So this post was technically started back in February with an email from the lovely people at FuelMyBlog sent out an email back then offering the chance to review a DVD Rental offer by a company called Cinema Paradiso.
I had started writing the review when I started using the service to keep track of how things were going.
I got all signed up on the 10th March. After completing all the details like where the DVDs are going to be sent and how often I then added my first 10 films to my list. Signing up was easy and clear to understand. All the information you needed was there in front of you.
I did have a little hiccup when I was adding films to the list. When I was looking at certain film pages the link at the top that told me about how many DVD’s I had on my list vanished and then would reappear on the next page or on different film pages.
On the morning of the 11th March I had an email letting me know that my DVDs were on the way. This was pretty efficient as when I got in from work on the 12th there were two DVDs waiting for me.
I watched both DVDs – one of them at first wouldn’t play in my DVD player – I think this was more the DVD player being temperamental rather than the DVD quality as when I put it in a second time it played with no problems.
On about the 14th or 15th March I mailed these two DVDS in the same envelope back to Cinema Paradiso – the good thing about it – Freepost envelopes – no faffing about with stamps just bung it in the post box and the postman does the rest and unlike services like Blockbuster there are no late fees. If you haven’t sent in back in about two weeks you get a friendly reminder telling you that they’ve not received a DVD back.
By the 24th March I hadn’t received any more discs although they had been left me over a week. Now had there been a bank holiday or a strike or something I would have understood the delay but it didn’t really make sense why there was a delay. I signed into my account on the 24th March and got in touch with customer services – although it said that someone would get back to me within 24 hours it actually took until the 28th March for someone to get back to me.
As of the 1st April I received my next batch – that was a total of two weeks between posting the first lot back and receiving the second lot. This was kind of disappointing as had it been a paid subscription I would have ended up paying for a second month but not had my full allowance of DVD rentals.
I wrote the original review and realised that it was quite negative and there was bound to be a reasonable explanation for the delay of the DVDs and a lack of customer service. I emailed my contact at FuelMyBlog who then past my queries onto Zoran who is the CEO of Cinema Paradiso. I received a response back from Zoran who explained that part of the delay was caused by a system that they have in place while people are on the free trials that are offered by Cinema Paradiso.
Me and Zoran had an email conversation over a couple of days so it was clear to see that he wanted to make sure that I received good Customer Service and that we were able to resolve the issue that had been caused along the way.
While looking into reviewing the service I looked at other services such as LoveFilm. I used to use LoveFilm but as I have a unlimited card for my local cinema I’m reluctant to pay out for a DVD rental service at the same time (maybe if I become a famous blogger who can pay the rent on a post then I might consider both at once lol). There are better value services out there but the website is user friendly and when needed the customer service is very good.
There are wide range of films but money wise it might be better to compare against other services that are out there.
This is a sponsored post and for full disclosure purposes, I received a free trial in return for a review from fuelmyblog
