I was a long time user of the Blockbuster mail order DVD service. For me, in Guernsey, it worked well enough, DVDs arrived promptly and I was pretty happy. Around the same time, I trialled the Lovefilm service (mainly, I think, due to a friend of mine doing one of those “Free iPod” style things, where you get friends to sign up for stuff, and you get a free, erm, iPod). And whilst the service was fine, I was perfectly happy with Blockbuster, so at the end of the trial I cancelled. But ever since, I have been plagued by emails from Lovefilm, begging me to rejoin the service, and chucking all sorts of carrots in my direction as incentive to do it. I never caved and simply deleted them all as they came in.
But I’ve recently been looking for a new mail order service. I’ve got a spangly new LCD tv, an a Blu-Ray capable PS3 and being a bit of videophile, I like real, actual DVDs rather than downloaded ones with people’s heads popping halfway through the important scenes, and Lovefilm does have a far superior selection than Blockbuster. So I figure fine, next time an email from Lovefilm turns up, I’ll go for it.
But, of course, after waiting a couple of weeks, no emails have arrived from Lovefilm, I had no copies of old emails from them, so I thought I’d try my luck.
What follows is a tale of woe and despair, highlights the problems of outsourcing your call / customer care center to non-English-speaking countries, but ultimately, through a little (sarcastic) persistence, has a happy ending. Kind of.