How to Get the Most Movies from Netflix

Netflix is, of course, the best way to get movies as a college student. I just became a Netflix user when I recently won three years of Netflix from two different contests. I've only received three movies so far because my returns haven't been processed yet. I expected Netflix to be faster, based on what I've read about it. So, I did some research to find out how to get my movies returned faster and to get my queued movies shipped sooner.

First, even though there is a window on the envelope to show the barcode. This is only for shipping purposes and won't increase the return process time. Apparently, many users have wondered what the purpose of the window is.

Because Netflix bases the shipping priority on the amount of DVDs you rent, it seems that renting a lower amount of DVDs will give you faster service. That's kinda pointless though. One article that I read, "How To: Hacking Netflix", suggests keeping your queue short so that Netflix will be unable to choose a movie that you have given a lesser priority. I'm not sure if the author of that article actually read the Terms of Service that he quoted because it states:

those subscribers who receive the most movies may experience that (i) the shipment of their next available DVD occurs at least one business day following return of their previously viewed movie, (ii) delivery takes longer, as the shipments may not be processed from their local distribution center and (iii) they receive movies lower in their queue more often than our other subscribers

Therefore, even if a subscriber who receives a lot of DVDs has a short queue, it's possible that Netflix will just delay shipment for a day.

For now, all the DVDs in my queue have no wait time. This might be because I'm a new user or it could be because Netflix has expanded so much that the "throttling" that users have complained about is just something of the past.

I'll keep you updated about my Netflix experience. It seems like a great service, especially since I'm using it for free.