This is a good example of consumer is the slave.
I took this service for my parents who live in Delhi. My first call to the company was greeted by one sales guy named Akash who gave big fat claims about their unmatched rental service.
The flip sides -
The titles database - Very disappointing. You will mostly find all B, C grade English to Hindi movies readily available. They, including Reliance Big Flix, claim to have 20000 titles but its all fake. The reality is, they have around 4000 movies in all languages and 4-5 copies of each so 20K is technically correct & mis-leading at the same time. Big Flix is no different either, in fact they are new comers in this business so they have lesser titles than these people.
Delivery time - my second concern was whether they would confirm the convenient time of delivery as people may not be home when the guy comes to deliver. No. They dont confirm that. They can come anytime, so in case you are not home, your movie goes back and you loose 1 day of subscription. Thankfully, we have a full time servant to collect, so if you are looking at this subscription, make sure someone’s always there.
Availability - I was told that movies in high demand will usually take 3-4 days to become available. But after I took the subscription, I figured out that the movies in medium demand itself needed around 2-3 weeks to become available, let alone for those in high demand the wait may very well exceed your subscription period.
Customer care - there is no escalation point. When you have an issue, these jokers point you to the terms & conditions - the second phase where you realise you are f-----. If you read the terms & conditions, it appears as if a moron with a nasty attitude and with absolutely no sense of gratification for its customers runs this show.
Movie delivery & the wishlist - you need to maintain a wishlist first to get going. That list is in the order of your preferences. But the point is, they will only deliver movies that shows ’available’ in the list irrespective of its rank. So if you wanted to watch Ben Hur tomorrow ranking 1st in your wishlist, but if that’s not available, they will automatically pick up from the list the one which is readily available. Meaning, you will have to keep on watching for Ben Hur when it becomes available because you are never qued for that movie and if you never order it again, you will never get it. So when they say you need to have min 20 movies in your wishlist, it means that out of those 20 movies, there will be atleast 5 movies readily available that they can deliver with the other 15 always in waiting. So, all their claims about 20000 titles and 5 copies of each after being in the business for 5 years comes out totally false.
Feedback - It may happen that you get a disc that never plays. So by the time you discover that, you have lost one more day of your subscription and no matter what, they will never compensate you by giving 2 movies the other day. Also, they don’t have this option of rating that disc so that others while ordering can see and refrain from taking it.
Wrong movie - I ordered the Steve Martin 2003 version of The Pink Panther, and they delivered the orignal 70s’ movie in the same Steve Martin 2003 cover!!!
Repeat movie - No. The movie once rented out cannot be rented again!
Refund? - Balls. I thought with so much of western influence, things were changing a bit with indian service providers too by refunding money to dis-satisfied customers. But here, they will not return you the money. I urge all the current users and potential seekers for DVD rental program to look else where. Its much better to pay Rs40 for that pirated copy of the DVD than giving your money to these traitors.
If you are looking at rental programs, I would rather suggest that you wait for that movie to be screened sometime on TV, or have a recorder so that you can play it in your convenient time. These rentals are no hassle free game but a pain that requires you to log into their shoddy website everyday, to pick a movie that is available but not worth watching, or pickup something of the choice, only to discover something else landing up the next day at your door. One of the reasons why these buggers have not given the money back program because they practice monopoly trade and take consumers for a ride.
Just that you don’t have to specifically drive into the store to pick/return the movie is the only good thing about it. But if you ask me, looking at this service and the database, I would love to drive to Church street in Bangalore 3-4 times in a week to Minhaz’s Habitat Store and pick original DVDs on rental instead when the choice of movies is anyhow very limited. I guess the next step in this movie rental program would be companies selling you digital copies directly at same prices as that for rentals, where the movies can be played multiple times in 24 Hrs and after that it destroys itself thereby simultaneously killing piracy and these jokers in between.
These companies need a total boycott.
Update - 22nd Feb 2010:
I had paid Rs. 850 to register for a 3 months - unlimited - 1 DVD per day plan = 90 movies in total. I am close to finishing the first month on it with 24 movies already rented out and now they’ve changed the membership to some premium plan where I can get only 30 movies upto 3 months.These buggers are calling my mom almost everyday asking her to pay more to get more movies. Today when I logged into the website, I am getting a pop-up on every click to renew the membership. Its a frustrating experience and I am thinking seriously on visiting their chamrajpet office in Bangalore and break some bones there.
I have logged a complaint & they are yet to comeback to me on this. Thankfully I have the registration email which confirms that my original plan entitles me for 90 movies so if they do not agree, they are gone. Also, potential seekers of this service in delhi, punjab, haryana, bihar region must strictly refrain from this. These people have only one library which is in Delhi and the movies get couriered to other states on a daily basis to serve their customers there. That’s the reason why most of the movies go on a 2-3 weeks of long wait.
I guess those who are in Delhi will be a little more luckier with the availability but it’s still not worth even looking at.