My Nefarious Netflix Plan

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into A Situation with my Netflix.

Neal and I had finished the first disc of the second season of Alias, so in a hurry one morning I got the disc out of the DVD player, slapped it into the little white sleeve, put the sleeve in the red envelope, and deposited it in our outgoing mail receptacle. It was not until many hours later that I remembered that, in the time between finishing Alias and mailing the disc, we had watched something else.

Specifically, we had watched How I Met Your Mother (season one, disc three). I know I've mentioned it before, but we love that show. We watch it all the time. Also, we got the first season as my Christmas present from my sister-in-law. So when I realized what I'd done, I felt a stab of panic, but then as I was explaining the situation to Neal, it came to me that Netflix is awesome. They're so good as what they do! Netflix, I felt sure, would correct my mistake.

I visited the Help section of their website and found an FAQ Q reading, "I accidentally returned a personal CD or DVD. How do I get it back?" How helpful that they should have my exact question! I thought. But then there was the answer. I'll spare you the whole quote, because the gist was, "You can't." I even called up the help guy on the phone. This is an approximation of our conversation:

Me: "Hi, I sent back my own disc by accident."
Him: "Oh, ok! We'll get that squared away! What disc was it?"
Me: "How I Met Your Mother season one disc three."
Him: "Oh, ok! Here's what we'll do: we can't get that back to you."

Then I hung up and cried. (I had had a hard day.)

Here's where the nefarious plan part comes in: I got my usual "Hey there, friend, we got the disc you sent us!" from Netflix. They were under the impression, thanks to the aforementioned little white sleeve, that I had sent them Alias season two disc one. "Aha!" I thought.

I added How I Met Your Mother season one disc three to my Netflix queue and moved it to the top. Netflix, being so good at what they do (aside from the whole "you can't get your disc back" thing), plopped that thing into my mailbox by the next day. Then I totally kept it, sending Alias back in its sleeve.

So, from one point of view, I stole a disc from Netflix. From another point of view, I righted a karmic wrong. And in the process, I found out Netflix's one weakness: they will believe whatever the sleeve says, regardless of what disc is actually in there. Now, maybe some people would try to use that to their own advantage (trading in your own busted discs for nicer Netflix ones?), I would only use it for that whole righting a karmic wrong thing.