We recently introduced two new features to the Blockbuster Total Access Queue. Our users have been clamoring for these options, and we think they’re pretty handy.
Shuffle
Don’t know what to watch from your Queue next? Or like to live dangerously (in a very limited capacity)? Now you can randomly shuffle your Queue and see what comes up.
Just hit the Shuffle Queue button, and we’ll show you what your new top 10 titles would be.
You then have a chance to reject it and stay with your previous order, accept it to change to the new order, or reshuffle. You can shuffle as many times as you want, because this is America.
Sort by Availability
If you have an impressively oversized Queue like I do (currently at 207 titles), it’s not always easy to see which movies are available right now, and which you might have to wait on for a bit.
Well, friend, your (Queue-sorting) troubles are over. Now you can click on the Availability column heading in your Queue to sort by most available to least.
After it re-sorts, you can choose to save the new order permanently, or you can change a few of the position numbers on the left. Or you can click the Order column header to go back to the original sorting order.
We hope you enjoy the new features. Keep the suggestions coming!
Why doesn’t Dish/Blockbuster stop wasting time with stupid queue features and invest in something that matters like increasing inventory and availability with both movies and games?
I wish also that the features worked correctly. Two of my closest stores are CLOSING – meaning they are only selling inventory and NOT renting – yet the queue tells me I can rent in store AND how many copies are there.
If they can tell me how many copies a store has, then why can’t they ALSO remove the store from Favorite stores?
Seven of the stores in this area are closing yet the web site shows them as open and still renting. Please update the site. It would have been nice if they had left one store open on the north side of the Twin Cities area open. Might as well move to Netflix. Their mailings are faster then Blockbuster.
My irk with Blockbuster rental by mail is that you KNOW that your movies are received the day after you put them in the mail, yet somehow it works out that you only get one a week.
The reason I stayed with blockbuster and did not go to netflix for half the price is because of in store trades. Now that all 4 of the stores within 5 miles of my house have closed I may have to reconsider. Especially given my frustration with long waits for the first disc in a series. I currently have Disc 2 and Disc 3 of a series at home, shipped over Disc 1, while Disc 1 remains in my queue with the short wait notation. I do not want to start in the middle of a series! I have been a loyal blockbuster customer since the 1990′s when I first signed up in Dover, Delaware, but I am losing patience.
why do they keep closing stores when there online service is the worst out there.I hope than stay open 4 10 more months cause i got the year free and it still seem like im getting fucked.Netflix is way better and if they rented games it would be awesome
[...] Source: Blockbuster Blog [...]
Who care if you can shuffle your queue movies, they should work on getting the available queued movies out to their customers! It took me 6 emails with customer service, plus a phone call to FINALLY get my available titles shipped, PLUS they sent me a bonus movie. The BAD thing about the bonus movie is that it was the same movie that they already sent on the same day, only 9 minutes apart!! Also they completed skipped my 1st priority title that was/is available, so why in the heck would I shuffle my queue items, when it looks like it’s being ignored to begin with!
Plus, what’s the difference between “speed” vs “ordered queue?” That should not even be a choice since most customer order the movies in their preference so it should always be first available title in the queue, meaning speed in the order of queued titles! I set mine to speed and it took me 5 business days (plus the emails and phone call) before I got another shipment sent out!
This feature sucks. I put my queue in order for a reason, and now shuffling it is the default action if I hit the enter key, which makes it too easy to destroy all my work.
Why would I want to shuffle my queue in the first place?
How about fixing your broken-ass Web site instead of adding useless crap like this?
I agree with everyone of these comments on this page.I have been with blockbuster online since 2005. I have several movies on my list that I have been waiting for almost 2 years.So whats up with that.They do need to get more copies if htey are going to keep closing stores so we dont have to see the words very long wait or long wait.Hell whats the differnce.The many movies I have had on my list for sometime know have said very long wait since I put them on there.
Thought it would be good to have access through Dish, but it’s a separate thing. Have to convert present acct to the At Home acct but benefits are not as good for the price.
I agree the movies are taking forever, none of my 30 movies in my que are available, I have better chanced getting it from the redbox. Please increase your inventory! I have been waiting for my 3rd movie for days!
Being able to shuffle your queue isn’t a sweet feature when half your discs are listed as Long Wait, Very Long Wait or On Order. Plus your lovely habit of shipping discs out of order from how they’re listed in my queue. Now the latest throttling scheme of shipping *all* my discs from a different *state* has me seeing red. Netflix may have gone about their price increases the wrong way but I would rather pay more for good, consistent, fast service with far more options than you offer. Goodbye, Blockbuster, I hope the door hits you on the way out.
i ve been with blockbuster for years and they always used to seem to get things right if given some time. Now no matter the time they don’t send the movies like they use too. they seem to hold off and only send one movie at a time where they would send three at a time, they were the premo service. Not anymore have to decide if it’s time to drop them, hate to let them go but if they insist on going backward instead of forward I may have to toss them to the curb.PS their website was great now it sucks all the so called inprovenents slow everything down so it hides their lack of providing an A1 service.
Shuffle Queue is the stupidest “feature” ever.
How about doing something useful instead, like making the site secure? 99% of the site is unencrypted (no SSL) INCLUDING THE LOG-IN PAGE!
Why is everyone being so mean? I think Blockbuster’s website is fine and is fun and easy to use. It says at the top of this blog that users were asking for the Shuffle feature (a practical request), so they added it; it does not say that everyone wanted it and everyone will use it. I disagree that it is “useless” bc not everyone has the same movie watching style or habits. I, personally, would not use the shuffle feature bc I, like others on here apparently, put my movies in order for a reason. But some people might add a bunch of horror movies that they thought of at once, then some romantic movies, and then some action movies, or comedies… if they are not particular about the order and don’t want to have to make a project out of manually sorting the movies for optimum variety, they can just SHUFFLE it, problem solved. The only point I do agree with is that the default action (when hitting Enter) should definitely be Update Queue, NOT Shuffle. (I am used to just typing the numbers in the boxes to sort my movies, and then hitting Enter to update it. Now when I hit Enter I have a mini-heart-attack as the window pops up showing me the new shuffled order, and I am thankful that I can hit Cancel – but it’s not the end of the world. I still think it’s a cool feature; they just need to make it a little harder to do than just hitting Enter.) Another (probably better) idea would be to have the option to simply SAVE the order that they’re currently in, so that even if you decide to Shuffle it, you can switch back and forth between Sorted and Shuffled. Simple.
Other than that, I love the site. I love that you can read the movie description, rating, etc. just by hovering over it – AWESOME. I hate it with a passion when you’re on a website and you have to open a new tab/window, or, Heaven forbid, leave the page you’re on entirely, just to read some additional information. No. I can just read it, decide if I want to rent it, and hit ‘Add to Queue’ (or already ‘In Queue’) – a button that’s conveniently listed below every single movie title on the site. Very cool, and organized.
They have a HUGE selection of movies and they have all the latest blockbusters (hence the name ;) UNLIKE Netsuxs. The reason Netflix is cheap and has no wait is because it has an unlimited supply of movies that NOBODY WANTS TO SEE. Period. If I had to choose between instantly watching a video of grass growing, or waiting a couple weeks to watch a hit Blockbuster that just left theaters, I’ll choose the latter, thanks. My fiance and I had Netflix for the last 4-5 months and eventually cancelled, effective Oct 7th. Looking for a movie with more than 3/5 stars, or that had ever seen the light of day, let alone ever seen a movie theater, was like looking for a needle in a haystack. We watch movies too often (sometimes nightly) to settle for ‘Recently Added’ once every few weeks, and otherwise sifting through the same tired old garbage that’s been in there for MONTHS, literally. (Also worth noting, their ‘Recently Added’ sadly has absolutely NO correlation to New Releases, as they “Recently Added” MI3 – which I thought was the newest one, until the opening scene started playing and I realized I’ve seen this movie 3x – and sure enough, it’s dated 2006. I was so pissed I cancelled that WEEK, switched to BB Total Access, and immediately put MI *FOUR* in my queue. We just watched it on BluRay this past weekend, along with Casino Royale, and PiratesOC 4 – look for those on Netflix and watch what happens…lol.) To be fair, the one thing we did like on Netflix were the TV series like Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, and in the several months we had it, we saw a total of 4 good, theater-worthy, movies (Thor, The Fighter, Captain America, and The Next Three Days – the first 3 of which we had *already* seen in theaters, but watched again anyway bc they were the only movies listed that weren’t covered in cobwebs). I could see those same four blockbusters in one WEEK with BBTA. Plain and simple. No comparison. Whatsoever. (For true movie fans, that is.) I essentially need a way to continuously watch new-release movies that I did not catch in theaters, and you CANNOT DO THAT with Netflix. I dare you to try.
With that said, all of the complaints about the ‘Long Wait’ in the BB queue are unfounded unless your queue is either close to empty, or you have nothing but brand-spanking-new movies in it. I have 24 movies in my queue, all fairly recent (2012, or late 2011) and only 7 of them say ‘Long Wait’ (2 of which are games) and the rest are Available. I don’t see a problem with that. I have a 3-DVD plan and w/no limit to how many movies I can rent and in what order, I’ll always find something to watch that’s Available.
I had BBTA a few years ago, and I loved it then too. Now they’ve just re-earned a customer and I’ve already gotten great service. My first three movies “shipped” but I only received two. I hit the ‘Report’ button for the 3rd movie, and it instantly said “Sorry, we’ll send another copy right away,” and they did. What more do you want?
It sucks that so many stores are closing, and the in-store trades are definitely one of my top reasons for going with this service, but luckily there is still one about 18 mins from us. However, even if that one closes, given BB’s title selections alone, I won’t be switching back to Netflix.
oops, I meant Quantum of Solace, not Casino Royale
the new features are f***ing stupid. get me my movies now. im sick of waiting weeks for a title that says short wait. is 4 months a short freaking wait. customer satisfaction doesnt seem to be a prority.
Website – terrible. Slow, know I have to use the site map to find where they are hiding the new releases. Or how about when they skip 3 movies that say they are available to give some low demand movie on your list.
I am one of the customers who left Netflix because of their site “improvements” when they did something very similar to “enhance” their website. This is the next step in throttling customers to better control what people select which better manages Blockbuster’s inventory availability rather than customer’s choices. With this new layout, I am still looking for the “New Movies” section with options for “Available last week, this week and next week”. Plus I am hoping that there is a main view option available which will give me an informative text layout instead of a big splashy picture layout that I have to navigate individually in order to route to the selection information and then backtrack my way to the big splashy picture section to move on to the next one. So far, overall, this does not seem like an improvement to me at all.
What happened to the New Releases feature on the website? That is really all I am interested in seeing, and now it is totally frustrating to not be able to just find out what DVD’s are being released this week, next week, etc. If that feature is still available, it is certainly well hidden! New website format totally sucks!
I hate the recent menu changes. I would like it if I could see what dvds are being released this week, next week, and released recently. Can this be brought back? I agree with most of the comments about the new features being a waste and the lack of inventory. You tell us older movies are available. But when added to the queue, we find they are unavailable with no time when they will be available.
The “new” features are useless. All I’ve seen on the “new” site is that it’s impossible to find the New Releases. That was the only “feature” I used and now it’s totally screwed up.
I’ve been with Blockbuster for many years. I went to them when Netflix began their practice of “throttling.” Now Blockbuster does the same thing. In addition, they consistently list films on their site that are clearly not available. Then they closed their distribution centers which slowed down delivery to a crawl. They aren’t a good deal at all. The only reason I’ve stayed with them this far is because Netflix doesn’t rent blu-ray, only dvd. But I will have to seriously reconsider my options, which are non-existant because they are the only two companies that do this kind of rental. Everyone wants “streaming” but on a screen any larger than a computer monitor, they look like crap. The whole industry has become very disappointing.
Wow, now I cannot even find movies the way I used to with this new version of Blockbuster Online. There is no Recently Released, Released Last Week, etc. How the heck do I find anything else that easily in those categories like before–other than “In Theaters” that I did happen to find. I don’t like this new set up…at all!!! Why did you go and have to change it to a more inconvenient version?????
There have been nothing but problems with the que. For months I have been having issues. Movies exchanged at the store never show as being exchanged until a week or so afterwards and then the store DVD which was already returned shows as being rented after it was returned. Calls to the 800# go outside the U.S. and it appears they can’t even see what my que indicates as they say a DVD I returned to the store 2 weeks ago is still out while my que verifies this title was returned since no longer in it and has not shown this title listed since it was returned at the store 2 weeks ago. The online submit question form never actually does anything after you hit submit..tried on several PC’s at home and at work so clearly an infrastructure issue. Since Dish took over nothing but system issues and the terms of my paid contract not being met…which opens some legal doors…I have a 3 out at a time program while BB has only allowed me to have 2 out as my que has not been working correctly for some time and my numerous calls to them support they have been aware of it as those should be logged. What type of class gets some action is what I am thinking. They may give you a coupon for a free rental however those are required to be retuned the next day and do not make one whole in replacement of mailed DVD’s.
you better be careful. i tried to get my b’b'er queque transferred to netflix because i thought you were going down. oh well, i’m not lying.
I’ve waited a month to see if BB would change (fix) an error that they’ve made…the only true feature on the website that I used was the Releasing This week, Releasing Last Week and Releasing Next Week. I thought certainly they would bring this feature back.
What do we, the users, need to do to make that happen?
John, the New Releases by Week are still on the website. They are listed on the homepage of Blockbuster.com right beneath the main image.