Readers may remember that in honor of Netflix passing the billion-served mark, I posted a little rave for the company. I also decided to undertake an experiment to test the rumors that Netflix uses a “throttling” system, by which a customer who returns rented movies frequently has a lower priority than a customer taking less advantage of their subscription.

A little research reveals that throttling (or “smoothing” as Netflix evidently calls it themselves) is a reality in their business plan, and a class-action law suit forced them to describe it in their terms of use agreement. Still, I have been a fairly heavy user for years, in two different markets, and I haven’t seen any strong evidence that my service ever declined. Thus the experiment… If I maximize my rental number, would my return rate be affected?

These were the rules: I began on March 1st, after a week of inactivity, with three DVDs in my possession. In some aspects, I would be like a customer who had just signed up. Each day I would watch a single movie and return it in the next day’s mail. My queue was full of titles, so there was no reason for delay on Netflix’s part. The only reprieve I would give myself would be evenings in which it would not matter if I watched another title that night. (For example, on a Thursday night with a single movie in hand, it wouldn’t matter if I watched it Thursday or waited to Friday, as the disc would be processed the following Monday, either way.) The goal was to see how many movies I could watch in a single month.

The results? Did my account get “throttled?”

Maybe.

For the most part, returns were very smooth. If I put a disc in my mail on Day 1, I would get a “received” e-mail from Netflix on Day 2, followed by a “shipped” e-mail later that day. On Day 3, the new disc would show up in the mail. I was surprised by this, because the mail carrier doesn’t come to my house until 4 p.m., and yet I would get “received” e-mails the next morning at 7 a.m. I later learned that Netflix sends trucks out specially to get discs from post offices, so they might be delivered to processing plants for a 3 a.m. shift to begin working on them.

I have an account that allows three rentals out at a time. Theoretically, excluding the issue of weekends, with a 3-disc account a person could have a new movie every day.

Over the course of the month, Netflix dropped the ball three times. Once was in the second week, and twice were in the fourth. Perhaps this is evidence of throttling. Perhaps my mail carrier came even later certain days. Perhaps random luck was on my side for the first two weeks and less so for the last. Hard to say. Here is a look at the frequency with which I was able to rent, with yellow indicating discs that took two days instead of one for Netflix to receive.

So it’s possible that this represents some amount of throttling by Netflix. The evidence suggests it, but there isn’t enough data yet. To make a real conclusion, I would need to keep going for another month or more. But I have to tell you, I don’t want to. Finding an extra two hours every day, on top of whatever TV one must follow, plus work and blogging and (God willing) writing? It’s tough. (I know… my life is hard.)

You’ll notice that there were four days in the month on which I had no movie to watch, and three of them were Mondays. Weekends add a natural, inherent throttling to the system, probably bigger factor than anything Netflix implements artificially. Mail doesn’t run on Sunday, and Netflix doesn’t process on Saturday. That means a disc you watch Thursday or Friday isn’t replaced until Tuesday. A disc you watch Saturday or Sunday isn’t replaced until Wednesday. The biggest thing Netflix could do to add value to their service, therefore, would be to add Saturday processing. I’m positive that it’s a conscious business decision on their parts not to do so.

Ultimately, though, examining throttling seems like a pointless pursuit. The fact of the matter is that I watched 21 movies in 31 days. That works out to 93 cents a movie, throttled or no. I watched more than four movies a week. Do you usually want more than that?

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