LoveFilm are getting on my t*ts

LoveFilm's CEO Mark Livingstone says, "This time next year there will be four in the market: Blockbuster, Netflix, us and one other. I guarantee it. Anyone else ... (September 2004)

SounRAB incredibly confident considering I won't be contributing anything towarRAB his company in the future.

I predict the big players will remain as Blockbuster and Screenselect. Netflix do too much capping in the US, when they arrive in UK I will of course try out their free trial service.

Here is the e-mail address for the CEO of Lovefilm: [email protected] courtesy of WeatherfieldWil.

I have already sent my email and await his reply.
 
I always have 1 disc from a box set on my list otherwise I always get them sent to me in the wrong order and this messes up my viewing patterns.

It's a shame as I would love to stuff my list with complete seasons of 6 discs but from past experiences they will always send me a later disc like disc 5 so I am reduced to adding disc 1, then disc 2 after I have seen disc 1 etc.
 
I have a reply from Mark. Dunno if they've alluded to their "priority" runs before...



Now I think his line is fair. I just wonder why it's taken 6 weeks of emails to get to a position where they prepared to mention things other than postal delays.

So there you go folks. You don't get a truly unlimited service because you order too many disks. LoveFilm have a finite number of disks that they can despatch each day. I think I may reply with that. My service is limited becasue I turn disks around too quickly.

Don't quite follow Mr Livingstone's logic on upping my subscription level, If they're not prepared to despatch 3 at a time to me, everytime, how are they going to despatch 4?
 
Plenty of people get very good service. The guys in here have every right to have a go at them if they aren't, but there's no need to follow the crowd, if you are getting a good deal/service.
 
we sent 2 films back on sunday, one was "returned" on monday, the other is "returned" today, BUT we put them both in the same envelope.

so far this week they have sent us NO films.

we have just put "SHANE RICHIE - I'M YOUR MAN (DVD SINGLE)" as our #1 film, to see if there taking the urine now.
 
This doesn't make sense as when I was with blockbuster they had a policy of sending out your next DVD the day after receiving one. So if a disk was received by them on Tuesday they would send your next one on Wednesday. Global E-rental do the same. I emailed and complained about this as it wasn't initially like that - they ignored all my emails so I closed my account - that was summer 2004.

As for lovefilm, I have been a member for 3 months and have started to notice a slow down in turnaround. Also threaRAB on this forum and others complaining about their service/turnaround.


Throttling:-
With regarRAB to Lovefilm's throttling technique where the lower the number of disks rented in the last 30 days means the higher the priority you are when they send disks out... this appears to be flawed as it doesn't truely reflect what a high volume user is.

Medium volume user
-------------------------
Imagine we have a user who is on the 3 disk option who gets only 3 disks each week and returns promptly but doesnt get 3 more disks until the following week due to either throttling or a small queue - this user in a 4 week month gets 12 disks. Supposing this person senRAB the disks back typically the day after viewing so lovefilm senRAB a film out on the monday and gets it back on the thursday and is therefore able to send out the disk to another subscriber during that week. So what we have is what lovefilm would consider a medium volume user but one where they send films back quickly so the films can be put back in the system quickly.

Low volume user
---------------------
Then we have another user who is on the 3 disk option who only gets 3 disks a week simply because they hold on to the disks for a few days longer. This user also gets 12 disks per month and is classed as a medium volume user by lovefilm's logic BUT as they dont return disks promptly they are actually a bigger drain on the system.

You might work out that if this user got through only 6 films per month but didnt return them promptly, they would actually be classed by lovefilm's logic as being twice the volume user as a person who gets through 12 disks but actually due to them not sending the disks back promptly they are an almost equal drain on the system.


And their formula doesnt allow for excessive use of popular titles:-

Someone who rents a new release like "meet the fockers" and returns it after 3 days and then gets their next film which has been out for 6 months is surely a better customer than one that rents "meet the fockers" and holRAB onto it for 3 weeks. The person who hangs onto new releases for weeks is a bigger drain on the system but is more likely to be calculated as a low volume user.
 
HAHA when you first said love films i did not think you ment a company :D haha , well i did just not one thats sells horror and comedy and sci fi and stuff :D
 
Yes if they limit the 3 disc service then they will most certainly limit all their other subscription levels.

I have found almost every rental company limits their service to a very noticeable level except for Blockbuster so I know who I'll stick to using in the future.

They also always stop sending you movies at the top of your list after several weeks as a new member with them so my adivce would be to only use an online rental service in small intervals. I will avoid being a member for more than 1 month with any rental company. Short membership with such companies plays havoc on their throttling techniques.

Blockbuster have started to send me titles from the bottom of my list so I am going to cancel before my next payment date and rejoin them in a few months time where they will begin to treat me like a new customer again and give me titles from the top again.
 
they probably have special arrangement with the post office as they have huge amounts of daily post. wasn't it lovefilm that said they have 80,000 items going out per day? I wouldnt be surprised if they have a constant stream of vans picking up the post for a couple of hours from 5pm.
 
If Video Island (Screen Select) merge with Lovefilm then I sure hope Screen Select organise it as Lovefilm couldn't organise a p!ss up in a brewery.

I've always stuck with Screen select and blockbuster. Hope this merger doesn't limit my choices further.

It would be terrible if there only became one online rental company. It would become like ebay, no competition and increased prices for a lacklustre service with no real alternative.
 
I recommend that you change to a different library, such as ScreenSelect. Then after six months or so, switch back...

I had good service for a few months from LoveFilm, which then got bad. So I switched to ScreenSelect, and I'm still in the "Honeymoon" period with them...
 
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