Free £15 Boots voucher and Lovefilm DVD rental trial

WELSH-DRAGON_2

Well I should have checked on here first but had an offer in my Boots magazine - get 6 free dvd rentals plus a £10 Boots voucher - offer valid until 31/01/2007.

website: https://www.boots.com/tenpound - promo code BTSDES9

I have just signed up and was hoping to get a voucher but maybe from the sounds of it I might not.

Welshy x

slarge

AaronAA wrote:

Hi skap - to be doubly sure they don't get me with their DVD posession charging 'scam', I have cancelled and completely emptied my list of titles, so they can't send me anything else.

Cutting my losses, less than 2 weeks into my 3 month not-so-free trial, I decided to cancel yesterday (£22.09 out of pocket, having received just 3 DVDs on the free trial). Adding more frustration to the whole thing, clicking on "Cancel Account" on the online control panel just brings up a page telling you to ring a phone number (0870 I think - probably costing an arm & a leg) to speak to a CS rep to cancel your account (as expected, a very distant sounding non-UK call centre).

A last ditch attempt of explaining my situation and asking for some form of compensation just fell on deaf ears. Helpless, I gave up, and just told them to cancel my account.

Words fail me when I try to express the frustration I have experienced with lovefilm.

I'm not generally a bitter person, but this whole saga leaves me wanting revenge somehow! Just £22.09's worth, that's all!!

But it ain't gona happen! I'll just have to be contented telling people to steer clear of the cowboys that are lovefilm.

Lovefilm truly are the 419ers of online DVD rental. In my case they re-activated my account a week after I cancelled it so they could take another months money. From the reports I have seen on DVDRR this is just about normal practice with them. It is time Watchdog and/or Trading Standards took a serious look at the practices of this company.

Regards cancellation, probably has been mentioned before but you can cancel online after 10 pm. This is when the Indian call centre shuts down and an online option becomes available. Why should you be forced to use an 0870 number which makes them even more money and have to endure a list of future to-be-broken promises just to get out of their abyssmal service?

pjays

grenny wrote:

Thats rubbish.
See my letter from Boots (back a few pages) saying i will get the voucher.
I didnt have the account for 28 days. I cancelled ON THE DAY I returned my
4th (or 5th) DVD. Definetly not 28 days.


Yes, I agree probably rubbish, but definitely the only response I am getting from lovefilm, they are pretty insistent. I did, however through persistence, manage to get 200 extra points onto my boots card - lets see if they ever materalise.

I agree, with the qoutes about martin, he is doing a great job + I love receiving his emails every week.

codger

slarge wrote:

Oh and as for other MSers at the till spending their vouchers, keep a look out for Elvis and Jim Morrison in the queue as well, because seeing them is just as likely

Tst tst tst, Slarge. You're such a cynic! I happen to know that neither Elvis nor Jim Morrison were in the queue at Boots this afternoon, because I had a real good look around.

Actually, I was looking around for anybody with a £15 Boots voucher, like the one I didn't receive this morning.

But obviously Lovefilm's best intentions are being frustrated by Royal Mail. So tomorrow, thousands of £15 vouchers will pop through letterboxes throughout the land.

When I was in Boots though, there was a nice chap at the head of the queue wearing glasses and playing a trombone. When I asked if he was celebrating his £15 windfall, others said no and that if I looked more closely, I'd realise he was actually Glenn Miller.

And that he'd landed before any voucher from Lovefilm.

codger

Edna and Grenny amongst others have referred to this before, how a thread's length can lead to stuff being buried and thus getting overlooked.

That may've led to MSE, for instance, being unable to perceive the true level of concern expressed here and on sister Lovefilm threads about the company and its operations, hence the decision to publicise the Lovefilm offer a second time.

It's certainly led to posts like skap's and Aaron's. Here's a quick info summary then before too much else gets buried:

1) The Lovefilm 21-day free trial / £15 Boots voucher offer is explicit and non-negotiable. Especially, it's non-negotiable by Lovefilm. So ignore any email from Lovefilm, or any conversation with any Lovefilm employee, to the effect that you cannot have the voucher if you do not maintain your subscription for 28 days.

2) The Lovefilm 21-day free trial / £15 Boots voucher offer explicitly entitles Lovefilm to request your credit / debit card details "to verify your identity". Neither explicitly nor implicity do those terms entitle Lovefilm to levy an unauthorised charge against your credit or debit card.

3) The Lovefilm 21-day free trial / £15 Boots voucher offer explicitly requires you to create a DVD rental list of a minimum of 10 titles in order for your registration to be complete and your subscription activated. Ignore any email from Lovefilm, or any conversation with any Lovefilm employee, to the effect that you should have created more than 10 titles.

4) The Lovefilm 21-day free trial / £15 Boots voucher offer explicitly states that the free trial "expires 21 days after registration or when we send you your 7th DVD rental, whichever is the sooner." Ignore any email from Lovefilm, or any conversation with any Lovefilm employee, to the effect that you should actually have cancelled several days before the 21-day deadline in order to give them time to process that cancellation.

5) The Lovefilm 21-day free trial / £15 Boots voucher offer explicitly states that "your Boots voucher will be dispatched within 30 days of registration." You should keep track of the days that elapse since your registration so as to determine the veracity of that assurance, though it's only fair to make allowances for delays at this time of year (see final note).

6) The Lovefilm website's own T&Cs explicitly refer to an online cancellation process. This is misleading. Lovefilm actually wants you to dial an expensive 0870 number instead. Don't fall for it. You can cancel online after 10pm -- more like 10.45pm in my case. Cancellation was easy and Lovefilm confirmed that cancellation by email within 30 minutes.

7) Lovefilm's address is:

LOVEFILM INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
NO. 9,
6 PORTAL WAY,
LONDON
W3 6RU

The above address information tallies with the Freepost address which Lovefilm provides on its website T&Cs:

FREEPOST RRCA-EHAC-ZZKX
LOVEFiLM International Ltd
London
W3 6RU

8) If you feel you have a legitimate complaint which is not being addressed satisfactorily by Lovefilm's representatives or agents, then you may wish to contact by Signed For or Special Delivery:

Andrew Ground
Managing Director
Lovefilm International Ltd
Number 9
6, Portal Way
LONDON
W3 6RU

9) If you feel you have a legitimate complaint that has remained unresolved after exhausting all avenues of redress open to you, then you may wish to contact by Signed For or Special Delivery:

Trading Standards Department
Ealing Council
Perceval House
14-16 Uxbridge Road
Ealing
W5 2HL


Finally. . .

If you haven't received your voucher yet, that doesn't mean it hasn't been despatched. My own date of registration / subscription activation was November 29th. So although my voucher should by now have been despatched to me according to the terms stipulated by Lovefilm itself, it could well be caught up in the seasonal mail back-log / slow-down.

It may also be the case that Lovefilm underestimated demand, and so many thousands of £15 vouchers are having to be mailed out at a time of staff shortages due to Christmas / New Year holidays.

Martin has promised to look at the situation re this voucher offer in mid-January.

grenny

Codger you're a diamond.

codger

Nah, not me, grenny. Credit where credit's due -- that last post of mine was merely a compendium-thingie of all the hard work done by other MSErs: you and deanos, Edna and technodwj and others I've sadly not kept track of.

grenny

Only a REAL diamond would not accept justworthy praise codger...

Sinope_2

Ok, so what is the problem with lovefilm, through reading through some of these pages i can tell people are not happy with the customer service but why exactly?

I read on thier site that it is unlimited dvd rental to your door for 9.99 a month, and i gather you can cancel any time - i would be happy joining them for a couple of months, therefore paying 9.99 as you get a month free, and getting a 15 pound voucher for boots - but is that how it happens then or not?

deanos

Sinope wrote:

Ok, so what is the problem with lovefilm, through reading through some of these pages i can tell people are not happy with the customer service but why exactly?

Everything is in the thread it dosent need to be explained further