Netflix claims to allow unlimited DVD rentals with no late fees. Unfortunately, both of these claims are contestable. The questions below will help you calculate the price that you pay for each rental, as well as your daily late fee and the maximum number of DVDs that you can rent each month.
Given the answers you provided to the above questions, the following fees have been calculated (assuming that Javascript is enabled):
Rental cost | $0.78 per DVD |
Daily late fee | $0.26 per day except on Friday and Sunday |
Maximum rentals | 22 DVDs per month |
As you are on the 3-at-a-time rental program, and there are 22 shipping days per month, there are a total of 66 DVD rental slots per month (each DVD you can have at a time is given a slot on each shipping day). Because you are paying a flat monthly fee of $16.99, each of these slots cost you $0.26.
Each shipping day that you hold a DVD instead of mailing it back uses up one rental slot. Your late fee is thus $0.26 per shipping day. Netflix doesn't ship on Saturday or Sunday. That means that if you return a DVD on Friday, then you won't get your next DVD any sooner than if you returned the DVD one day later. This effectively waives the late fee on Friday. As neither the USPS nor Netflix process mail on Sunday, it is not considered a shipping day and the late fee is also waived.
Whenever you send back a DVD in order to obtain a new one, you lose 1 rental slot(s) while the old DVD is in transit to Netflix, plus 0 rental slot(s) waiting for Netflix to send your next DVD, plus 1 rental slot(s) while your next DVD is in transit to you. Assuming that you watch DVDs in the evening (or at least that you can't mail back a DVD before 5:00 PM on the same day that you received it), you wil hold each DVD at least 1 additional day (in other words, you watch each DVD on the day that you receive it, and you mail it back the next day). Each DVD rental thus costs you $0.84 as it consumes 3 rental slots. Non-shipping days are not included in the round-trip time calculation
Finally, there is a limit on the number of DVDs that you can rent each month. With 66 DVD rental slots per month, and 3 slots being consumed by each rental, you can rent no more than 22 DVDs each month.