lovefilm free trial

[dhali2105]

hi
just wondering how the lovefilm free trial works. my dad used to have it before but cancelled it because he didnt like it. i just want to use it to rent games in the free tiral or dont it work like this. will i have to carry on with it after the free trial and become a paid member? i intend on cancelling it after the free trial..
thanks

[nheather]

It works really well.

Be sure to look around for a 90 day trial (there are plenty about) - don't just take up their 14 day offer.

Basically you sign up to a scheme - typically 1, 2 or 3 disks at a time. You can also say whether you want games aswell (this adds an additional £1 to the subs for each disk in your scheme - regardless of how many you use for games). For example the 2 disk scheme is £12.99 - if you want games aswell then it goes to £14.99. Note you don't pay anything during your trial - this is just setting the level of your membership.

You can change the level of membership at any time but don't do this during the trial - this is something that the lovefilm system can't handle and your trial gets ended automatically and you get charged from that day.

You have an online account where you can set up lists and assign disk alloaction to it.

So you might have one movie list and one games list with a disk allocated to each - or you could just bundle everything into one list.

The rub comes in getting the disks you want. You can specify priority against each item in the list but when I was in the trial I found it very difficult to get popular stuff that had been recently released (say 4 months or less old).

When it comes to near the end of your trial you can decide whether to cancel or carry on. If you carry on you will be automatically charged. If you cancel then as long as you make sure all your disks are back before the end of the trial then you account is closed without question.

Cheers,

Nigel

[zAndy1]

I'm currently in the middle of a 90 day trial, had quite a few blu-rays (30 Days of Night, Saw IV, Hostel 2, AC/DC Live At Donnington etc) , they've been very quick turning round new discs, send one back and get another a couple of days later. Got about 15 blu-rays on my list at the moment and about 10 reserved that haven't been released yet. Been impressed so far but not sure I'd be happy paying £15pm after the trial ends. The problem will come when I've watched the backlog of stuff I haven't seen and am then just wanting new releases as I suspect the supply will slow down considerably at that point. Anyway, got a month or so to make up my mind and enjoying watching some blu-rays for free!

[nheather]

Yep I thought the service was excellent. Slick website, very fast turn around and if I was living alone I would have probably continued with it. But for me and my family it had some fundemental flaws.

(i) As I neared the end of my 90 day try I could see that I was running out of films. Sure new ones were being put on the list but at a slower rate than I was watching.

(ii) I didn't start to get my high priority films until the very end. I started with about 30 films on my list, about 15 high priority and the other 15 mixed medium and low. It wasn't until I was down to 15 (all my high priority) that I started getting them. I felt that whilst they had the option to offer me a medium they would do so.

(iii) We became slave to the machine. We were watching too many movies (about 12 per month). 12 per month works out at excellent value. Sure you can cut back but then the value starts to drop off.

(iv) We never seemed to have the film we wanted to watch when we wanted to watch it. So often we would find that on Friday evening both are DVDs would be at Lovefilm. Or we would end up watching a film which we wouldn't have chosen had we gone down to blockbuster. Again, we could have kept the DVDs for longer but then the value would drop away.

In the end we decided to cancel. My wife found a different scheme using Tesco club points. For £11.99 of points you can get 12 Blockbuster rental vouchers. This will be great for us - will probably last us for 3 months and it means that we watch the films we want (including latest releases) when we want them.

Had I had BlueRay I would have been tempted to stay with LoveFilm for a while to view all my old favourites in HD.

Cheers,

Nigel

[jwlawler]

Originally Posted by nheather

Yep I thought the service was excellent. Slick website, very fast turn around and if I was living alone I would have probably continued with it. But for me and my family it had some fundemental flaws.

(i) As I neared the end of my 90 day try I could see that I was running out of films. Sure new ones were being put on the list but at a slower rate than I was watching.

(ii) I didn't start to get my high priority films until the very end. I started with about 30 films on my list, about 15 high priority and the other 15 mixed medium and low. It wasn't until I was down to 15 (all my high priority) that I started getting them. I felt that whilst they had the option to offer me a medium they would do so.

(iii) We became slave to the machine. We were watching too many movies (about 12 per month). 12 per month works out at excellent value. Sure you can cut back but then the value starts to drop off.

(iv) We never seemed to have the film we wanted to watch when we wanted to watch it. So often we would find that on Friday evening both are DVDs would be at Lovefilm. Or we would end up watching a film which we wouldn't have chosen had we gone down to blockbuster. Again, we could have kept the DVDs for longer but then the value would drop away.

In the end we decided to cancel. My wife found a different scheme using Tesco club points. For £11.99 of points you can get 12 Blockbuster rental vouchers. This will be great for us - will probably last us for 3 months and it means that we watch the films we want (including latest releases) when we want them.

Had I had BlueRay I would have been tempted to stay with LoveFilm for a while to view all my old favourites in HD.

Cheers,

Nigel

Similar experience here.

It worked well except that which film came next was pretty random. Specifying high priority did not seem to help. Some requests were labelled with a "long wait warning" but others were not and still took a long time.

We can currently play HDDVDs but not BluRay. We borrowed mostly HDDVDs.

We were also watching too much TV and were about to run out of HDDVD titles that we wanted. Of course, we did not expect many new ones to appear.

I had expected to cancel it and consider rejoining on a lower package when we got BluRay ability.

Finally, after a family negotiation, we switched the minimal £4 for 2 discs a month package.