Off the Top of My Head

Review: Screenclick.com DVD Rental via the Post in Ireland

I signed up for a DVD rental program a few months ago called Screen Click which is pretty much the same as Netflix in other parts of the world. At the time I asked some people for movie suggestions and got a huge response. My want list is huge so I have been getting DVDs on a regular basis. I am going to review a lot of them but that is for another day.

For those not familiar with Screen Click here in Ireland or Netflix in other parts of the world, you basically pay a monthly fee and they send you a DVD everytime you return one. How much you pay depends on how many DVD’s you would have at any given time. Most people probably go for the 2 DVD plan which goes for around €20. The way you request DVD’s is by adding them to a wishlist and every time you return one, they send you another off the list.

Enough of the boring stuff since everyone probably knows how these programs work by this stage. Instead, I will give my opinion on the service. There are tons of codes available in which to get a free “trial” month which I took advantage of. Then unless you say cancel, they charge your card every month after that. During my first month, the service was excellent. I always seemed to get my first or second choice DVD and DVD’s went out the same day I returned the old one. Also, any time I had a question it was answered quickly and professionally. Unfortunately, the glowing praise ends the day I stopped being a trial member. It seems they must give priority to these accounts in order to make a good first impression. Once your status “drops” to member, things eerily change.

My first problem is the quality of DVDs. They claim to scan them when they are returned to make sure they still play but I have received a lot of DVDs that must have been used as drink coasters by the person before me. Just a quick visual check would be all you would need to see these DVD’s won’t ever play. It is the kind of damage that can’t be done in the mail (which is their standard line) because they are deep scratches and stains. Given the fact they ship in think plastic cases, that isn’t going to happen in any circumstance. When you returned a damaged one, you basically go through the whole process again. I wish they credited you that time but they don’t. I tried emailing as soon as I put the damaged one in the post but that doesn’t speed things up at all.

My next issue is during the trial period I usually got choice 1 or 2 but always one of my top 5. After the trial I am lucky to get one on the Top 20 (Another Pet Peeve is I can only add 25 to the wishlist rather then the hundreds Netflix offers). I asked about these issues but I never got a response.

What I will say that is positive is that despite all the issues mentioned above (Those were the biggest but there are tons of smaller issues), it is still cheaper per DVD then Blockbuster or any other rental place. The no late fees thing is a big part of that as Blockbuster basically encourages you to incur them through various methods.

As far as I can tell, ScreenClick isn’t directly affiliated with NetFlix but since they were bought ought since their initial founding, it is of course possible. If they are, I hope NetFlix improves Screenclicks website to make it more functional and user friendly. If they aren’t, I hope they launch a competing service.

If anyone asks me now if ScreenClick Ireland is worth it, I usually say yes but I make sure to list all of the issues. It isn’t as good as they will tell you but its still marginally better then the store chains (That is a low bar indeed lucky for them)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.