All 55 of Netflix’s 55 distribution centers were shut down for several days last week due to a system problem that caused the worst failure in the DVD shipper's history and Netflix was unable to ship DVDs during this time.

Netflix refused to reveal the source of the problem, other than to indicate that, "it's technological." The customer-facing Web site was online, however, and users could access and update their lists of requested movies, as well as preview movies. This is the second distribution center shutdown problem, with the earlier outage on March 24th.

Netflix has announced its program to make up for its lapse of service. Those customers who were affected by the delay will get a 15 percent credit on the amount of their next monthly bill, while new customers still within their free trial period will get an additional week before their subscription becomes a paid one.

However, the credit will not compensate for the broken dates and plans made by Netflix customers who had planned to watch the DVDs they had ordered. Those customers have been venting on the Netflix blog.

For some customers, though, a dashed stay-at-home date night or other event planned around movies by mail can't be fixed by a credit that will top out at $3.75. These users are making their frustrations known on the Netflix Community Blog, which you can find here.