Netflix Saturday Processing Sleeps with the Fishes
For a good long while, I’ve been a faithful Netflix subscriber. To the point where I have timelines of movie returns mapped out.
But, the past few weeks, I’ve noticed something strange with my timeline — the Monday plan seems to be going to hell. Let’s roll back a minute and allow me explain the “Monday plan.”
In my neck of the woods, if I return a set of DVDs before the mail is picked up, it will reach the Netflix processing center the very next day and the new DVDs will get sent out, then the day after that, the new DVDs arrive in my mail box.
So, the Monday plan is basically when I schedule my returns so I’ll have new DVDs in my mailbox by Monday afternoon. To achieve this, I’ll drop my returning DVDs in the mail on Friday morning. Saturday afternoon, I usually receive notice that Netflix has received my returns and shortly after that, another notice that my new DVDs are being sent out. On Monday, I have new DVDs waiting for me in the mail.
Lately, that hasn’t been the case. The past two rounds of my Monday plan has been thwarted and it’s now been turned into the Tuesday plan. It seems that Netflix has silently phased out its Saturday processing when no one was paying attention. Even notes on their site allude to this (i.e. “the next business day” as opposed to using the postal schedule).
Saturday processing, I will miss you.


Claudia wrote,
We’ve noticed that in the last two weeks (today is 4/15/08) the return of movies has substantially slowed down. Is this happening to everyone?
Comment Link | April 17th, 2008 at 8:08 pmteli wrote,
Hi Claudia,
I think you meant to say that today is 4/17 (i.e. when you posted your comment). As for the movie return substantially slowing down, I have not experienced that at all — just the Saturday processing being nixed. During the week, the movie is process and listed as returned the day after I mail it (if I get it in the mail before that day’s pick up).
~ Teli
Comment Link | April 18th, 2008 at 6:04 pm