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Blockbuster Down For The Count? 12+ Hour Outage
As of 3am Eastern - still down.
Back up at 4:45 Pacific says MG. And it is up, yet instead of any note about the outage, you get a popover message about adding to Facebook. Shame.
Apparently the Blockbuster Web site has been down over 12 hours as of now (11pm Eastern). Reuters notes the site went down at 9:30AM Eastern today. Attempting to access the Blockbuster.com Web site produces the following error:
SITE UNAVAILABLE
We’re sorry; blockbuster.com is currently unavailable due to technical difficulties. We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and expect resolution tonight.
Ok fine, it’s down. No customer service phone number? No backup plan for dealing with customer issues during the downtime? That’s not acceptable. Where are their disaster recovery plans? Will this outage affect the stock on Tuesday morning? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
It would be interesting to see if Netflix has received a surge in traffic today. MG Siegler wonders if this is compounded by Netflix’s partnership with LG for the "living room". Maybe no one cares about Blockbuster anymore – it’s interesting that this wasn’t a bigger story today.
It’s finally back up Allen at 1:45 am Pacific Time. That was a nice little outage, no explanation anywhere to be found…
Perhaps not surprisingly they don’t seem to have shipped any movies out while it was down.
“Ok fine, it’s down. No customer service phone number? No backup plan for dealing with customer issues during the downtime? That’s not acceptable. Where are their disaster recovery plans? Will this outage affect the stock on Tuesday morning? Leave your thoughts in the comments.”
It’s a movie rental place. It posted a note about technical difficulties. It was down 12 hours. You’re acting as if the customers will become permanently traumatized by this event.
“Getting a life” comes to mind about now.
I too have been getting really slow shipments of DVDs and just thought it was me. I didn’t know about these “throttle holds” on shipping. Now the site is down when I went to check when my DVDs are coming and what’s next on my Q. I used to use Netflix but had a lot of bad DVDs – have they improved quality? Time to switch back again perhaps?!
My company sells performance and functional testing tools – maybe we can sell into Blockbuster as they seem to have no quality controls with their site just being down all day like this!
Okay, here’s the deal. Last postng was April 2008. Since then, Blockbuster has failed dozens of time. I check every night and I can tell you, they’re screwy, but worst of all, they’re totally unreliable. They don’t seem to care anymore; that’s the real problem. They take over a week sometimes to process my movies, even when I bring the movies into their store and have them scanned into their computer system. They like to send the movies out on wednesdays so they don’t have to process more than once a week. That stinks. They used to be the new and improved Netflix, but now they’re just lousy and unreliable. I’m pulling the plug and going back to netflix, how about you?
Actually no IT IS NOT Blockbuster’s business model, new CEO is moving as far away from online service as much as possible.
What I don’t understand is, even if their website is down, why are they unable to ship the movies in my queue? I would think Blockbuster’s shipping sites would have an advanced fool-proof system they follow, so even if the customer is unable to access their Blockbuster Online account, the movies in their queue that should be shipped will not also be affected. Very bad computer system management.
In regards to not having a backup recovery plan, its not unusual that when a site goes down, they don’t provide any Customer Service number. Take Facebook or Myspace for example. But then again.. we’re not paying for those services, are we?
Man does this suck! I haven’t been shipped a movie yet this year! I have 30 movies in my Que and many say long wait or coming soon when they are available at my brick and mortor store. I think this qualifies for a free month. Maybe a trip to Netflix is warranted.
Bluz
Maybe all of you should check out Netflix?! Blockbuster raises their rates and reduces their features twice in six months, wantonly throttles shipments, and goes dark for 12 hours and you all think maybe? I just jumped off the Blockbuster ship a couple weeks ago and Netflix is like a breath of fresh air. I’m paying $5 more per month for two extra movies and their community features are actually useful. Yeah I can’t trade in discs at the local store but I’d spend an inordinate amount of time there trying to find something worth watching.
Before they changed their shipping days to eliminate Saturday
and ‘limit’ monday shipping –their words which makes no sense
unless you are trying to ‘throttle’– I used to return DVDs on
friday and they would ship sat or monday.
Now if I return to the store even on thursday they don’t get
the replacement DVDs shipped until TUESDAY of the next week.
What used to ship in ONE BUSINESS DAY (still says that on my
new $34.99 contract), now takes FOUR DAYS TO SHIP! I complain
EVERY WEEK and get coupons when I insist, but it is not worth
the hassle to get fewer coupons than the DVDs would generate.
Enough is enough, I’m cancelling my contract NOW BEFORE IT
RENEWS … wait, I CAN’T GET ON TO CANCEL EVEN!!!@@!
I’ve been very unhappy with blockbuster online’s turn-around as of late. It’s been a week now and no movies. So, this morning I go to log in and see where my movies are…nothing. This might be the last straw that pushes me to Netflix.
That’s what BB just did. It is incredible for a website to shut down so long these days….very disgusting.
Goodnews for Netflix.
I am glad to find out i am not the only one experiencing very slow shipping times now. When I signed up a year and a half ago, they shipped movies out of my que almost imediately. I haven’t gotten one shipped to me in over a week now.
They have increased prices, decreased services, and limited benefits. After their last announcement, I was thinking about cancelling before my next renewal. Now I am sure I will.
That is unbelievable! A company of that size with no backup plan? Is this a sign that they could be in trouble? Time to go elsewhere for sure. Well, at least the Canadian site is still up http://www.blockbuster.ca/
I agree – put a damn phone number up there at least! They have absolutely no concern for the customer it seems.
I guess Canadians can still get dvds :)
I signed up for a trial took 8 days to get my first dvd’s I hope they don’t try to hit my card because im done with them going back to netflix. I don’t think anyone uses them anymore because the disc’s looked like new I never recived one from NF in this shape but they take to long to get the movies out I cant even check the status of my account.
Good catch on this story Allen. I really cant believe there was no buzz about this today! This is huge! I guess nobody in the US visits Blockbuster.com on a daily basis?
Complete shock to me – this IS blockbuster’s biz model these days… maybe they only care about their stores and the $4.99 rentals in manhattan?
I still am shocked that they have no disaster recovery process. In fact, where is Sarbox?
I too have had no movies shipped for over a week I’m pretty pissed. I think it might be time to go back to netflix since blockbuster is dropping the ball big time on this one… If it goes back up today and still no movies shipped i’m raising some h*ll with customer service tommorrow.