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[MSE Lawrence]

This is the discussion to link on the back of the updated

DVD Rental: Cheapest online providers & tarting article.

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[robskillz]

Here's a quick tip for you. Rather than signing up for your free trial in the daytime I found that if you can stay awake until midnight and sign up for your free trial just after then your first batch of DVDs will likely be sent out the following morning (still the same date though), effectively adding an extra day to your free trial.

Rob

[jinkssick]

I done the metro Lovefilm deal for one month with 2 free cinema tickets, before the trial was done I phoned and cancelled, two minutes later I got another code for returning customers for 3 months free trial and thats what I am on now. DVD rental tarting I suppose.

[jinkssick]

Some tips:

Make sure you send your last DVD a few days before the end of your trial, as youll be charged. When you send it back make sure you delete all the DVDs from your list so they cannot send you anymore.

[everton_army]

i tried love film but films kept getting lost all the time in the post! other than that really good

[PopeSock]

Is there a site - apart from LoveFilm and PostaDVD - that does combined DVD and game rentals? LoveFilm seems to have a bit of bad press, in terms of delivering crap service once the trial is over. And PostaDVD has some completely shocking reviews.

[kazzachick]

Tesco do a combined dvd and games but its run by lovefilm although cheaper than the rest. I was on it for a while but got a bit fed up at never getting xbox games.

On another note, I signed up for the cd wow free trial with a free cd. They won't give me the cd because I cancelled my account four days early so they wouldn't send me out more dvds and charge me. WHAT A CON!

[paddytt]

Blockbuster offering 1 month free trial:

www.blockbuster.co.uk/winteroffer

TT

[Robston]

Hi,
I've been with Lovefilm a couple of months and in terms of speed of delivery they are very good. The despatch depot in the UK is in Peterborough and I'm only a couple of hours away in Ipswich so the turnaround for me is usually post today-there tomorrow-new disc arrive day after. Customer service is OK although the email response is offshore (not sure about phone) so there is sometimes a language barrier. I recently sent a message advising them on a technical issue and their response suggested that they had no idea what I was talking about. Don't know what they are like when you try to cancel your subscription.

Excellent selection of discs, including High Def. ones, and if you receive a faulty disc then the replacement will be in addition to your normal allowance.

All in all OK so far, and definitely a lot cheaper than high street rental.
Hope this helps.

[codger]

Originally Posted by Robston

Hi,
I've been with Lovefilm a couple of months and in terms of speed of delivery they are very good. Customer service is OK although the email response is offshore (not sure about phone) so there is sometimes a language barrier. I recently sent a message advising them on a technical issue and their response suggested that they had no idea what I was talking about. Don't know what they are like when you try to cancel your subscription.

Not sure if the dozens (hundreds?) of posts last year on MSE about "cancelling from Lovefilm" are still there -- nor all the complaints about this company's dreadful business practices when it comes to charging customers who thought they were on a "free trial" -- but Lovefilm certainly hasn't changed.

Now it's Which? that is having to offer advice to the unsuspecting, as mentioned in Which? recent review of DVD rentals by post providers:


The good, the bad and the ugly

Most triallists only had to wait a day or two for their first DVD.
But Lovefilm, the UK’s largest online DVD service, kept them waiting, on average, five days.

Several triallists of Tesco and WH Smith, which are powered by Lovefilm, had similar problems. A Lovefilm spokesman told us this was down to technical problems it was experiencing when we carried out the trial.

Lovefilm was on a par with most other companies for sending priority films – on average, three of the first four DVDs were among the top five on triallists’ wish lists. But those with Movieconnect received on average only one top-priority film among the first four DVDs.

Movieconnect, along with Lovefilm, Tesco and WH Smith, also did worse than the other companies for problem DVDs – on average between 10 and 20 per cent of discs received had problems playing, such as the DVD freezing or skipping frames.

As for cancellation, most triallists found it easy, although some were surprised that Lovefilm required a phone call to cancel.

However, without advice from Which?, it may not have been so simple.

The fact is that Lovefilm continues exactly on as it always has done, ever ready to bluff its way out of any situation with tales of "temporary" system malfunctions or "misunderstandings" or "errors from which lessons have been learnt".

That Lovefilm should now be in the process of acquiring Amazon UK's DVD rentals business -- unless that acquisition can be stopped -- is bad news indeed.

[RegBagley]

The article states that Lovefilm won't let you take successive free trials with the different rental companies they operate, but actually I've been able to do just that, although I had a period as a paid-up member. I did a free trial with WH Smith, then signed up, cancelled a year later, and took out a 2 month free trial with Tesco. Both WH Smith and Tesco are run by Lovefilm. So, it's worth giving it a go.

[kedj]

Going to try these myself and think its worth a mention for occasional use. Buy a book of 12 Blockbuster rental tokens for £11.85 in vouchers (x 4 = £47.40 full value). Vouchers valid for 6 months and can be used on game rentals too.

[musician11]

I hated LoveFilm and so joined Amazon DVD free intro trial which worked fine. However, just looked in my Amazon account and noticed that LoveFilm seem to have bought Amazon's scheme too!! What a stitch up! Is there no escape from LoveFilm? Don't Amazon know how many people don't want to give their business to them?

[mrviner]

When it says "unlimited" it really means limited by how many back&fourths Royal Mail and the rental company "librarian" are able to process.

I'd like to know how many DVD's it's possible to get through assuming you watch the DVD(s) the night you receive it(/them) and send back the next day?

(I'm with Amazon, but any company experiences would be interesting.)

[codger]

mr viner / musician: Well, talk about synchronicity. . .

I'm just about to downgrade my Amazon "unlimited" account because it's not worth the subscription. I used to have the cheapest option -- four DVDs per month; one DVD at home per time -- but switched to the "unlimited" account with one DVD at home because it seemed to represent a good deal.

It isn't.

I've just gone on-line now to downgrade the account because in the past month I have received no more than four DVDs. Yet I've theoretically paid for many more.

Is it Royal Mail? I doubt it. The service I received was always prompt when I had the 'budget' account, yet after upgrading it suddenly, and curiously, deteriorated.

For example: a DVD was sent back to Amazon a week yesterday by 1st Class Mail. Amazon emailed me to say it had received it last. . . Thursday.

On Saturday, Amazon emailed me to say it had despatched the next DVD on my list. Today is Tuesday, the morning post has been delivered. . . and there's no DVD.

So the last DVD my wife and I watched was on Saturday, February 23rd and here we are on March 4th, still awaiting its replacement. No delay has been caused because of the nature of our rentals list; we have 20 titles listed and the first 10 are marked 'available'. Equally, no delay has ever occurred at our end: we watch a DVD on the evening of the day we receive it, then post it back to Amazon first thing next morning.

Sadly, reporting the "problem" only exposes the blatant fatuity of Amazon's current fault tracing system. I've just clicked to report the non-arrival on March 4th of a DVD sent by 1st Class Post on Saturday March 1st and the options are, bizarrely, identical: tell Amazon that your DVDF hasn'tarrived, and the answer is:

It can take a few days for your DVD to get back to Amazon.co.uk. Please allow four business days before reporting a disc lost by sender


Complete gibberish. I'm reporting the non-arrival of something from Amazon to me. Not the non-arrival of something from me to them. Amazon must know there's a difference yet chooses not to correct this fundamental error, and so provides a well-nigh identically worded explanation for two quite different situations.

Anyway. I'll stick with Amazon only because nothing would ever persuade me to deal with a company like LoveFilm.

My views on LoveFilm are pretty well known so I won't repeat them here.

However, just to clarify the position for musician and anyone else here:

As of today's date, LoveFilm has not, repeat not, acquired Amazon UK's DVD rental by post business.

Whether it will ultimately do so remains to be seen.

[Platinum Horse]

We are with Blockbusters service, and I have to say I think they are brilliant!

If I send a DVD back Monday. I'd have my next film by Thursday. I always figure the DVD takes 1 day to get there, 1 day to process and post out next DVD, another day to arrive. Sometimes sooner if I get the first post of the day.

In terms of service - they have been great. A couple of films have been lost in the post - which we informed them about, and they re-sent those films to us, no questions asked.

The only downside has been a few scratched discs (we have DVD player which is very fussy, but my old PS2 plays anything!). But if you mark a disc as scracthed or faulty, you never receive an apology - where as when borrowing instore, if that happened, we'd get a replcament and a free extra rental!

My main gripe is if you send back 3 films at once, they'll post you back 3 films in 1 envelope, which is no good if you then watch a film a day over the next 3 days, wanting to post each one back after wtaching it - although you can request more envelopes.

We pay £15 a month for their 3 dvd's at a time, unlimited service. And I'd recommend them.

In terms of No of Films per month, last month, we had 13 DVD's posted to us.

[codger]

That rate of despatch / return far exceeds our experience with Amazon, platinum.

And if you consider what you're getting for your money -- 13 DVDs in a calendar month for £15 -- that's superb value: I tend to calculate the base price of the cheapest DVD rental as £2 a time, so at minimum you're picking up £26sworth of viewing for £11 less.

Blowed if I can figure out the percentage 'discount' there but it's, er, a lot.

If Amazon's DVD rental business is acquired by LoveFilm then I probably won't be the only Amazon customer looking for a new home. On the basis of your experience, Blockbuster looks good.

(The only caveat is that I don't know how Blockbuster compares on low volume accounts: we've now dropped back to 4 DVDs per month, 2 DVDs at home at any one time, for which Amazon's fee is £6.99p per month.)

[skibster]

We've tried Lovefilm (awful!), Amazon (slow turnaround and now owned by Lovefilm), and Blockbuster (pretty good, but started sending only movies far down on list).

I'd like to try Blockbuster again in a month or so; has anyone figured out how many movies you can take out on an unlimited plan before they stop sending you your top selections? If you're a high-volume user, after a month or two they basically start to ignore your top 20 choices, even the older films. Can you get away with 4 a week, or 5, before you get relegated to poor service?

[codger]

skibster: LoveFilm hasn't yet taken over Amazon.

It's by no means a "done deal". . .

[Wolfsbayne]

I prefer lovefilm to my moviestream which is just awful. Have recently tried a free 3 month trial for returning triallists at lovefilm but they dont seem to want to validate my card details, waiting for an email response as to why.