal Soldier under popular matches, 0 people matches, and 0 genre matches. Lovely. I don’t really understand how that’s more intuitive than Blockbuster’s system, but so be it. This is supposed to be how one is more intuitive than the other, and in reality, it’s the same thing.

If you’re going to nitpick, do it with something worth nitpicking about. Seriously.

Truth be told, Blockbuster may suck too, but to say Netflix kick’s Blockbuster’s ass and then to bring up such irrelevant points in defense of that… Well… I think it proves that the folks at Laist should stick to what they do best… Whatever that is.

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