in their old ads, they emphasized the fast turn-around (they said something like 'usually a one day turn-around').
by emphsizing the fast turnaround, and then intentionally delaying the turn around, they were providing a lower-level of service than they were advertising.
in New York we would call that a "rip off".
i quit netflix, and i wouldn't deal with them again.
i do that with any company that advertises one thing and provides something else.
They only said that for your initial shipment. Of course even if they said it universally throttling towards the ends of the month is still going to leave your disks usually shipped with one day turn-around. "Usually" is a very important word, if 10 out of 17 disks get turned around in one day that's "usually". They didn't advertise anything other than their giving, a large movie selection, a convenient way to rent movies, a flat monthly fee for rentals, and the ability to get a lot more movies in a month with that fee than you can with the same amount of money at 90% of the brick-and-mortal rental places. Those are the ads, and that's what you get, if that's not good enough for you it's your money, me I like it, I get as many movies as a I want they have a better selection than Block Buster and I wouldn't use the "free" in store because Block Busters are nasty places filled with annoying employees.