Recently the idea of Online video rental has become very popular. While I would say the prospect of this particular mode of business is very very promising, very few do this maintaining the “rules of the game”.
Even I fell prey to this service. Although I have never been a movie fanatic, after moving to Bangalore for work, I needed a healthy pass time. So decided to go for this service. Online DVD rental in Bangalore showed up SeventyMM as the first link. This particular organization had the maximum number of hits and was the most well known in Bangalore. Strangely I was forced to sign up first in order to have a good idea about their rental tariff. When I found the charges to be more than my expectations, I left the membership form incomplete.
Within 10 mins I got a call from them ( I put my mobile number in the sign up form) and they offered me to waive the security deposit as a part of their “Anniversary Offer”. I would not be surprised if they have an anniversary every 2 days 
. Anyway, the person whom I was speaking too had really good marketing skills and I decided to go for the membership and signed up for 3 months during which I could rent a maximum of 18 DVDs. The sales person assured that they would deliver the DVDs to my office or residence as per my preference. I would have to inform them before 1 ‘o clock noon for getting the delivery the same day. This seemed to be a very reasonable requirement.
In my opinion, the site for this organization had been laid out pretty badly. There are quite a few features which majorly screws up in Browsers working with a Non Internet Explorer Engine. Also there is no “Sign In” link on the main page. I had to poke around quite a bit before I discovered this one . Also this site although deals with Credit Card information, does not use session variables, something which is pretty alarming.
Anyway, started off with creating a rental queue. The site heavily relies on AJAX. So paranoid users like me who prefer to disable Javascripts would have a hard time trying to figure out what is happening. SeventyMM recommends having a rental queue containing at-least 20 movies. So for me actually I would have to select all the movies I would like to view as a part of my membership. Once I was through the creation of the rental queue, I called up just to make sure everything was fine.
Although I called sometime around 12:30 in the noon, I was told that they can’t deliver the movie today as their delivery boy had already left for the day. Considering that this could be a goof up I agreed about the next day delivery. The first movie came in as per my request the next day however I was very surprised to note that the DVD was majorly broken in the middle and had been repaired in a very crude way. Although the data portion of the DVD was “OK” but the condition of the DVD made me think very hard about whether the DVD would damage my notebook drive. Luckily the DVD worked fine and left the drive in my notebook intact.
The real story however begun from the second day. When I requested for a pickup, the delivery boy turned up with “28 Weeks Later”, 2nd part of a sequel. This was 19th on my rental queue called up the customer care keeping the delivery boy waiting. I was informed that they have sent me the movie as no other movies which I have requested for are available. SeventyMM have however put up in their website that they have multiple copies of DVDs in their stock and it rarely happens that they are running short of copies. On asking for clarifications stating this point, the executive told me that he would get back to me in the next 30 mins. I have almost been through 1 month of my membership and I am still waiting for the call.
I didn’t accept the DVD and again called up customer care only to find out that they have already marked that DVD as accepted and it would count in my 18 DVD contract. So they have effective ripped me 1 DVD. On further arguments the SeventyMM executive told me that he would get back to me after discussing this with his seniors. After calling them 3 more times I was told that there is nothing they can do as “THEY CAN’T OVERRIDE THEIR SYSTEM”. I was extremely irritated and hanged up.
The next day the delivery boy turned up with a bengali movie which was 12th on my queue. To my utter surprise, this DVD refused to play after the first 10 mins. On informing the customer care I got the same answer that “they can’t override their system” and they would not be able to send me a replacement as they had only 1 DVD version of that movie. I didn’t feel like wasting more time on the telephone.
The next day the delivery boy again came up with the same DVD “28 Weeks Later”. This time the story was earlier when I had called up the SeventyMM Customer care, they were kind enough to reinsert the DVD to my rental queue. They acted such as I had mentioned while refusing that I would like to have the 1st part first. But their logistics had again screwed things up and created the exact same situation which was earlier. By this time I was too much frustrated and decided to terminate the membership.
On calling the customer care stating my cancellation request, they refused to return any money on a prorata basis. I think this is a clear case of fraud and breach of contract. Luckily I have paid with Credit Card. I have decided to inform my back and charge back the entire amount.
In the end, I would suggest readers to stay away from this company if you really value your time and money.
Tags: videorental, online, review
. I really doubt if the camera thingy is going to happen in the next 3 months.
