CanFlix - do they have *anything* in stock?

[hfxmike]

Hi all,

Has anyone had any experience with CanFlix?

I'm on their free trial. I have 47 dvds on my list - they have NONE of them.
I decided to put some more mainstream titles on my list and they've apparently shipped me Troy and Reservoir Dogs (wow...)

They list so many impossible to find dvds, (Sid and Nancy criterion, The Killer - criterion...both long out of print) but they are all "available soon".

Imageing going to a new video store and walking to the counter with 47 dvds (expecting that you'd be able to get 3). And the guy says "those are all out, but we have a copy of Troy"

[YKdvd]

They must have popped up while I was away? Their FAQ page claims 17,000 titles, but the META tags in the HTML, and their Affiliates page claim 25,000. Any new company that pops up out of nowhere claiming this large an inventory (and with numbers that vary so widely) should probably be viewed through large salt grains (hello, Starflix). As well as your two titles (which they seem to claim to have), I notice they also claim to have the hard to find O/P title "A Taxing Woman". Since they'd either have to be buying these on the second-hand market or have access to an old rental store's inventory, I'd go with the old "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" theory.

If you look at their Affiliate page they seem to have taken much of the wording as paraphrase from ZIP's program (look for phrases such as "guidance" and "You're just a click away from introducing a hassle-free service to your website visitors and earning money!". They also use ZIP's "ASAP" and "Park" terminology. Not a crime, but no way to make the dean's list, either.

But for a mortal sin, look at this from the Affliliate page:

We're Canada's largest and most popular online DVD movie rental store. The Canflix Service features...unlimited access to the world's largest DVD library – which includes more than 25,000 titles...

I'm not sure if this was just more text they swiped from ZIP, but since this claim is obviously, um, nonsense, I wouldn't expect much from them.

[YKdvd]

Mike, were any of the 47 you queued up and didn't get marked with that pink "Preview, coming soon" cover art?

Quickly checking, it looks like they are claiming to have all of the Out of Print Criterion titles (15 or so), except "Rebecca", for some reason. None of them seem to have the "Preview, coming soon" notation, so they seem to be implying they already have stock. Since some of these have been out of print for some time and I'm told command big bucks on the secondary market, I'm guessing they just loaded the catalog and didn't properly mark some of the ones they don't have.

I'll try and add them to my chart once I get caught up at work. Their contact page shows their mailing address as Blairmore, Alberta. My map puts this southwest of Calgary into the mountains (any Albertans here?) - seems a strange place to be running this out of!

[Morgan]

I emailed Canflix, and here's part of their reply...

Canflix.com is still very new and we are still developing much of the content on the site. We have not started our marketing campaign as we are waiting to complete the development of many key systems.... We hope to be in a position to officially launch the site in the next month or so.

They said they aquired their discs from "a few video stores that were being liquidated," but will be reviewing their inventory and trimming it down somewhat. And they advised that much of their text is temporary filler.

hfxmike: How did you find this site?

[YKdvd]

I phoned the Canflix number today just out of curiosity. This is actually the number of "Video Mill", apparently a local video store in Blairmore. I spoke briefly with the woman there (I think she was the owner or manager), and it sounded like the guy behind the Canflix site has 3 or 4 other video stores in the area (I don't know if they are active or liquidated as Morgan indicated). It sounds like this is just a small operation which is going to leverage of existing video stock.

The "filler text" would make more sense if the site was still only internal, but since they seem to be accepting customers like HFXMike, and the text is so overblown (not to mention plagiarized) that it doesn't give you much confidence in them.

I'm assuming they are going to be doing the "virtual inventory" thing. Even setting aside the ones with no cover art marked "Preview, Coming Soon", their site gives every indication of having been loaded up from something like wholesaler data. A number of titles like "Searching For Bobby Fischer" list multiple versions that they would never be ordering such as "Sensormatic" and "Checkpoint" (these are versions with those plastic/magnetic anti-shoplifting tags attached to the packaging for retailers). If you search on "Charade" you can see they list a half dozen of the public domain DVD versions of this; I doubt they would order all of them in even if people queued them up! Hopefully they will add some indication of the actual inventory status (like ZIP's "Ready To Order" indicator).

They also seem unsure of their pricing - most of the site seems to indicate 3/$25, but the signup screen itself has a popup with 3/$20 and 4/$25.

[Morgan]

Hmm, I should have included this from our conversation:

Currently we have a limited number of customers that are testing the system and providing us feedback....

Although we loaded all of the inventory into the systems, we are now going through it to decide what will be kept and what will be sold off.

They said they were keeping their number of subscribers low for now, until they get things cleaned up. I'm still curious about how hfxmike found them...

[hfxmike]

sorry i've been away for a while and forgot to check the forums
i think i found this place by doing a yahoo search (in early Dec!).
i wasn't aware that I was a beta-tester!!!!
about 1/2 of my list had the "preview coming coon image"
that leaves 23 or so "legit" entries - of which they had maybe 1 or 2, so I put ultra mainstream movies on my list.

I specifically remember finding them pre-xmas. Their *apparent* stock left me thinking that they were biggest and best place in Canada.

this will probably display like crap, but here's what my list looked like...a bit on the obscure side, but for them to have a corner store selection - while listing this stuff? oh well...


Title Genre Status Priority

Incident At Loch Ness Adventure Available Soon
Buzzcocks: Auf Wiedersenen Music Available Soon
Slaughter Hotel: Cold Blooded Beast (Widescreen) Horror Available Soon
Sid And Nancy (Special Edition) Drama Available Soon
Jack The Ripper (1976/ Special Edition) Horror Available Soon
Revenge Of The Stolen Stars Action Available Soon
Scanners Horror Available Soon
Buzzcocks: Live In Concert Music Available Soon
Contempt (Special Edition) Drama Available Soon
Killer (1989/ Special Edition/ Criterion) Foreign Available Soon
Bullet For The General Western Available Soon
Great Silence (Image) Western Available Soon
Don Juan (Or If Don Juan Were A Woman) Drama Available Soon
Rushmore (Special Edition) Comedy Available Soon
Spirits Of The Dead (Image) Foreign Available Soon
Evil Dead: Book Of The Dead (Limited Special Edition) Horror Available Soon
Beastie Boys: DVD Video Anthology (Special Edition) Music Available Soon
Army Of Darkness (Boomstick Edition/ Special Edition) Action Available
Class Of Nuke 'Em High (Special Edition) Horror Available Soon
Hell's Highway (2003) Documentary Available Soon
Interiors Drama Available Soon
September Drama Available Soon
Black Orpheus Foreign Available Soon
Kurosawa Documentary Available Soon
Evil Unleashed: The Mummy (2-D & 3-D/ Razor Digital Entertainment) Horror Available Soon
Ultimate 3-D Horror Collection: 3-D Horror Available Soon
Andromeda Strain (Universal) SciFi Available Soon
Time Bandits (Criterion/ Special Edition) SciFi Available Soon
Manhattan Murder Mystery Comedy Available Soon
Everyone Says I Love You Comedy Available Soon
Husbands And Wives Comedy Available Soon
Novices Foreign Available Soon
Russ Meyer's Mondo Topless Documentary Available Soon
Plucking The Daisy Drama Available Soon
Love On A Pillow Comedy Available Soon
Come Dance With Me Mystery Available Soon
Operation Thunderbolt Foreign Available Soon
Night Of The Assassin Action Available Soon
Deep Red Horror Available Soon
Brown's Requiem (Special Edition) Mystery Available Soon
Echo And The Bunnymen: Live In Liverpool Music Available Soon
Devo: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution Music Available Soon
Weezer: Video Capture Device: Treasures From The Vault, 1991-2002 Music Available Soon
King Crimson: Deja Vrooom (Special Edition/ DTS/ 5.1) Music Available Soon
Karaoke Beatles #1 Karaoke Available Soon
Motorcycle Diaries Adventure Available Soon
Resident Evil: Apocalypse Horror Available
Manchurian Candidate, The Suspense Available Soon
Collateral Action Available
Bourne Supremacy, The Action Available
Spiderman 2 Action Available
Dodgeball Comedy Available Soon
Beatles: Help! Musical Available Soon
Alice (1990) Comedy Available Soon
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask Comedy Available Soon
Bullets Over Broadway Comedy Available Soon
New York Stories Comedy Available Soon
Show Me Love Foreign Available Soon
Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy Comedy Available Soon
Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste Music Available Soon

Number of Flix in your list
Your order contains 62 items.

Currently Shipped Titles
: Vanity Fair (2004): Saw: Reservoir Dogs (Special Ed ...: Jimi Hendrix

[YKdvd]

i think i found this place by doing a yahoo search (in early Dec!). i wasn't aware that I was a beta-tester!!!!
about 1/2 of my list had the "preview coming soon image" - that leaves 23 or so "legit" entries - of which they had maybe 1 or 2, so I put ultra mainstream movies on my list.

I specifically remember finding them pre-xmas. Their *apparent* stock left me thinking that they were biggest and best place in Canada.

After seeing your list, my advice would be to "go to ZIP, go directly to ZIP, do not pass Canflix, do not pay them $200".

I sent them a note and the response I got back was that their database was combined from various video store inventories and that they were having a bit of work in cleaning it up to what they actually had. They also said that they will hopefully have this process largely completed by early April, and will be carrying 20,000 titles in stock. They "did not put up a 'under construction' page, as we actually did want some customers on the site. We currently have 15 customers using the site, and this helps us work out kinks. The text lifted from the ZIP site was blamed on a former programmer.

That all remains to be seen, but even if they actually get to what they hope for, for most non-Albertans there would seem to be little reason to skip ZIP and pay extra (3/$25, instead of 4/$25 at ZIP). While I'm a bit skeptical, it should be remembered that when ZIP first showed up claiming 15,000+ titles they didn't have their Availability indicators and a lot of their obscure stock and imports were on backorder for a little while, making them seem a little iffy. The difference there was that they were part of an internet company that was a plausible source of investment capital, and had some recognizable names behind them, so it wasn't such an unlikely thing.

I run a recheck on Canflix next month to see how the site looks and whether it seems ready to be added to my chart.

[Mr. Hollywood]

I've been a Canflix customer a month and a half or so. After I decided to leave DVDHype, I began looking for other services out there, and having found a number of them, I was unimpressed. The web site designs and just the whole feel of those services did not seem particularly professional or confidence-inspiring to me ... I am picky about that. Zip certainly looked the best of the bunch, but for some reason I was not able to bring myself to go with them ... I was not ready to give up the search. I simply typed canflix.com in the URL curious to see what that would return and behold ... through a fluke I found the service in topic.

So, I'll share my experience with you guys in as much detail as I can, seeing not very many people have tried it

It was their inventory list and the fact that they were located in the "neighbourhood" that convinced me to sign up. I also liked the clean, professional website design. No busy, ugly, overcrowded pages, no popups, marketing banners trying to convince me to buy something ... everything was clean and straightforward. I liked the "no frills - no gimmicks" design. Browsing the site, like their policies etc. gave me the sufficient confidence, so I signed up.

Sign up went without a hitch. I immediately added a bunch of DVDs, mostly foreign and independent titles, for that is my primary interest, and a bunch of new releases for my girlfriend. The new releases arrived immediately, most of the foreign and independent titles remained as "Available Soon".

So, I contacted the folks at Canflix after a while inquiring as to why some of my picks are constantly unavailable, and received the response to the effect that you guys already posted here: site still in development, not marketing yet, how did you find us, cleaning inventory, enhancing the site ... etc. etc.

But, I decided to stay on with them, because I could see changes take place, and I liked the fact that whatever titles were available arrived quickly. Now, I'm not the kind of guy that needs to figure out the best drop box/post office to return titles from, or make sure I drop them off before certain hours to maximize my shipping times ... that to me defeats the purpose of the convenience these services offer, having to worry about dropping of at certain time. This is the reason I stopped using brick-and-mortar shops. I like to hang on to the movies for a bit, watch them whenever I feel like it -- sometimes twice as my girlfriend tends to fall asleep at the first screening -- and return them whenever my heart desires, or when I remember to do so, more accurately . Still, according to the little "Previously Shipped" report Canflix provides, I watched 11 titles and I have 4 in my hands now ... not bad for a month and a half at a slack pace ... and that without a single problem so far.

The envelopes DVDs arrive in are of a squarish shape. It contains a sleeve with the DVD in it, and a return envelope. The envelopes are plain: Canflix logo and the 3 "how it works" steps printed upon them. Intially, the sleeve was of thick, clear nylon-type ... now it is a white waxy-paper, which seems sturdier, but probably offers just as much protection for the DVD. Maybe they found the plastic sleeves unreliable, as I could see some of them splitting at the bottom when I had them. Anyway, all 15 DVDs I've received were playable ... no problems there.

Their inventory is getting cleaned up, as indicated, to be sure. When I first signed up, there many titles with the "preview coming soon" cover art. Those titles have since then been removed or cover art added. The inventory count has gone down from 30000+ to just over 20000 ... this is what the search result for everything returns, anyway. They also started to group titles in a series ... TV seasons or multidisk titles, such as 24 for example. Before, each disk would be listed individualy in the search results, now it only shows one title and you have the option to add the whole series or a particular disks to your que from the detail page.

There is also new que status ... before, there was either Available, or Available Soon, which could mean either all inventory was out or there was no inventory at all. Now there is also On Order, which seems to mean "we never had it in stock but we are planning to order it soon, or we have ordered it already". "Available Soon" now means "Movie is out, but expected back soon" according to the tooltip on the website.

The user interface seems to be getting additional features tacked on to them and tweaks are being made here and there. For example, one seemingly small enhancement that is a god-send is the addition of "go to page" field in the search results. I can go directly to the page I want, rather than hitting the next and previous buttons as was the case before. They've done the same thing to their que, which they call FlixList. The page by page, or title by title navigation is still avaialble, which is good, because it is more efficient for minor navigation adjustments.

I am dissapointed that the older foreign and independent titles are not available yet, but as I mentioned during my membership with Canflix, I see changes taking place, so I remain faithful. Admittedly, some of the items on my list are quite obscure. It is a site that was not meant to be "discovered" as there was not marketing effort on their part yet, so the fact that they're still working on it -- that it is a beta -- does not bother me ... it's actually kind of kewl to see the changes take place, offer suggestions and see them taken to heart.

Overall, I'm pleased with the service even at this beta stage, so I'll stick with them for now. I like the site interface ... it could use enhancements to be sure, but it does allow me to quickly find what I'm looking for and que it up. The customer service is very responsive. Again, I would have liked more independent and foreign titles to be available, but the stuff that is currently available keeps me busy, so I feel like I'm getting value for my money.

Seems to me they've taken the approach to make the new releases available immediately, while slowly loading older inventory. Makes sense to me, as most people probably care about the new releases most, as would seem to be the case when you walk into a brick-and-mortar shop where walls are lined with 10s of new releases, and only a single copy of older releases. Not all of movie watchers are the sophisticated connoisseurs -- as so many members on this forum -- demanding out of print titles

Not sure how smooth the membership cancellation process is, having not done so myself ... sounds like hlfxmike has tried them and cancelled ... he'll have that insight to share with you. There is a cancel membership button in my account page, so I suspect all that is required of us is to click this button and we'll be set free.

Oh, one of my communications with them mentioned that they're planning some sort of marketing effort at the end of May.

[YKdvd]

Just for fun, I signed up tonight at CanFlix. The results are even worse than I had expected - not one of the first 30 titles I tried were actually there (they all showed "On Order"). Some of these are out of print titles they have listed, which makes it all but certain they'll not be able to get them in ("A Taxing Woman", "The Last Days of Disco", "Breaking the Waves", etc). I tried a few mainstream Criterions with no luck ("Rushmore", "Walkabout", "Last Temptation of Christ", "Hopscotch", "Down By Law", "Rashomon") - I didn't even bother checking some of the more obscure ones.

I tried a few of their listings that seem to be US imports, and harder to find at most companies ("Vanya on 42nd Street", "Buckaroo Banzai", "Mrs. Dalloway") - nope. I wondered how multiple sets might be handled, so I checked the Sopranos - all 4 seasons are "On Order". Thought I'd give them an easy one with "The Return of King" - nyet! Perhaps an oldie like "Before Sunrise" - nix. I seemed to be in a repetitive loop, so let's try "Groundhog Day" - hmmm, neither version they list.

Obviously, Canflix has some sort of starter stock, with the rest just loaded in the database to be ordered as needed, but who knows whether things would actually get ordered as they are queued up. In theory this might be acceptable, but given the complete lack of disclosure it feels rather deceptive (indeed, the site boasts about "Our appeal and success are built on providing the most expansive selection of DVDs" and "we stock more than 20,000 movie and other titles" [emphasis added]. I've always been a little uneasy about MoviesForMe and their "20,000 title" virtual inventory, but at least they have the grace to not list large numbers of Criterions and other hard to find titles that they aren't willing and able to stock.

I'll do a little playing around during my trial period (if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how many discs I have to try to get something to ship), but I doubt Canflix will be of much interest to serious renters.

[YKdvd]

I had no luck finding anything older at Canflix - I finally filled my trial shipment with new releases that were "Available" ("Ray", "Door In The Floor", "Casa De Los Babys" and "Closer"). "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland" were "Available Soon" - presumably all copies were out.

The Availability status of a title is only available when you put the movie in your queue, not from any listing or detail page, which makes it very hard to see what is there. I ran a bunch of titles from my testing database through my queue, with the following results:

- As far as I can tell, Canflix has no Criterions actually in their inventory - all 179 they list come up as "On Order".

- I ran another 183 non-Criterion titles from my database, choosing those that were at most other companies, and all the stuff that has been theatrically released in the last 5-6 years. Only 18 came up as "Available", with another 4 as "Available Soon" - the other 161 were "On Order" and presumably don't exist at Canflix. This included titles such as "Shrek", "Jaws", "Kill Bill", "X-Men 2" etc.

I would have run more titles through, but their queue page becomes rather large as you add movies (100 titles is over 300K), and since you can only delete one movie at a time from the queue, the data transfer quickly adds up. In any case, Canflix would go directly to my "Doghouse" section if I was adding them to my chart right now, as this seems to be the worst sort of "virtual inventory" type of operation. At a minimum, they would have to provide some sort of indication as to what actually triggers an order for a supposedly "On Order" title.

[Mr. Hollywood]

Hmmm ... interesting ... you've done some legwork. I find it strange that you found only 18 available titles ... I pretty much rented as many so far. Unless I'm the only customer using their site, seems rather weird. Today, I was shipped another title "Man of Marble" (any Wajda fans here?), which is fairly obscure, and which has been on my list since I've signed on with Canflix ... so a month and a half ... heh heh. Well, at least it's coming!

"Sideways" is in my list as well ... I have 21 items in my list ... 9 are available, 2 available soon and the rest of the titles on order. The 8 available are mostly new releases ... those having being released in the last few months. This 9 also includes "Malena" (gotta love Monica Bellucci!), an older foreign flick that I have been waiting for as long as "Man of Marble". I'm surprised with both of them, obviously, as I have been waiting for them for a while ... those must have been added on the weekend, as I don't remember seeing them available before.

The 2 available soon are "Sideways" and "Spanglish". The rest of the unavailable or on order are rather uknown, I suspect.

I hear you about the UI ... I already suggested some sort of paging and multiple remove function, and they came back to me saying that it is on their todo list. You have the option of switching the list to text only display, which displays a compact list without the DVD covers.

Anyway, the available stuff will keep me busy for a while. By the time I'm through with those, I'll hopefully find more.

EDIT:
Ok, I see the reason why you found only 18 available, as you've added releases that are older than 6 months, which they seem to have in stock for the most part.

[YKdvd]

My testing database doesn't have a lot of new releases (usually just stuff that I'm interested in), but it does have all the Ebert 3-4 star stuff up until a year or two ago, which should be a pretty good "mainstream" test.

I've run the Canflix stuff I've tested through my standard report page generator, with the results available here. I put on three of the lesser companies just for a comparison. You'll notice that even a bare bones company like MovieBuffs has 77 of the 183 titles, while Canflix only has the 22. I'll try and update this further when I get time.

Unless they have plans to do a huge inventory purchase, it would be hard to see things getting much better. You've been there a month or more - what percentage of the things you first queued up are still "On Order"?

The note I got from the Canflix guy a month ago said

We did not put up a "under construction" page, as we actually did want some
customers on the site. We currently have 15 customers using the site, and this helps us work out kinks.

Seems rather hard on those who actually come across them and try it out!

[sonician]

You should re-run your database against MovieBuffs (And fix the link!)
I've found 18 movies at MovieBuffs that your test says don't exist:

Malcolm X
School Daze
Rain Man
The Yards
Aliens
In Cold Blood
Russian Ark
Lovely and Amazing
Mulholland Dr.
Alfred Hitchcock Collection Psycho
Happiness
When A Man Loves A Woman
Ran
Shakespeare In Love
Silverado
Hoosiers
Topsy Turvy
A Streetcar Named Desire

Granted they're missing heaps of classics, but more supporters means more selection.

- Ian
Halifax, NS