Your distance from the rental service's warehouse is siginificant if you're the type of person that rents frequently and returns the items quickly. If the shipping times are shorter both to and from you then you're able to view more movies per month.
In terms of shipping times, I don't think there's a store out there (rental or retail) that gets orders into customer's hands faster than XRentDVD. But I woulnd't use this as the sole criteria for selecting a rental store.
For example, if you dropped a couple DVDs in the mail for return on Monday and they had to go to California it might take 3 or 4 days, and then the same time to get the new ones back to you, leaving you without new movies for the next weekend.
The big dog on the East coast is Adult DVD Empire, located in PA, I believe (according to the address on this site. Another one, in Indiana, is RentFlixxx.com which I have never used.
Myself, I've used WantList, SugarDVD, BushDVD (which is great) but they are all located in CA. Still as Drew said, don't let that be your only criteria. (Of course, it is possible that they have another distribution center closer to you too.)
Go Xrent. Don't waste your time with ADE. Chances are almost every thing you want to rent will be unavailable. They really piss me off when a movie on my list will be listed as available that is of course until its ready to ship then it becomes unavailable. I've returned movies and had to wait 3 days until they shipped the next movied on my list in the meantime my top choices became unavailable in that time.
Xrent is fast they ship the same day. I live in Pittsburgh and it can take 3 or 4 days for me to get my order.
AdultDVDEmpire was a nightmare for me. Slow, slow turnaround times and poor availability.
Xrent has been good to me, but you have to wait three months for new releases (on the unlimited plan... you can still rent them a la carte). That's the one and only drawback.
BushDVD has been very good to me in the month and a half I've been with them. Quick turnaround and shipping... but their selection is just short of complete. This is really only a problem with feature studios, however, which sounds like it may be less of an issue for you than it is for me. And their pricing is the best.
Obilong, I think BushDVD is great too. They seem to be very accommodating to requests for title additions, so you might give that a try. (I asked about the lack of recent Private releases, they wrote back asking for specific titles, I sent a list of 20 or so, and they said they would add those to the August order and they have since shown up in their library.)
I might as well share a recent great customer service story too: one recent rental showed up with just the envelope, missing the DVDs (envelope was ripped open) I emailed them, it was after 5:30 pm, and they responded within the hour with saying that they sent a replacement for one that was in stock, plus the next 2 in my rental queue. They mananged to get them in the mail that night yet, as I got them the next day! (They are in the same city as me, which is nice!)
I joined XRent's program about a month ago and can say nothing but good about them. The DVDs went out the day I signed up and the replacements have went out the day XRent received them every time. Although a few of the titles on my want list are normally out, there are MANY more which are normally in and I can easily adjust my list so that I have a really good idea what I get next. My biggest complaint is that being in Minnesota it takes about 3 days either way. So far, if I watch a movie that arrives today and stick it in the mail tomorrow, I'll get my next DVD in a week. Going that way it means it's $25 for 12 movies or $36 for 20, both of which seem more than fair! My more minor complaint is that the only way to manage my list there is in order of preference, so if I decide I want to watch something like Anabolic's Gangbang Girl in order after being completely awed by Tricia Deveraux's episode and I have the others spread through the list, I have to go through the entire list one by one and put them in order rather than sorting everythign either alphabetically or by studio.
XRentDVD ships from Southern California. I give them a "A+". I have been renting from them for 6 months and every DVD had arrived on time and have had zero problems with returns. If you rent, I highly recommend them!
I never rented anything by mail before, so please excuse my ignorance.
Does the parcel come packaged discreetly, or is there a big dick on it or something? Also, would I start getting adult catalogues or other direct mail? One of my neighbors used to get some catalogue that wasn't wrapped in anything and her name was right on it. Not the kind of thing I want.
They're in relatively plain envelopes. The Xrent ones have a logo that says "24-7 INTERNET" on the back. The Bush ones say "NO CASH" on them for some reason. Odd, but nothing obscene or recognizable, anyway.
Strange, but true, the rental places I've used (Bush, Flicksmart, WantedList and SugarDVD) must not sell customer lists as I've never gotten any adult advertisements in the mail.
The only problem I see with Bushdvd.com is they ship 2 dvds in the same package. Which means you have to watch both of them before you get to return them.
Yea, that is a bit of a problem. Usually not a big deal for me. I guess they make up for it by giving you 4 DVDs out at a time for the price that the others do 3 at a time. Something I have done in the past is try to order my queue in a way so that I might get a movie that I really want to see (or by someone that usually puts out good material) and one that may only have one or two good scenes or maybe a cumshot video which doesn't take long to watch.