A week ago, Undergrads: Freshman Season Disc 2 shifted up to the top of my Netflix queue, and it was mailed to me. I loaded it into the player, really looking forward to continuing the series. Sadly, my player wouldn’t play it. It popped a “DISC IS DIRTY” message up on the screen. Now, it’s not uncommon for rental DVDs to be scratched – and my player isn’t the most tolerant when it comes to poor conditioned DVDs – but I’d never gotten an error message on the TV before.

When I looked at the disc, it wasn’t scratched, it was cracked/creased radially. The crack didn’t go all the way through the DVD, which explains why I didn’t see it when I loaded in the player. The top/inked/labeled side looked fine, but when you flipped it over you saw a crack all the way through to the ink. The disc has a certainly ‘flexibility’ that non-cracked discs did not.

Netflix has a feature that if you receive the wrong disc or a broken one, you can go online and report it and they’ll instantly mail you out a new one. This circumvents the normal mail-it-back, get-the-next-one procedure (and saves you from having re-add the movie to your queue.) I did this last Thursday, and popped the DVD in the mail on Friday. Netflix acknowledged the request and said they would send one out shortly.

Monday, I get the normal “this disc has been received” email from them – but still no replacement DVD. No confirmation from them that they’ve mailed my replacement DVD. Tuesday, I get an email saying I should expect it on Thursday. (Normally it’s next day, but my guess is it’s being shipped from a different, further away distribution center.) Thursday comes and goes and no replacement movie.

It’s disappointing that this is taking longer to receive/replace than a normal movie in my queue. I’d like to think of it not that Netflix is dropping the ball, or not living up to expectations, (although to be fair, they are) but rather me having eclectic tastes and Netflix not having a quick enough contingency plan when the normal scenario goes bad.

Maybe it will finally get delivered today, guy.

[ Edit 1/16/06: The DVD arrived on Saturday, 10 days after I reported it broken and 5 days after they acknowledged receiving the broken disc. It mailed from Santa Ana, CA which I guess explains some of the delay. I finished watching it yesterday, and will mail it out tomorrow. I wish they would make an Undergrads: Sophomore season! ]