Okay. You've seen the ads on TV and the Internet. You can rent DVDs over the Internet for about $9.99 a month, have them delivered to your door overnight, keep them as long as you want without late fees, and return them in a pre-paid mailing envelope. Sounds great – but is Netflix really worth the price?

Well.... First of all let's make one thing clear. That business with the DVDs arriving in your mailbox overnight? That happens during the two week trial period and maybe a little bit afterward, but don't expect it to last much longer. Netflix will tell you that this is unavoidable at times and maybe it is – at times – but more often then not the DVDs will take two to three days to arrive or more. What makes it more annoying is that they will sometimes mail out part two before part one. What I mean is that I often rent those long cliffhanger serials that have 12 to 15 chapters and normally come on two separate discs [Netflix will not mail them together]. Netflix will sometimes send the second disc first and the first disc will arrive a few days later. Since nobody wants to see the second half of the story before the first part, you can't return the second disc until the first one arrives [therefore you can't get another movie -- get it?]. Netflix has other tricks to make you hold on to your DVDs when you really want to return them as quickly as you can so another one will arrive, that way making the most of your monthly investment by seeing as many DVDs as you can during the thirty day period. Frankly, Netflix does not make it easy for you to do this.

Furthermore, let me explain that I am on the two-discs-out-at-a-time plan [comes to $16.10 a month with fees, taxes etc.] I can't imagine what people who are allowed only one disc at home at a time would do in my situation – they'd just have to watch the last eight chapters of the serial before the first seven. It's one thing to send part two of a two disc set that shows different movies or episodes of a sitcom like I Love Lucy, but a cliffhanger serial...? When I complained about this to customer service I was told that I had to remember to put part one before part two in my queue [my list of movies to be mailed to me]. I replied to customer service that only an idiot would list part two before part one on the queue, and I was not an idiot, and someone else in customer service sent me what was meant to be a soothing email without ever addressing the issues involved. [Then of course I noticed that when I logged into the Netflix sites there were ads for upgrading my account so that I could have three movies out at a time instead of two .... sure ... ]

My advice: Go to the Netflix site and look over the lists of titles. If you find things there you absolutely must see but can't find at your library [or local video store] then join up for a couple of months until you've gone through them all. Then cancel your membership.