I did read the article, but I didn't see where it said that there was no automation on the receiving end. Maybe I missed it, it was a long article.
When I noticed this for myself, 2007 sometime, I had a common problem where every Nth disc would take an extra day to be received, and that would really throw off my pattern, which mostly was just to have a couple movies for the weekend.
So soon hypothesized that it'd happen on days the barcode was not visible. So to test, I put 1 of them wrong intentionally, mailed all 3 at the same time, and the 1 that was wrong did indeed take an extra day to be marked as returned.
So I didn't have any real facts, just an observation that seemed plausible to me.
When I noticed this for myself, 2007 sometime, I had a common problem where every Nth disc would take an extra day to be received, and that would really throw off my pattern, which mostly was just to have a couple movies for the weekend.
So soon hypothesized that it'd happen on days the barcode was not visible. So to test, I put 1 of them wrong intentionally, mailed all 3 at the same time, and the 1 that was wrong did indeed take an extra day to be marked as returned.
So I didn't have any real facts, just an observation that seemed plausible to me.