Zip.ca Hyper-Volume Renters

[fishhead]

Honestly I now find the whole affair a little silly.

Zip comes up with a business model that's presumably profitable, continues to invest in ways of making the delivery more efficient (including 'Refills'), and then realizes that it's costing too much.

Customers are then asked in what form they would like to be penalized.

Excellent!

[Rick]

Thanks for all this folks. This is more than just a trial balloon, it's serious, and we are absorbing all your useful input now. I expect we'll be back here to post our conclusions within a few days, goal is to please the greatest number of people of course.

Two small points regarding some of the later questions that have been posed.....the issue is not so much financial per se as a question of priorizing investment and spending: where do we invest our discretionary capital, what kinds of service enhancements and additions are most valued. Many, many of our members (I believe most) value our selection of titles a great deal; that selection is already twice as large or more than other services, and of course we stick to our "if it's available, we'll add it" guarantee. Maintaining and adding to that library and to our inventory - a daily occurence - is our number one investment, every month. The second-largest costs we incur - some 35% of your monthly membership fees - are for postage and shipping, and that is really what this discussion thread is mainly about: it's not that the original model didn't work, it's that our shipping efficiency, and therefore your rental volumes, have increased by 50% since we started. That's good news - but it means that our volume-based shipping costs are now also 50% higher than they were originally, so one way or another, that needs to be addressed. Your responses here have been most helpful in making us aware of the range of views on this. Second, to those who base their analyses of our costs as basically shipping-related, well, all I can say is read the above. Postage and air shipping our indeed big parts of our cost of service, but so are the DVDs themselves, so is labour, so is the website, etc, etc...

Thanks again, we'll be back soon.

[Paguma]

The only thing I'd be very careful about is how any change is going to reflect in comparisons with the competitors.

Sure you can say if you try Zip and somebody else, you'll like Zip better. However, most people will only pick one service to try. When they go to choose which one, some of the things they are going to consider are the very things that have been hinted may change, i.e. unlimited vs maximum number of rentals, price, additional service charges.

Sure a user who has tried two services may know that a 20 maximum at Zip is better than an unlimted account at a service that can only send you 12 a month anyway. Does a user who is looking to join a service for the first time know that?

If a user is comparing between two unlimited services and one is cheaper, does he know the more expensive one has other advantages? I think a good number of customers will take the cheapest one too often.

As for additional services charges, I certainly hope we don't go that road, because the very idea is enough to anger me to the point of quitting now, let alone deterring new users.

[everitt]

Why not simply offer us "high volume users" a larger membership package, say 8 out or 10 out at a time and price the package accordingly? (Dvdhype, for example, has a couple of packages larger than 6 out at a time.) Also, how about offering a package whereby the dvd's are sent out in the form of "packs" of 3, 4 or more dvd's at a time each week. You know ahead of time how many dvd's you will be receiving (4 per week/16 per month, 5 per week, 20 per month, and so on and be billed accordingly). I am currently trying out Cinedvdmax and this is what they do. I receive 4 dvd's per week, all shipped in the same envelope. I ship them back all together in the provided postage-paid envelope (two 50 cent stamps). Cheaper for Cinedvdmax to get their dvd's returned to them than it is for Zip where each dvd is returned in its own envelope.

[SoloMio]

Well, for one thing, you can buy sheets of 100 stamps - so that's one trip to the post office...Making individual users pay their own shipping lets users choose how much the overall cost of their membership is going to be - a user that wants to keep the cost down simply rents fewer movies, while the user that wants to go hog wild pays for it...

Personally, if it came down to that across all online dvd companies, I think it would be better to simply have zip limit the number of DVDs and anything above that limit, you have to pay THEM the service charge. I don't want to go to the post office to get stamps, etc. That way people who are only doing their 4 per week will be just fine while others will know that they are going to be paying an extra $1 per movie (cost of shipping @ 50 cents each way) for anything over that.

There are very fair ways to do this however if other companies are not going to go that direction, it may not be good for customer retention.

Joe

[SoloMio]

I think the zipreturn is great, but you added it all on your own - I didn't ask for it.

My choice to go with zip.ca hinged on the zipreturn option because I have vhqonline right here in Vancouver. If they didn't have zipreturn, I would have vhqonline. The reality for me is that, on good weeks, it takes me 5 to 7 business days in between movie shipments from Ottawa's Zip (2-3 to send back and 3-4 to get more), which is just fine with me as I'm happy getting a shipment a week (at no additional fee) however I also know people with vhqonline that get their shipments in 3 business days and that's awesome since they can theorhetically almost double the amount of dvds that I get for the same money.

I have prepaid for 4 months and so far Zip has been just excellent so even though it's slower (than my hometown alternative), I have no desire to change unless prices are raised. I really do like this company alot.

[Tik]

Not to be an alarmist in any way, and this could possibly be a typographical error of some kind - but the following information is currently available in the Zip.ca Knowledge Base.

What Membership Plans are offered by Rogers Video Direct.?

Question
What Membership Plans are offered by Rogers Video Direct.?



Answer
Rogers Video Direct offers a variety of Membership Plans. Select the plan that best suits your home entertainment needs: Our Standard Plan offers up to 4 DVDs out at one time, with a monthly volume of 12 DVDs, for $24.95 per month. This plan allows you to designate 2 titles as ASAP priority. We also offer three alternative plans:

6 DVDs out at a time, with 3 ASAP designations and a monthly volume of 16 DVDs for $34.95 per month.

2 DVDs out at a time, with 1 ASAP designation, and a monthly volume of 6 DVDs for $18.95 per month.

1 DVD out at time, with no ASAP designations, and a monthly volume of 3 DVDs for $10.95.

You may change plans anytime by logging into your Rogers Video Direct Account and clicking on Change My Membership Plan in Account Info.

A sign of things to come? I actually tried to hunt down the Rogers Video Direct service and cannot find it, but I haven't been an online DVD renter for very long so I may have missed it.

In no way will I commit to believing that the above is or is not an appropriate plan for Zip.ca. As many posters have already stated - Zip will do what they need to do and we will do what we decide to do.

As for myself, I am a 6 DVD renter and I'm probably averaging somewhere in the 20-25 discs per month range. I think that I am getting excellent value for my money and appreciate the conveniences that online rental has to offer.

Thanks for listening.

[YKdvd]

Not to be an alarmist in any way, and this could possibly be a typographical error of some kind - but the following information is currently available in the Zip.ca Knowledge Base.

Rogers Video Direct ...

There are 3 FAQs that have "Rogers" in them. In addition to the one you found, there is one titled "What are the shipping thresholds on the Rogers Video Direct membership plans?", which reads:

A shipping and handling charge of $1.99/DVD will be applied to Rogers members in the month for any DVDs shipped above their monthly volume. A Free Trial does not contribute to the monthly volume.
The Shipping thresholds are:

a. $10.95 - 3/month
b. $18.95 - 6/month
c. $24.95 - 12/month
d. $34.95 - 16/month

There are two distinct things here - one is the concept of shipping thresholds, and the other that Rogers may be buying ZIP. I'm not sure that the second doesn't worry me more than the first!

Since this thread is already 11 pages long, I'm going to start another one with this same post, and maybe everyone could post in that one, since I'm sure it is going to create a lot of comment

[Prentice]

I have cancelled my service already because of their horrible "service" and I would never come back for prices like this. I hope others will realise the contempt that this company has towards it's customers and follow suit.

[paul61]

Thanks for all this folks. This is more than just a trial balloon, it's serious, and we are absorbing all your useful input now. I expect we'll be back here to post our conclusions within a few days...

Rick, are you still here? It's been more than "a few days" and we haven't heard anything from you. Hopefully you can spare a few minutes and let us know what you decided (and clear up all this stuff about Rogers!). Thanks.

[paul61]

[dawziecat]

Well, OK. I voted to charge the High volume users" additional fees.

This is fine . . . BUT . . . it certainly isn't how the service was/is advertised, is it?

What ZIP really means is 12 or so movies a month for $25 and taxes . . . not unlimited movie rentals.

From Zip's "About Us" page: "Members can rent an unlimited number of DVDs for a flat fee of $24.95 a month, with our standard membership plan."

This was the draw. Now it appears that people taking them up on it are "abusers?"

[Morgan]

Hello everyone. I'm locking this thread, now that Rick has posted their new plan. The discussion continues here:
http://onlinedvdrentalguide.ca/forums/v ... .php?t=327

Cheers!