Another service from the ever growing Tesco! (Tesco DVD Rentals)

Member Name: frankie1984

Product:	Tesco DVD Rentals
Date:	06/10/08 (127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great choice of DVD's, cheap and fast service

Disadvantages: Sometimes there may be a wait for popular films

I have been using Tesco DVD rental for some time now so thought I would share my thoughts on it!
I originally signed up to Tesco's DVD rental service over anybody else's because they had a free first month trial and I could rent out at only £7.97 per month. The original deal I had was based on two DVD's at a time with unlimited DVDs per month - it worked out that if I rented and sent straight back the day after watching I could have at least 12 DVDs per month for only £7.97 which was really good value considering it is £2 per rental at my local video store. As I mentioned my first month was free so I used this first month to work out if it was any good and decided it was worth sticking with. Unfortunately this deal is no longer applicable but, it is still good value and cheaper than renting from the video store.

First I'll run through some basics.
The Tesco DVD rental service is actually run by lovefilm.com but, Tesco do it under their name with their own set costs per month. You can sign up to lovefilm.com itself but if you're like me you'll appreciate that you'll get club card points through using Tesco instead! They have different levels of membership and I'll list these below starting with the cheapest and what is included with each.

Tesco value packages:
2 discs per month with 1 at home at a time - £4.47
3 discs per month with 1 at home at a time - £5.97
4 discs per month with 2 at home at a time - £7.97
Tesco unlimited packages:
unlimited amount 1 at a time - £8.97
unlimited amount 2 at a time - £11.97
unlimited amount 3 at a time - £14.97

The value packages are cheap but it works out you pay more per DVD rental - if however you live somewhere a bit remote, I suppose this kind of service is useful anyway as delivery is paid for by them for it to be sent out and the envelope is pre paid for the return. The unlimited packages are very good in my opinion as it means that you can go through as many as you can in a month as long as you remember to post back straight after watching!
They also have game rental too and this service is only available to those on the unlimited subscriptions - it starts at £1 extra for the 1 disc at home service, then £2 for the 2 discs and £3 extra for the 3 discs service. Again certain levels of subscriptions work better than others for this as if you have 1 disc at a time level and you receive a game then you wouldn't get any films until you send that game back whereas if you have the 2 or 3 disc option you could still get films too at the same time. Again this would depend on what you want from the rental service as you choose all the films and games anyway so maybe you would want just games for a while anyway?


Now how does it work?
A simple run through of how to go about setting up the rental service.
First, log onto the website www.tescodvdrental.com
there is a link on the right hand side which says ''14 day free trial - sign up now'' - if you click on here it will take you through all the steps to get signed up such as name, address, which package you want and bank details. Now it is worth noting that whichever package you choose to have that can be as your 2 weeks free trial so my advice is to use the best one available - you can always change the package or cancel before the trial ends if that's not the one you want all the time - this however will give you the most out of your free trial!

Now once you have signed up you can select DVDs to add to your 'rental list'. There is a search box to the left hand side of the screen which you can type in the film name or you can search by actor/actress etc.
Once the search has found any matching titles it will display them in order of closest match - when you see a film you like you can read more details on the film and add it to your selection by pressing the 'rent this' button. By pressing this it will bring up a box which will ask you to select how high a priority you want the film from high, medium or low - once you have chosen it will then get stored on your rental list. If I remember rightly from when I first signed up it asks you to have about 10 titles at any one time in your list as this way they should always be able to send you a title from it as there is occasions where a film may not be available so by having more films listed they can guarantee to get one to you. I've never had a wait of more than 3 days after sending one back to receiving another which I believe is really good. One more thing to note is that any value packages are sent by second class post and unlimited packages are sent by first class post.


Using the site:
To view your rental list there is a link at the top which says how many titles you have queued. If you click on the number it will take you to that list - here you can see them all listed in order of priority, so all the high first followed by medium and then low. On this bit too, you can change the priority by selecting the new place next to which ever film you want to change and then update at the bottom on the 'update button or even remove them from your list by pressing the remove link and then updating the list.

At the top above the whole list, the DVDs are displayed that you have at home at the moment. Next to each one are 5 blank stars. You can click and rate the film by selecting the numbers of starts you believe it to be worth.
There is also a link at the top where you can select rented films by clicking on the 'rented' link next to where it says 'queued'. From here you can see all past films and rate them and even write a review on them if you wish.
Also in the queued list there are a few lines just underneath the list of films you have at home which are:

I'm expecting another dispatch
I want to have more DVDs at home
I want to report a problem

If you go into each one you can do as each says, so for example the link to have more DVDs at home would take you to the page to change your subscription package. I have used this before when upgrading and they will do it straight away and then just change the amount payable normally on your next payment date - a thing to note with this though is if you move down a grade, they will only change it if you don't have too many DVDs at home so if you are going from 3 at a time say to having 2 at a time, it won't change until you send back the 3 disc you have at home.


Other things:
Lots of other little features worth noting are things like taking a payment holiday, so rather than cancelling your account, you can freeze it for a while or even freeze it whilst on holiday. Also even if you do cancel your account altogether, to sign back up again you just log back in with your old account and password and click to reactivate which I think is a very clever feature as then all your old lists of films to rent are still saved and ready to go!
You can also save money by paying a yearly subscription in one go as they knock about 20% of the fees - if this is something you can do it's definitely worth it.


Overall opinion:
The site is really easy to use and you have control over your account and if you want to cancel it can be done online rather than having to ring through to a call centre! I have never had any problems with them and the only one time that a DVD wasn't showing as received back at their end I was able to report it as missing and within a short time they had sent me my next DVD with no hassle!
When signing up it's also worth seeing if you can get a 3 month trial instead of 2 weeks as they do send flyers out with certain companies that do net orders so worth checking first as obviously quite a big saving!

Summary: A great overall DVD rental service