Blair Space: Online DVD rentals with Screen Select

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http://movies.blairspace.com/features/46.html

Online DVD rentals with Screen Select

It seems like everywhere is now offering online DVD rentals. The latest one I saw is the ITV Movie Club although I think they are just a front for one of the main companies. The most well known, at least in the UK, is probably Block Buster due to the adverting campaigns.

I decided to give Screen Select a try however. They seemed to have the best choice as Block Buster was missing some movies I wanted. My experience with Screen Select so far hasn't been so bad. I phoned them once and the person I spoke to was fine. The system was down so she took my details and phoned me back which was good.

The selection is pretty decent; I managed to hit 70 items on my list. Dispatch wasn't fast though. Although they offer one day turn-around to members it is slower for new customers - two business days. I registered Wednesday night and they failed to get them out by the end of the week so they weren't displayed until Monday.

I had around 6-7 things on high priority, the three they sent me were all on that list. That said there is no priority system other than a high, medium, low so you end up with lots of things on each priority levels rather than being able to order exactly. Also, when you add stuff it automatically goes onto medium priority so a lot of the time I had to go to my selection page and change it.

The only issue I don’t like is that you want plenty of movies on the weekend but their dispatch centre is closed over the weekend so you are limited as to when you can send them back, although that is also a limitation of Royal Mail. I sent one back Thursday and hopefully a new one will arrive today.

Turnaround is good though, if you send it back one day, it will arrive the next day and they will ship the new stuff out to you that day so it will arrive the next day – the day after the day after you sent it out which you can’t really ask any more of them.

The disks are originals though they just come in plastic cases. It arrives in basically a paper case containing the plastic case inside and you use that for your return envelope too.

So overall my experience has been pretty good. I haven’t had any DVDs that haven’t worked and delivery has been fast, plus everything dispatched to be so far has been my high priority choices. It’s a good service although I haven’t used any of the others yet so I can’t compare.