According to bloggers and a flood of angry comments on the Internet, operations at American DVD rental service, Blockbuster Online, have come to a screeching halt. Angry customers are reporting that they have not received movies from their queues for weeks. According to one customer, repeated calls to Blockbuster customer service were fruitless and when he finally did get through, a customer service rep told him that their mail rental system was shut down.

However an official spokesperson for Blockbuster denied the existance of any problems when contacted by Ars Technica.com. "We've been continually shipping product. If a customer feels like they are not getting a movie, they should follow up with our customer service. But in terms of product being allocated and shipped, there has been no interruption."

Despite what the spokesperson says, sites like DVDRR.com have been flooded with negative comments like this one from a Blockbuster Online user named Cat: "No dvds have been shipped for over a week despite 3 open slots and 26 available titles in my queue. Emails and phone calls to customer support have not succeeded in getting this resolved, just promises that are not kept. I will be canceling and switching to Netflix."

Is it just a random coincidence that Blockbuster Online users didn't receive any DVDs last month? Or is Blockbuster being less than truthful about possible problems with their rental service? Blockbuster is engaged a tough battle against Netflix, the market leader in online rentals. Admitting to significant service interruptions might persuade users to switch to Netflix.

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