Okay, so I’ll admit that I’m a tad cynical, bordering on paranoid. Or maybe I’m just a really cautious consumer.
Either way, getting half a dozen DVDs for, what, about $50 trips my “too good to be true” alarm. Like I said, paranoid.
So is it going to end up costing me a lot more than $50 (or so), will I be deluged with junk mail and/or spam, called by telemarketers every second of the day, or what?
Or is it just gasp a really good bargain?
Before I joined, I figured out what the cost of the s/h on the original “free” DVDs would cost, added in the reduced cost and s/h of the extra DVD you can add to your original order (which counts as one of your commitment selections) plus I estimated that I’d have to pay around $25 apiece including s/h (if I shopped smart) for the 3 remaining selections. All told, I think I came up with an average cost of $11 per DVD after you’ve completed your membership (including all s/h fees). Not too shabby, considering that some of the membership selections offered are in the $30 range.
I still get mailings every few weeks that need to be responded to, but at least they have an online decline/select option now so you don’t have to be constantly mailing back cards. All that you need to do is remember go to the site when you get your notification in the mail and decline the selection if you don’t want it. I have yet to receive any DVD’s I didn’t specifically order.
I haven’t noticed any increase in junk mail or spam, but of course, it’s hard to tell.
The only downside I saw is that it is amazing how many times you forget to send the little cards back, or specifically say “decline” to the monthly offering, and end up getting a CD you didn’t care for.
If you’re not careful, you can wind up paying an awful lot of money for your fulfillment DVDs. The trick is to buy very expensive DVDs on enrollment and then fulfill your membership with the cheapest titles possible.
These folks have all the angles figured out.
You solve this easily by doing one of two things:
Fulfill your minimum purchase agreement right away, then cancel.
Ask to be on their “positive reply” option. They won’t want to do it until after you fulfill your minimum purchase agreement, but I told them I was someone who traveled on business a lot, and they agreed to do it for me. (snicker snort, I was only 14 at the time! My business took me to the local high school and back. So you have to be willing to fib.)
One thing that kind of irked me about them – I wanted to join, choose my free DVDs, choose all the others as well, and send them a check for whatever the total was (ballpark $125-150) and wash my hands with the whole thing.
They would not let me do it, apparently they must really make a lot of revenue from the monthly mailing of the “Just return this notice in 10 days unless you want us to send you Krull or some other shitass movie that no one in their right mind will enjoy” card.
I would think they would be happy to get the full payment up front for an entire membership, but they told me to hit the bricks.
Bleh, whatever. http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/ has DVDs very cheap (no additional shipping charges – the price you see is your final cost) and it is much less hassle.
The biggest problem with these guys (and BMG) is that entire Amazonian rainforests will be depleted so that they can can send you circulars and, if you quit, letters begging you to rejoin.
My mother joined Columbia House as a college student, back when they were a record club. She bought the minimum number of records and then dropped out. They continued to send her those “we want you back” mailings for over twenty years, and didn’t lose track of her until after seven changes of address.
I never used to send back the reply cards when I joined. I’d let them send me their “DVD of the Month”, write REFUSED on the box when it arrived, and drop it right back in the mailbox. Eventually they got tired of paying for shipping both ways, and they “upgraded” my membership to one where I didn’t have to mail back the cards and they wouldn’t send out the monthly selection unless I requested it.
The same thing happened to my mother. She was a member back in 1979, and they sent her “We want you back!” letters for years and years. In fact, they may still be sending her stuff for all I know–she’s only moved once in that time.
I’m a BMG member, and a few years back I chose the “paperless” option. Every few weeks I get an e-mail reminding me of my featured selection. I click on the link, log in, select “decline,” and am on my way with no hassle in less than 5 minutes. Overall, it’s been a really good deal for me.
Biggest problem I had with the CD club was lack of new releases. Oftentime I couldn’t wait and wound up buying in a record store instead.
After fulfilling the membership agreement they always had “buy one get one free or get one half off” or something like that but you had to order both at the same time and finding two I really liked and didn’t already have was rough at times.
Also, Columbia’s “regular prices” were at least a few dollars higher than prices in the stores.
Finally, as a mail-order outfit, I never understood why they charged me sales tax, unless they had a physical presence in Illinois of which I am unaware. Of course, any mail order co. can charge sales tax but it seemed to me they were giving away some of their competitive advantage vs the brick and mortar stores.
One other benefit of switching to the “no automatic shipments” plan: if you do not order anything for several months straight, they will drop you. The automatic ship if no decline plan is forever, almost.
Does any of this apply to the DVD club and if not, my sincere apologies for the hijack.
My grandfather used to do this with some record companies-get the free stuff-then quit.
Don’t know if this is the case with DVDs, or if it matters to you, but when I used the club, I noticed that the packaging was different from standard releases, i.e. no lyrics, etc. If you like having the lyrics, graphics, photos, etc., it’s annoying…
Wierd, I never had to deal with those auto accept cards. Maybe I lucked out and joined the one company that didn’t do it.
I joined, BMG I think it was, got me so many CDs for so many dollars, bought the minimum and a few hard to find CDs and have ignored their mailings for the past … 10 years.
www.playcentric.com has cheaper prices on some of the ones I did a search on at deep discount, even after I had to add in the shipping costs(thanks to their perpetual “x off each dvd” sale codes). Most of their prices are about the same. Thanks for the link! 
I’m pretty happy with my Columbia House DVD club. I purchased some expensive DVD’s in my initial join-up package, including the first season of Sex and the City and Sense and Sensibility, then only choose the titles I really want when they are offered at the $19.95, which is the minimum price they have to be in order to count towards the rest of the fulfillment agreement.
I use the e-mail option, which is very convenient. Once I did receive Black Hawk Down because I must have missed the mailer and reminder e-mails. So I called them up and they sent me a postage paid sticker. I just had to pop the sticker on and send it back and they gave me full credit.
Hm, thanks for all the responses. I’m the kind of guy who forgets to send in “reject” slips (and things of the sort) more often than not, so I’ll have to give that some thought…
All things considered, though, it sounds like it’ll be worth some minor irritation to fill in a few holes in my DVD collection. Well, time to do some comparison shopping.
When you get a DVD sent to you that you don’t want, just write on the box “return to sender”. I do that all the time.