Fed up with renting scratched DVD's (1 Viewer)

[Zen Butler]

I just recently joined Netflix. Jack is right, they seem to take pride in their discs. I have yet to receive a scratched or defective disc. I stayed away from them forever, until I noticed they are expanding their foreign and independent section pretty rapidly. If you live in Southern California, it is an added bonus. I receive discs in 1 day most of the time.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

This is why I love Sony's Blu-ray disc (hi def DVD) that uses a very *cool* looking caddy to keep the disc far away from all scratches and finger prints.

I hope whatever HD-DVD system finally happens...that it uses a caddy. Smudged and scratched discs suck big time...sometimes they come scratched just from having slipped out of their case holder when being shipped in the mail!

-dave

 

[Ted Lee]

i'm in the habit of asking the person at the checkout counter to check the dvd on the spot, before i leave the store.

they usually give me a funky look but are pretty cool about it.

 

[Yumbo]

can't beat the customer who always says almost every disc doesn't play properly on their player.

roll eyes.

 

[Jon Strong]

can't beat the customer who always says almost every disc doesn't play properly on their player.

Amen.

 

[Yumbo]

what do you do with such customers?

this is one reason why we scan test in store, to verify such claims.

if we can't replicate it, no credit.

same reason why we also track player details for each customer. saves us giving it out to others with the same (problem) player.

 

[Matt Pelham]

How long has your store been open? You're saying that if I work there for 6 years I'll be making $67 per hour? That's incredible.

 

[Yumbo]

this is our 4th year.

1st year - me, myself and I.
2nd year - me + 1
3rd year - me + 3
4th year - me + 5

5th year - 2nd store

longest serving employee is in 2nd year.
it's not a career.

figures provided are relative (as detailed earlier in thread).

what I can divulge is that our programmer who does it in his spare time, gets paid an additional $1,000 per year, even if he does nothing.

and I just got another call asking what's the best player to upgrade to, from across the country.

time to watch some new arrivals!

Red Dragon
Truth About Charlie
Femme Fatale
Maid In Manhattan (fairly funny)
Friday After Next (pretty funny)
Secretary
Far From Heaven

got in 4 SACDS and no SACD player yet! drat.
Onkyo SP800 vs. Yamaha S2300

ps. I don't pay myself. grin.

 

[James T]

I also work in the video store. We keep track of the number of complaints on the disc(max 3 before it's written off). If it's an obvious crack/scratch, then it'll be written off before it hits the shelf. We have someone come in once a week to look at our defective tapes/discs. We also have a couple disc repair kits, but there's no time to fix the discs.

There are also some people coming in with a disc saying it doesn't work. Since we have a DVD player, we test it out. 9 times out of 10 it works fine. If it works, the #1 excuse the customer has is "It can't be my player it has to be the disc, I just bought it last week". I think there are also a lot of people having problems with layer changes, because some of the newer people are complaining about a second pause halfway through the movie and want a credit for that.

When Traffic came out, people were complaining about how the Mexico scenes looked "dirty" and looked as if it was a "copy". I tried to explain the director's intentions, but no good. Another customer complained that a movie had too many commericals in it and wanted a refund plus a free movie. I told him he could fast forward through them and he got more mad.

 

[Yumbo]

hi james,

that's a very small tolerance for write-offs. we had a similar policy, ie. sell-off quick, but very high maintenance. life was so much easier and profitable when we bought a Disk Doctor machine - best investment a store can make.

it's a little different here in multi-region land - most of the errors are to do with compatibility, and older players.

our #1 defence claim is, "I have a multi-region player", which really means multi-coloured, ie. nothing.

commercials - pre-movie trailers? MENU button is faster.

we got a customer who walked out because there's very tiny swirly lines on a disc (from wiping). that's democracy disguised as ignorance (a lemon player is just that).

ps. it is a fact that different manufacturing processes produce varying disc surface tendencies.