WH Smith

 

Tom from London, March 27, 2007

It's the same old story, service is great in the free trial period. A constant stream of DVD's every 2 days, which lures you into thinking it's a great service. Then as soon as the honeymoon period is over, and I do mean that day, it all goes very slooooooow. They don't seem to be receiving them back as quick, and they don't send them anywhere near the amount as before. And I'm getting wrong discs sent, which I never did before. It's a stupid ploy really because you can cancel at any time, so surely if they keep up the service as before the customer would stay longer. - I think WHsmith and me are about to part. Shame really

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Rob from Norwich , October 7, 2007

I've been with WH Smith online DVD rental for nearly two years, but have just decided to close my account with them.

Over the last few months, the quality of their customer service has declined, and in the last month alone I have been sent 4 incorrect discs. Each time I complained, I was sent a brush-off email saying this didn't happen very often! When I asked for a gesture on the part of WH Smith in recognition of the amount of time wasted and inconvenience caused, I was told that an extra 4 days would be added to my account. This seems something of an empty gesture to me.

Today the 4th wrong disc arrived, and I tried to go on the site to complain, only to find that it's out of action until at least tomorrow. Shoddy! The site itself is badly designed, the search facility is very random, and many of the titles have been incorrectly entered on the database, meaning that searching by title can often yield no results, but a search by director or actor will find you the film you want, with the title mis-spelled. This, again, is shoddy, and a waste of time. Another annoying thing about the site is that it is rarely updated with details of new films; at present when I log in, the site tells me that "A History of Violence" is out now in cinemas - it's been out on DVD for nearly a year!

The basic premise of online DVD rental is paying to watch DVDs you want to watch. WH Smith are becoming less and less able to grasp this relatively simple concept. I strongly recommend that you look elsewhere if you want a decent level of service.

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Andrew from Kent, June 24 , 2006

Everything started well, the DVDs arrived promptly and I was averaging 2 per week. But then the disc despatch slowed down. I queried this with WH Smith by email and I received a prompt response saying that they were operating their fair use policy i.e. deliberately not sending my next disc to me. I think they were just trying to reduce their postage costs by slowing down the rentals.

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Ron from London, March 22 , 2006

Excellent value and swift deliveries. Agree that new releases can take a bit, but you do get a continuous stream of DVDs through the letterbox, especially good for catching up on TV series (watching Lost that way was great!

Definitely a good option, Smith's High Street reputation doesn't let them down in DVD rental.

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Joe from Livingstone, March 7 , 2006

Great for the first 3 weeks then they operated a go-slow, I elected a 'unlimited' 3 discs at home package but it seems they don't like high users. I complained, duly resigned and received this reply..

"Thank you for your recent email. I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the service you are receiving.

We always do our best to get our customers the next discs they want as soon as possible. In fact, 75% of what we ship each day is to customers whose previous rentals arrived earlier that day.

However, we do operate a Fair Use Policy that aims to ensure a balanced experience for all our members. This means that we give priority to members who don't rent high numbers of discs from us. Therefore, members who rent the most discs from us might experience lower mailing priority. By allocating discs in this way we ensure a fair system for all members.

The Fair Use Policy is in our Terms and Conditions and available for you to read simply by clicking on the Terms and Conditions link at the bottom of the home page.

Should you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us."

So there you are, WH Smith advertise 'unlimited' but appear to be limiting mailing to high users. What's the point of electing to have 3 dics at home if WH Smith are effectively calming mailing priorities?

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Phil from Banbury, February 10, 2005

Its very annoying when they ask you to compile a list of DVD's you want in priority and then completely ignore the priority. I tried to get them to send me a couple of DVD's I really wanted by removing all others and leaving just my main requirements, all that happended was I stopped getting DVD's altogether. When I phoned up to discuss this with them they basically told me that the DVD's were very popular and didn't have them avaialble to send out!!! Would High Street DVD chains survive with responses like this? I think not.

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Ramona from Middlesex, December 15 , 2005

Please, please don't let yourself be fooled into getting Lovefilm or their affiliates' service. It's the worst company ever. You never receive any of your Top 15 titles, you pay for unlimited DVD rental 3 at a time, but receive 3 at the most a week, it takes them at least 2 days to send you another title after they've received the disk back.
Take my advice and go for Blockbuster or Tesco. Believe me I've tried them all. They're much faster and you don't have to send the disks back BEFORE cancelling. What a waste of time and money that is when you could get another 3 disks to watch in the meantime!!!

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Ross, October 6 , 2005

Like other reviewers I thought the service good initially, however after a couple of months I was consistently receiving titles outside my top 15 (which was not full of popular new releases).

When I joined the 1-disc fee was 9.99 per month but was soon cut to 7.99. I thought this was great until I noticed they were still charging me 9.99! I had to tell them to change it.

They also claim to offer a fast-track facility where they will hold a disc for you for up to 48 hours - this is subject to numbers in stock and I have yet to see this option on any of the titles in my rental queue.

Their turnaround time seems to be getting slower - it's often at least 1 or 2 days till they send the next disc, so although they claim to give you unlimited rentals in reality it's fixed to about 1 per week for the 1-disc package.

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Paul from Stoke, September 23, 2005

Like most comments about WH Smith, the service starts off great, then after a few months the rentals virtually stop.

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Robert from Glasgow, August 18, 2005

During my free trial the discs kept coming through the letterbox and I thought what a great company,(following the dreadful experience of Global Video). I joined for a year - big mistake. As soon as they had my money I received a max. of 3 discs a week, some weeks only receiving 1 disc. This company has a policy of reduced delivery if you try to exceed what they think is a reasonable number of rentals.

Only subscribe if you never exceed 3 discs a week.

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Helen from Durham, August 11, 2005

I have been with whsmith for 3 months, for the 1st 2 months i was extremely pleased with the service, i only had 1 disk which was too damaged to play. however in the 3rd month i noticed a very significant slow-down in the time it was taking to get my next disk allocated. typically all my disks would be registered as returned on a monday, 1 would have 1 disk sent out on wednesday evening and the next 2 on thursday (but only 1 of the 2 would arrive the next day). before this, new disks were being allocated as soon as mine were returned. have contacted customer services who were v polite but there has been no improvement. will be cancelling and returning to screen select at end of month

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Ferhat from London, August 2, 2005

I put over 40 titles and they dont have any of them. Unbelieveable this is, also I put about 8 titles at the beginning of my trial and now I have come to end of my trial and still haven't recived them.The only good thing is when they send a title you recive it the next day.

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Jim from Teeside, June 14, 2005

They were ok until about 3 months ago when they went down the pan. I would try elsewhere.....

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Jon, June 14, 2005

I I have had 6 kayaking DVDs at the top of my queue for 6 months! and I have a 3 disk subscription. I have complained 3 times, but keep getting told there are on order. I will be taking it further.

Customer Service - Very poor

Delivery a little slow. Can not recommend at this time - go elsewhere.

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Mike from Doncaster, June 7, 2005

It took 3 days before my first rental then they only sent one 2 days later 2 arrived following week only received one for that week and the more you complain the worse it gets

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Terry from Herts, May 16, 2005

Subscribed to WH Smith since March 05. Started off rather well and was receiving most of my top requests. Agreed with Marty on the decline in service for Lovefilm affiliates. The service had definitely gone down hill after May Day bank holidays. The return system has changed whereby we are no longer able to view the date when they received back our discs. I suspect that the company have become so popular that they couldn't cope with the demand. Or maybe there's a cap on the number of DVDs per week.

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