I live in the same town as Netflix' headquarters, but I don't think they've ever had fulfillment in California. I think it's in Texas.
I bow to your hometown knowledge. It was *several* years ago that I had that first membership. Obviously, my memory is faulty. But perhaps I thought it was from California, because that seems as far away as it could be! :)
I live in the Bay Area too, and also have Netflix. They have several distribution centers around the country (I believe the newspaper article I read about them said they have 12 distribution centers around the country, but don't quote me on that - it has been awhile since I read the article). The nearest center to one's location is the one that usually sends you your movies. In our case, they have a distribution center in San Jose', CA. This is why we receive our movies from them in just one day.
Must be some fancy bizness buzzword. There's gotta be another word shorter than 11 characters that means the same thing. :O)
And someone in Texas is probably getting their movies from the distribution point near you. That's another reason why movies seem delayed or slow when they arrive. "Throttling" the hardcore Netflix customers is the other half of that problem.
They have fulfillment all over the place. Just about every major metro area has one.