Tired of Blockbuster / Netflix Selections? Cancel for a month
We’re loyal Blockbuster Online (formerly Netflix) subscribers. However, even though we have about 100 movies in our queue, there’s really nothing we’re excited to see. Eragon was a bore, we sent back Seven Years in Tibet without watching it, so right now all we have is Hidalgo…ugh. The only two we’re interested in getting soon is Pursuit of Happyness and Rocky Balboa, but is it worth about $20 per month to keep the service?
How to fill your queue with movies you actually want to see
Both Blockbuster AND Netflix allow you to cancel your subscription at any time. The good things are
1. You can reinstate your account at any time and
2. They don’t delete your queue
This means that, if you time it right, you can cancel at the end of a billing cycle, have 7-10 days, depending on the service, to return all your movies, and then start back up whenever there’s enough interesting movies to add to your queue. Therefore, you’re not stuck in a movie slump.
It’s also a good method during months that you might be away for extended periods, watching more TV than usual, or just want to be doing something else than watching movies.
Does anyone else do this?
I am a member of Blockbuster’s service and find myself frequently running into the same problem.
I have a modded Xbox with Xbox Media Center installed on it. So, when I get movies in the mail I immediately rip them to my computer, exchange them at the store for more movies, rip those, rinse and repeat. This allows me to rip well over 18 movies per month – more than I ever end up watching in the same month.
Right now I am in a dry spell where I have a good stock of movies ripped and waiting to be watched, and at the same time there is nothing really interesting in my queue. I think I may just take your advice and deactivate my account until I can accumulate another good bundle of movies in my queue.
Now I’m assuming that you rip those movies, watch them once, and then delete them? (just say yes)
My husband and I love movies and we’re independent filmmakers when we have the time. We’re excited about a bunch of selections in our queue, including TV series, documentaries and independent films.
But in the past week we decided to reduce our Blockbuster plan from $20/month to $5.99/month. We get two movies max. The reason is we’re in a bit of a money crunch for a few months and there are upcoming films we want to see when they open in the theater (Spider-Man 3, Oceans 13, Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers, etc).
We made a Google spreadsheet listing which ones we’ll see when they open (matinee-only), which ones we’ll see at a $1.50 second-run theater, and which ones we’ll rent. When the summer movie season is up, we’ll probably go back to our $20 plan again and catch up on indie films.
Does anyone else run into Blockbuster just sending any movie they choose? We have gotten movies that neither of us put in our queue!!! How does this happen????
Ok, so Hidalgo was actually a good movie.
Now we’re saying this works with both Blockbuster and Netflix? Is this a recent thing? Is there a certain time period you have to reactivate by or what?
Because NetFlix surely killed my account when I tried this a couple years back.
We had Netflix about 2 years ago, cancelled to switch to Blockbuster, didn’t like blockbuster, so we reactivated Netflix about 2 months later. Our queue was intact.
Not sure what happened with your account. Perhaps it was before they made some unknown changes to their service?
Not sure either.
I do like Aaron’s idea though. I did that when I got my first trial subscription with them.
Doesn’t really work now since they have all these different account types where they limit the number of movies you can get.
Oh well.
Although we watch a lot of movie, we don’t get tided with those monthly thing. I guess one good thing about cancel for a month is you can be able to enjoy the free trail again?! 😛
Unfortunately since they don’t delete your account, they’ll know you already had a subscription to that address.
If don’t have any further movie in the stock of netflix and want to take the break for a month, then you can even change the delivery address to that of your friend’s who is interested in watching movies. Let them enjoy for a month and after you make up your mind to continuining the account, change the shipping address back to yours.