LOVEFiLM, how much it sucks, and what to do better
LOVEFiLM sucks. It’s dishonest: you pay per month with no guarantee on how many DVDs you can rent that month, and no information on the maximum number of rentals per month, or anything like that. It takes seven screens to cancel your account. Cheekily, the bastards even ask you if you want to upgrade your account in the process of leaving. They annoyed me. Lots.
So. Here’s a better model for rental firms’ customers, which is who they should be out to serve.
The model
Each rental costs some small amount. Over here, that might be £1.50. Call one rental credit “R”. It’s gotta cover the cost of the rental, deal with the cost of the original DVD and any replacements, and have profit left over.
You have an account with the rental people, which must always have at least 5R in it. When you rent a DVD, you get have 1R deducted. If this takes you to 5R then you’d need to top up your account before being allowed to take out another movie.
When you leave, the remaining credits in your account simply get refunded.
Why is this better?
With pay-per-month schemes, when you cancel, you lose the rest of your credit for that month. Either that, or their system is unpredictable as to when it will send new DVDs, and you cancel a little too late — when they’ve already sent out a DVD — and end up having next month charged too. This is blatant ripoff territory here.
This way is more honest. No more “secret delays”: you pay per DVD, but it still has the convenience that LOVEFiLM gives, assuming you have a big enough collection of DVDs. It’s more transparent, open, and I’ll sign up to the first company who does it.
Fred said,
2007-02-01 at 06:36
Prioritizing your titles on lovefilm is an excercise in futility. Cynically, during the “trial period” they will send you your priority movies but once they have you hooked this goes out of the window.
It’s amazing that I have over 100 titles queued and for the past few weeks they haven’t even sent me a MEDIUM priority title from list.
When I deleted most of the titles from my list to FORCE them to dispatch the movies I wanted..guess what..they started sending me titles that I’d already DELETED !
It’s not even as if the movies I prioritized were recently released or in great demand !
Lovefilm? Look elsewhere !
jon hanson said,
2007-02-15 at 21:22
I switched to them from Amazon, and regret it. I’m currently struggling with their Kafka-esque customer support whilst I attempt to get them to cancel my account.
http://lovefilmsucks.blogspot.com/
Adiebabe said,
2007-02-16 at 17:24
After reading the above comments i have to agree,but as some of the films i wish to rent are quite old, it seems only Lovefilmwith its 60,000 plus choice stocks them.
Does any one know of a better alternative?
By the way if i want a current top title i usually end up giving up waiting and go a local hire shop although this involves a 20 mile round trip
isaid said,
2007-04-27 at 11:29
Damn right they suck, I wrote a long diatribe about this, I think they are taking their customers for a ride. I think it’s intentional. I think if you are a customer, you should stop now. The thing that really annoys me is their cutesy advertising and stuff makes you feel like you are dealing with a company that cares.
They don’t.
http://inspite.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/the-problem-with-lovefilm/