Signs of Strife in LOVEFiLM Land

customerservice
2006-11-01

My recent posting regarding the Screenselect/LOVEFiLM merger elicited a lot of (mostly unfavourable) comments from strangers regarding LOVEFiLM’s poor service. So far I hadn’t seen any of that, but their website has just refused to downgrade my package (i.e allow me to reduce my spend with them). I’ve sent an email, but as others have pointed out, they have pre-prepared excuses ready about the high volumes of email they are getting (hint: this isn’t OK, LOVEFiLM, you should have expected it). We’ll see how fast this problem gets sorted: is this the start of a slippery slope which ends in me cancelling my account? Time will tell.

Comments

[...] I’ve written many times before about the poor quality customer service I’ve received from LOVEFiLM, the UK’s largest DVD rental service, and those posts have solicited a lot of complaints from other people too. I’ve finally bitten the bullet and cancelled my account: a combination of frustration with poor delivery times, them never sending me the titles high on my list, and that they won’t allow me to freely suspend my account for a reasonable amount of time. It’s sad, as they used to provide excellent customer service when I first used them a few years ago (when they were small), but acquisitions and growth seem to have made them fat and lazy, and they no longer treat customers with respect - written examples are all over their website, including the veiled threats of continued charges in the cancellation process itself. At some point, probably once I return from San Jose, I plan to sign-up with Amazon instead, who now seem to be their largest competitor, and stock 2/3 of the titles that LOVEFiLM do, so might still stand a chance of fulfilling my sometimes unusual taste. Amazon have generally provided excellent service in the past, and it’ll be interesting to see if their foray into DVD rental hurts or helps their brand. [...]