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Comment by nothlit | Hacker News Reader

I think the throttling thing was a long time ago. I've been a Netflix subscriber for 4 years and have never been throttled. And yes, there have been many occasions where I've sent discs back on the same day I received them (putting them in a blue mail box that hasn't been picked up yet). The only delays I've ever had were due to postal holidays or once when a couple of discs over a span of a few days were mangled in some processing equipment (the USPS dutifully delivered the torn-off front flap to me, sans DVD).

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Netflix has never stopped "throttling", perhaps it has gotten better over the years as they opened more distribution centers & expanded their library, but it's never gone away. They are rather vague about how it works & don't want to explain it to customers which is why they tuck it deep in their DVD Terms and Conditions.

DVD Terms and Conditions

As a result of your viewing habits and our operational practices, the actual number of DVDs you rent in any month may vary, and you may experience differentiated service during the course of your membership. Also, such service may be different from the service we provide to other members on the same membership plan. The type of differentiated service you may experience includes, (i) the shipment of your next available DVD occurring at least one business day following return of your previously viewed DVD, (ii) delivery taking longer, as the shipments may not be sent from your local distribution center and (iii) the DVDs you receive coming from lower in your Queue more often than our other members.

http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse?id=7686

Netflix has algorithms that decide how quickly your next dvd is sent. More accurately, it uses a score to rank the group of people who have the same DVD at the top of their queue in order of who should be allocated the next available copies.

This score is based on a number of factors, with the objective being to maximize subscriber happiness (one example question is whether is it more valuable to have quick turnaround for a frequent subscriber who is already happy with the service, versus an infrequent user who might be on the fence--it is not obvious who would be more sensitive to and negatively impacted by a delay in receiving the next DVD).

(Source: I work with people who previously worked at Netflix. This is not confirmed fact but a loose understanding based on casual conversations.)

Living in Hartford (home of a distribution center), I find that I am still experiencing some throttling on my unlimited disk plan. I recently went on watching Big Bang Theory and saw a surprising decrease in turn-around-time as I started to return disks at a regular pace again.

I don't know if it is actually due to throttling or not, but Netflix is preceived at least to still be throttling me.

Same here. Our turn-around is usually two days. We routinely get the "we've received" emails but our next ones won't ship for 1-3 days after that. It's annoying considering the "unlimited" plan claim.

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