Netflix hacks

With all the hype about Netflix throttling the mailings of high volume members I thought I would publish a couple of Netflix hacks, cause throttling isn’t the only way to slow you down.

First, you can avoid throttling simply by keeping one movie longer and/or sending it out of phase with the rest of your returns. If you keep one movie for a week or longer you can dramatically increase the average return time, without a substantial reduction in your rental rate. Netflix expects a surge of movies to be mailed Monday, and checked in by Wednesday, if you’re constantly returning movies in the middle of the week (esp the same day you get them) then that is a nice big red flag.

You can hack the system by returning the movies out of phase or out of order. If you normally return all three or five same day, return one or two a day and don’t return them in the order you got them. Most people don’t watch movies in order you get them, some movies you’ve got to “feel” before you watch. So if you check out Caddy Shack, Police Academy and foreign film with a name you can’t pronounce, then hang on to the foreign film a day longer, before it goes back. All these hacks are designed to simulate the normal patterns of the high volume movie watcher, so you stay high volume but aren't throttled.

Netflix can also slow you down by mailing your movies from further away or having you return the movies to a more distant return center. This is not actually throttling, it is all part of Netflix’s inventory management system, but it can add days to your return times. The first key is if you hear about a cool “cult” movie on the radio or something it your area, add it to your list but not the top, give it a week or two. Here’s why, if a movie that only has a few copies in inventory undergoes an unexpected but localized surge in interest (like a popular DJ recommends it), then the first people who get it will likely not be getting it from their local distribution center, but a more distant center where it has been gathering dust. Netflix will then stage most of the copies to the area of demand, so the next round or two of people will get it and return it to the local center. Once demand dries up or spreads to other areas, Netflix will disperse the copies again and those people will have to return to a more distant center. So, if you stage your rental just right you can be in the middle of the demand and have neither of the longer times en route on you.

Now as for Netflix having you mail a movie to a distant place, you can hack that too. Netflix allows you to return 2 movies in on envelope, so if you don’t use the far away return envelope, you can save time. Now it can sometimes add a day to the check in if you do this, but if mailing it to the end of the earth will add more time then this is still worth it.

The last hack is different kind of hack, it is how to optimize your mailing. When you return your movies, your choice of post office matters a great deal. For me my local post office is the address of the return center, but here are some loose rules. Your mailbox is the worst place, unless your carrier is ultra-reliable and you don't live in a residential area. The big blue mail boxes aren’t bad assuming they feed a good post office. If you live in a big town the best post offices to do your mailing aren’t, the ones where you can stand in line to buy stamps. Those are retail post offices which are set up to deliver mail to residential customers, not process lots of out going mail. In general these post offices will be much slower, adding at least a day to your return times. The best post offices are commercial post offices, and are generally in areas that are not residential. These are recognized by the fact that they don’t have a retail counter, so you’ve probably never been to it, and the trucks parked around them are mostly semi’s not small carrier trucks. These post offices are nodes, all they do is process and route mail. (Retail post offices often send and recieve their mail to/from these locations.) A movie mailed from a commerical post office (if the Netflix center is local) will go straight to the last stop (same or next day), and if the center is not local, then the movie is much closer to leaving town and arriving at the Netflix center.

Hope all this helps!