Have you ever wondered about those online mail order movie rental stores that you hear about? Have you ever checked to see what they were really all about? Neigh Sayers will automatically say something like – “mail my movies – that’s crazy, I’m not going to rent my movies by mail.” Have you ever asked them – why not? Well, I haven’t either, but I have personally compared a mail order movie rental place (Netflix), a large movie rental chain store (Movie Gallery) and a local movie rental store (Video Warehouse) and here’s what I found.
For those of you whom have not rented by mail, this is how it works: after setting up an account online you simply select the movies you want to watch and place them in a queue in the order you wish to watch them. Next, the movie is shipped to you (free) via regular mail and is usually received in one business day. Watch the movie, put it back in the pre-packaged mailer provided for you and drop in the mailbox. You do not need to provide packaging or postage it’s all provided for you. Once the movie is received back to the store (usually within one business day) the next movie in your queue will ship. There are no due dates and you can have 1 to 3 movies out at a time depending on your plan selection. You can even elect to receive an e-mail every time a movie is received and shipped.
The obvious difference is the way you choose the movies that you want to watch. At Movie Gallery and Video Warehouse you physically go to the store and choose your movies based on what’s available. On Netflix, you go online and select movies for your queue to be mailed the next day. You will have your movies instantly with the first two options the third requires you to wait one business day. One business day you ask? Yes, I can attest that it usually arrives within one business day. Since we typically only watch movies on the weekend we can order our movies early in the week and have them readily available before the weekend.
Let’s use the comparison chart below to analyze a typical monthly scenario for our family which is approximately 6 movie rentals per month. There is at least one weekend where we do not get to watch the movies as planned and then we must decide between taking the movie back late or to return a movie that we have not watched. We are notorious for not having movies back in time.
Store / Prices / Due Date / Late Fees
Netflix / $13.99*/month with 2 movies at once / None / None
Movie Gallery / $3.99*/movie / 3 nights / Same as rental cost – $3.99
Video Warehouse / $0.99/movie / 1 night / Same as rental cost – $0.99
*Pricing may vary by plan or specials
Six movies per month equates to $13.99 on Netflix, $23.94 at Movie Gallery and $5.94 at Video Warehouse. At Video Warehouse the movie has to be back the next day so you can pretty much bet that you will pay at least $1.98/ per movie which amounts to $11.88/mo. Factor in a least one movie that you do not have time to watch which leaves you the option to (1) keep the movie and incur at late fee or (2) return the movie to rent and watch another day. In our scenario we decide to keep the movie and watch it 3 days later. This now brings our monthly total to $13.99 at Netflix, $27.93 at Movie Gallery and $13.86 at Video Warehouse. You can quickly start to see where the savings may lie.
For our family there is no comparison, we save money with Netflix mostly due to late fees and unwatched movies. Netflix gives us the flexibility to return movies at our leisure and we can still go online and select movies together as a family. Netflix will also use your prior rental history and ratings to recommend other movies that you may like. It is slightly harder to see a list of new releases because they do not have an overhead sign listing the them, but you can sort by movies released in the past week or month and find them this way.
The local movie store Video Warehouse comes close to matching the money but this store is usually not as convenient in location as the larger rental chain and it is usually in an old musty building that you can’t wait to get out of. The local store usually has the new releases more readily available but may not have the extensive movie library of a larger chain, meaning that sometimes older or less known titles are not available at the small local store.
Do the comparison yourself and see what’s best for your family. Just be sure to factor in all of the costs including late fees. And yes, you can rent movies by mail, and you can do so without additional costs and/or hassles. Try it and you’ll be surprised how convenient it really is. I know that I’m not the only one who is dropping little red envelopes into the office outbox these days.
