Conspiracy theories: where is the information on stock

[SirRobin]

Hi there,

I'm currently subscribed with Blockbuster, and the service is pretty good except for one annoying issue: I can never tell wether I will be receiving a particular movie I want to watch.

I'm surprised that they don't have an indicator on the web interface telling you wether a particular title is available at the moment, or since when it has been on loan, or how many units they have... It seems to me that this is a rather basic feature that would help customers a lot - I might decide to reorder the priorities depending on which title I'm likely to receive and so on, so as to get a DVD closer to what I want to watch a particular day. Does anyone know if any of the online stores has this kind of feature on their interface ?

If not, does anyone know or can guess why on earth they want to keep this information hidden from the users ? It seems to me that most people that complain about the online rentals mention the issue of often receiving items at the bottom of their list, and not knowing which title they are going to get next.. Why do some online retailers hide this information ?

EDIT. I've been doing some web research on the subject, and my original suspicions seem to have been confirmed : most companies hide this information in order to engineer the way dvds are sent to customers. For those interested, here's an analysis of the largest dvd rental company, Netflix.

How Netflix works

What it boils down to is:

1) Hook free trial/special offer users
2) Keep profitable users happy
3) Discourage/get rid of unprofitable users