Tuesday, May 23, 2006

NPR visits Netflix


National Public Radio reporter Scott Horsley visited the Netflix distribution center in Santa Ana, California, and brought back a sweet photo of the zip code machine that Netflix uses to sort 17,000 mailers per hour, to speed things up for the postal service. He also reports on the following details of the Netflix service:
  • Netflix is one of the postal services FIVE LARGEST CUSTOMERS

  • Netflix ships and receives SEVEN MILLION DVDS PER DAY

  • The Santa Ana distribution center processes 130,000 DVDs per day

  • Membership is nearly 5 million

  • Membership is expected to be 6 million by year-end

  • Round-trip postage costs Netflix 78 cents per mailer

  • Upon their return, Netflix movies are stuffed into a new envelope BEFORE THE ENVELOPE IS ADDRESSED, which solves the mystery of the see-through slot on the back. That barcode is definitely used to determine how to address the envelope according to who gets the movie inside next

  • Netflix workers get a FREE DVD PLAYER and FREE NETFLIX SUBSCRIPTION

You can listen to the whole story here

3 comments:

  1. You left out how they say that the lawyer that filed that class action lawsuit that netted everyone a whole free dvd for a month, himself got 1.3 MILLION DOLLARS. But I'm sure he was just doing it for philanthropic reasons...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, the lawsuit is ridiculous!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    After reviewing some of the articles left on my consumer reviews
    website, I still cannot understand: Who is winning in online DVD Rental business?


    Blockbuster Service Reviews


    Here are some of the Blockbuster specific examples:
    Blockbuster Books, Records, Videos and DVD rentals
    Blockbuster Video Stores and Online service
    Blockbuster Late fees


    Netflix Service reviews

    Here are some of the Netflix specific articles:
    Netflix Complaints - 3 Movie at a time rental
    Netflix Quality of Service
    Netflix speed of service


    Can someone help me understand, who will come out on top here?

    Regards,

    ReplyDelete