I signed up with ZIP.ca late in the evening on Monday, February 23, to get things ready for the next day. My inital queue was:

Day 1 (Tuesday): The first item filled was #2 ("Down By Law"), and then they had to drop to #12 ("Hopscotch"). At that point (around 3-4pm EST) I added three more titles to the list ("Wild Strawberries", "Walkabout", "Gregory's Girl"). I don't know if these didn't get added in time to get picked up by the shipping department, or if they were not in stock.

In any case, I only got two movies shipped out on Day 1. Not a good start, if that many backlist titles are unavailable. Also, I received no email notification of shipment, or that my queue was exhausted. I wryly note ZIP FAQ #35:

We stock multiple quantities of our titles and should always have them in stock. If you are having difficulty renting a particular title please notify our Customer Support Centre and we will take care of the problem immediately.

What I've done is reduce the Queue to a small number of rarities, and use that empty third slot to see if any of the rarer ones turn up during the trial.

1. Claire's Knee
2. The Last Temptation of Christ
3. The Draughtsman's Contract
4. Persona
5. M. Hulot's Holiday
6. Wild Strawberries

Sadly, this isn't unique to ZIP - I've had "The Mighty Quinn" stuck in my DVDflix queue since I joined in mid-January, and "Walkabout" almost as long. I stayed with CinemaFlow for a month after the trial to pull out some goodies from their inventory, but I've got three week waits going on "Safe", "Strapless" and "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould".

Day 2 (Wednesday): No new title shipped. Sent an email to customer service.

Day 3 (Thursday): No new title shipped. No response so far to email.

Day 4 (Friday): No new title shipped. I received a reply to my email, confirming that "now" in the queue's Availability doesn't really mean that. "When a movie is listed as being available now, it is active in our inventory and available to be queued to be rented. It does not necessarily mean that it is on the shelf waiting to go out." This makes it a useless piece of information, since upcoming new releases have their own section in the Queue, and I don't know what other value could be given instead of "now" (perhaps "unavailable" or "not really owned"). If anyone sees a value other than "now", please let me know.

Day 7 (Monday March 1): No new title shipped. I found a phone number for ZIP's Customer Service (1-866-422-4830), but the person there had no way of determining how many copies of a title they had (or at least wouldn't admit to it). I sent a followup to my original email to try and get ahold of anyone from the corporate side of things.

My two shipped DVDs arrived today - this was 4 business day delivery (the Canada Post national standard) and no worse than my average shipment from Vancouver. ZIP is using outgoing prepaid Canada Post envelopes , but stamped return mailers (I had a physical stamp on one, a metered stamp on the other). I think this is because prepaid reply mail is costlier and requires extra processing. Both outgoing and return envelopes had bar-coded address labels.

Day 9 (Wednesday March 3): A third DVD finally shipped ("M. Hulot's Holiday", #5 of 6 on my shortened list). I also returned "Hopscotch". ZIP now seems to show the availability of some titles in the Queue as "short wait" instead of "now"; this was briefly the case for the top three titles I have left. However, once I added a new title to the Queue all the "short wait" indicators disappeared, and haven't yet come back, so presumably this feature is either buggy or bogus.

I've seen a report from someone who put a couple of dozen music titles in their Queue, and after 9 days or so only had 1 ship. He was told that most of these titles were in a separate warehouse, but unless it is in Mongolia tend to believe that ZIP in fact does not own a number of the titles they have listed (although perhaps are ordering them). This would be very disturbing if they are explicitly lying about this.

Day 14 (Monday March 8): The third DVD ("M. Hulot's Holiday") arrived in very good time - 3 business days (albeit over a weekend). I returned "Down By Law". ZIP does seem to have fixed the "Availability" so "short wait" listings don't disappear.

Day 16 (Wednesday March 10 ): My first return ("Hopscotch") made it back to ZIP (5 business days). The movie shipped back out ("The Draughtsman's Contract") was the first disc in queue with "Now" availability (#3 overall), which is a good sign.

Day 18 (Friday March 12): "Down By Law" got back, and "Persona" was shipped out. Again, the first item on the list that was marked "Now".

Day 21 (Monday March 15): "Draughtsman's Contract" received (3 business days).

Day 22 (Tuesday March 16): "Draughtsman's Contract" sent back. ZIP received "M. Hulot's Holiday" (5 business days). They shipped out the third "now" title from my queue ("Sports Night"), which was #7 overall.

Day 28 (Monday March 22): "Claire's Knee" shipped. This is the first "short wait" title I've seen turn into "now".

April 23 - ZIP seems to have settled down into a good service. I've been sent pretty much all high priority choices, including some British TV series (Sandbaggers, Dr. Who) which I wouldn't be able to get elsewhere. See elsewhere on this site for notes on ZIP's queue, inventory commitments, etc. They seem to have settled down, and things are certainly promising, at least for my needs.

April 29 - ZIP has updated their queue to show much better Availability information, including an "On Order" indicator and an availability bar graph for each title in stock. This should solve most of the "why isn't this disc shipping" problems.