cicer

I use Netflix and love it (although I'm probably going to cancel again soon since I don't have time to watch movies, really) and recommend it highly. With this caveat: you'll get really great service (shipping speed, movie-queue priority, availability of DVDs) the first few months while you're a new customer. But if, like me, you become an older customer who's unprofitable--I had a period of time where I was watching & sending back so many Netflix movies a week that Netflix was no longer making money from me--then they will deliberately slow up your service and give you less priority than more profitable customers. It's in their TOS that they can/will do this. For instance, when I first started, I could drop a DVD in the Atlanta mail Monday and have it reported "returned" with another movie shipped out by Tuesday; now I'm lucky to have the movie marked "returned" within two or three days. I've had the Escaflowne movie at the top of my queue for weeks, usually marked as "Long wait", but even when it says "Available now" and I have an empty slot, I'll get the next more widely available movie in my queue, presumably because the Escaflowne movie went to a newer customer. I don't think it's something you'll have to worry about immediately, since the first couple of months Netflix will be concerned with wooing you as a new customer and therefore keeping you happy, but eventually the honeymoon will be over.

Overall the benefits of Netflix outway the cons for me (when I have time to watch movies I rent from it, that is), so I've mostly just resigned myself to never having as good of service as I did when I started using the service.

Check out these sites:
Hacking Netflix
Wikipedia