zip.ca places monthly rental caps on plans (1 Viewer)

[glen_esq]

You guys think you have problems with netflix, check this out.

zip.ca is Canada's version of netflix, the big player up here.

End of February, they will change their monthly plans introducing a cap on the number of rentals you get each month.The most popular plan is 4 movies out at a time - 24.95 per month.

The cap for this plan will be 11 rentals per month. After that is reached, each rental will cost an additional 2.49.

I rent somewhere between 12 and 15 movies a month from zip, at 12 or 13 rentals per month, my monthly charge goes up 10 - 20%.

Or I can settle at the 11 per month cap and get 10% to 20% less value.


Their president discussed cap plans last year with keeners at onlinedvdrental.ca and said they were thinking of setting the cap at 14 per month for the 24.95 plan, but now they have decided to lower the boom implementing the cap at 11.

cinemail.ca is their largest competitor, doesn't have the selection zip has.
zip = 40,000 titles, cinemail = 15,000 titles a quick check from my own queue shows I would lose titles if I move to cinemail.ca


I rent a lot of obscure titles, those titles that cinemail doesn't have I'll now move up my queue at zip. Once those are rented, I think I'll leave zip and give my business to cinemail.

 

[Bob Turnbull]

I joined them last July and have been pretty happy. Especially while I had the ZipRefill option (where they send out your next disc as soon as you update the site that you've mailed it). I lost that privilege when one of the discs I mailed back never showed up on their side...

Though the max I've rented in a month has been 12, I'm still not keen on this new policy. It kind of indicates the beginning of the end. I know they've become much more popular in the last year and expect to grow even more, but I just don't know if downgrading your service is the way to scale up growth (of course, I expect that mailing costs would end up being pretty big if their audience grows that much more).


How do you move things up the queue Glen? Or are you just talking about the one ASAP designation you can apply to any movie in your queue? I'd love to fine tune the list somewhat and bring recent additions closer to the top.