After getting my Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II speakers, I wanted to make the most of them. I was unsure of getting a TV tuner card  as I sold my TV on account of it taking  up too much of my time. Since  during purchase, my vendor mentioned in passing that the speakers were THX compliant (I’m not sure whether it is a fact), I Googled for online movie rentals for something to watch on weeknights. I came across a site where various movie online rental sites were reviewed. There was also some statistics on the number of movies available and according to the reviewing site seventymm.com had about 15,000 movies on demand. I had been seeing seventymm advertisements behind auto rickshaws for quite some time now and on reading the review I was convinced that seventymm was the right choice for me. I had a fast PC, a high end 5.1 sound card and although I owned a 2 speaker system (because I was fed up of the wired clutter that multiple speakers create) my speakers were high end and rated for audiophiles. From the PCI card onwards all the connectors were gold plated for minimum contact resistance and I assumed I was ready for a good A/V experience. I created an account on their site and opted for the lowest plan where I could watch six movies a month -one movie at a time.  (250 per month + 199 Registration charge + 349 “refundable” deposit) They were very prompt and I received my first DVD the next day. After messing around on my Ubuntu Linux system to get the right packages & dependencies, I finally succeeded in playing the DVD. The movie played well for almost 80% of the DVD and then got stuck. I ejected the disk and noticed that the DVD was scuffed on the outer tracks. It was obviously the reason for playback stopping.  (In contrast to the old record player, a CD or DVD starts playing from the  inside out and if your CD/DVD is scratched on the outer tracks, or warped or there is a slight wobble in your drive spindle the tracks/chapters at the end do not play or play at very low frame rates (Choppy video). This is indicated by the activity light on the player remaining continuously lit and the drive alternately spinning up to full speed and spinning down as the lens tries to re-initialize and re-compute the location of the data on the disk with reference to track zero or the beginning of the disk and then tries to re-read it repeatedly until the drive firmware/software asks it to give up)

Assuming that this was a freak incident, I requested pickup/delivery and the next day promptly received the new DVD. As I was watching this DVD, this too stopped somewhere at the most interesting part of the movie due to the same reason. I took it to office the next day and tried it on 5 different laptops/desktops but to no avail. The same thing happened on my third DVD and by this time I lost interest in the whole scheme of things -especially as I’m not the kind of guy who goes out of his way to watch movies and can live without watching a single movie for over a year or longer without feeling any sense of regret over having missed them.

During this time, I also noticed that their site was not exactly fast -probably too heavily scripted trying to make it more interactive (something that I could do without). On Linux & Firefox, I had a tough time trying to add a movie to my wish list. Especially on a slow connection, when you click on add movie, nothing happens as you need to wait for the script to download and run which pops up something like a small tag which has sub-options like DVD/VCD/Any. Which you are subsequently supposed to click. This tag used to close as I moved my mouse to make the selection which was extremely frustrating. Many of the movies had no descriptions leaving me at the mercy of my luck on whether the movie appealed to my taste.  Some  had no thumbnails either. Sometimes when I checked my wish list, I would often come across -DVD not available -choose VCD which was a let down -why show the DVD popup when you don’t have a DVD?

My last DVD request was The English Patient. Like I mentioned above, after adding the DVD to my wishlist, I found that they only had it in VCD. When I promptly received it the next day -a set of 3 VCD’s the office assistant at my office (a good friend of mine) who cleans the office, serves tea and does other odd jobs looking at the VCD said, “this will never play” and his words proved to be prophetic. When I went home and popped it into the drive -after a lot of spin ups and downs, the drive gave up. I gave up too and clicked on the contact form on seventymm.com and explaining my dissatisfaction, asked them to close my account/refund my security deposit. This was the worst set of media I had ever received from them. I never got a reply and soon forgot all about seventymm.

A few days later I received a call from seventymm, apparently they had not forgotten about me. The lady on the other end reminded me that my payment was  due. I told her that I was not interested in continuing and repeated my reasons. After trying to convince me that it would not happen in the future and having failed. She asked me to request my last DVD which I was eligible for (which she would check and send) after which my account would be closed and I would receive my refundable security deposit of Rs. 349 back.

I promptly received the DVD, watched it completely (for the first time -they probably checked the DVD before sending it and were hoping to get back in business with me) and then requested its pickup and closure of my account and refund of my security deposit. I noticed that this DVD had a different jacket and had among others the following text towards the bottom of the CD Jacket

SMS ‘DISC<Your Problem>’ to 5757570 for disc related problems

That may sound friendly, but doesn’t make any sense to me. Imagine a family waiting eagerly for their Sunday night movie (DVD) with popcorn, Coke and other munchies and having their movie interrupted as the Superhero is going to pummel the villain and rescue the fair lady… what good is a replacement the next day going to do? It is quite likely that they will end up receiving another movie in lieu of the scratched disk.

Coming back to their service, I called up their helpline which was incidentally very busy for two days and I could not get across to them. (During the period of my subscription this wasn’t exactly the norm and I have been able to get the line pretty easily). When I asked them to close my account, It was the merry go round again… I’ll give you a special deal….we have updated our software… I guarantee you it will not happen again. Finally they said, “Your last movie has not been picked up yet, once it is done, your account will be closed and you will get your refund in 15 – 20 days.”

I waited for a few days for pickup (Normally delivery/pickup happens promptly the very next day), then called up again. After going through the merry go round for the second time, I was told that I had not clicked pickup. I logged in and clicked on pickup, however  I forgot to cross my fingers, so nothing happened. I called up again and after the merry go round was told that someone would be dispatched the following day. No one came. Six reminder’s and merry go rounds later, No one came. They were “helpful” though. They contacted their “logistics partner” (who I suspect was a man with a bike) and found out that on two of the occasions he could not make it as he had a puncture -I marveled at their logic-less  excuse… they were actually saying that if their logistics partner had a puncture, all the pickup/delivery requests expired automatically! After the 7th time, I realized that they were not interested in ex-customers and they wanted to retain my security deposit in exchange for a low budget unwatchable Afro-American movie. I am pretty upset  with them yet, but for the sake of the reviews section of my blog must rate them fairly.

• To summarize,  they do seem to have a good collection of movies (going by the thumbnails on their site). However I suspect that they themselves don’t know how many of them are in working condition in addition, most of the high demand movies might be in circulation and you might have a long paid wait watching cheap low budget movies before your turn comes.
• They need to work on Thumbnails and reviews. Most people want to choose a movie depending on their tastes.
• If you are thinking about subscribing to seventymm to watch A rated films, think twice. When surfing through the comments/reviews, A number of users reported that the names/thumbnails were misleading and the content had neither anything that could be considered adult and neither was there a proper story line to the cheap low budget film.
• As long as you are a member, the service is prompt and helpful. However when you opt out, they start sending out pickup boys riding motor cycles with bald tyres -with some kind of electronic gizmo that remotely deletes your pickup request whenever they have a flat tyre (which happened 7/7 times). This also automatically pushes your security deposit further and further away until it reaches Neverland.

Options in a nutshell,

• If you are offered a subscription without a security deposit or are willing to forfeit it, go for the seventymm service! (But expect scratched DVD’s!)
  
• If you are already trapped, make sure that the last DVD you order is one you’d love to keep!

Variety of Titles/Languages

Rating:

Availability in watchable condition on demand

Rating:

Movie Delivery service

Rating:

Ease of closing your account

Rating:

Value for money

Rating:

*—*—*

Updates:

• 11th Aug 2009 : I receive a call from a lady from seventymm. She asks me why I wanted to quit (yeah, the merry go round again). I tell her about the two guys who obviously have their heads full of kitty litter and still keep on the pretense that someone will come for sure the next day (which never happens -due to their patented excuse of the motorcycle suffering a puncture).  She promptly assures me that someone will come tomorrow to my office to collect it. When I express my skepticism, she promises to call up in the evening and verify. I thank her and hang up.
• 12th August 2009 : It gets even more mysterious, more like a spy thriller – another lady calls me from seventymm and after the merry go round, asks me what the lady who called up yesterday told me! I should have asked her who she was, but my land line was ringing and I gave her the facts and hung up. Meanwhile I’m still waiting for the pickup! I logged in to my seventymm account to check when I first requested pickup. I was surprised to see that my pickup request has been reset for the 3rd time… nevertheless I clicked pickup (Deliver) and managed to  calculate my original pickup request using the movie delivery date and I realized that my movie had now not been picked up for 19 days… that means my request for closure via their web form had been done almost a week earlier (and still no reply)… yeah and the billing reminders keep coming by SMS in spite of the fact that at the end of every merry go round, I have insisted on them closing my account! Some dude called up in the evening asking me which address  I wanted it picked up from… It never got picked up and neither did that lady call who promised to call up and verify pickup.

• I did something I should have done before subscribing to seventymm…  I Googled for reviews. I was not surprised to find the seventmm page on www.mouthshut.com full of negative reviews… If you are a potential subscriber, you’d better read that  before you subscribe.

• 13th August 2009 : Today I got a call from the lady again. After  long disagreements from both sides, the call ended 25 minutes later. She said she had sent someone yesterday evening and that I was not home, which could have been true as  I was delayed in office, but then I had never asked them to come home. She said she was sending someone to collect it from office. She seems to be someone with authority as someone dutifully turned up and collected the DVD from my office in a few hours time.  She said I would receive my refundable deposit by cheque. I am closing this post here. In case I receive the check, I will append the information to this post. If there is no further news, assume that the check never arrived.

• 9th December 2009 : I suddenly get a call from 70mm. It catches me off guard as I have given up on them, this is in spite of the non stop SMS spam from them on my  cell phone even after closing my account long ago!  The dude on the other line asks me where I want the cheque for my security deposit refund delivered. I opt for office. The waiting begins again. Today is 28th December and their call centre is about two bus stops away from my office… I’m glad I’ve been noting the dates!

• 20th January 2010 : Last week I received a call again from seventy mm. I was out of station and was annoyed at receiving their call. More than a month later, the same question -where I want the cheque delivered… I hold back all the mean things I want to tell them and politely ask them to deliver it to my office informing them to hand it over to anyone there as I am out of Delhi on official work. A few days later. I get an urgent call from my colleague. He informed me of the arrival of the cheque and asks me whether he should deposit it on my behalf as the date on the cheque is at the end of its life of 6 months after which it would not be honoured. I assure him that I am on my way back as I had to cut short my trip due to multiple goof ups by our software developers.

• 25th January 2010 : At last I hold the cheque in my hand. All this trouble for a paltry sum of Rs. 349/- It is dated 9th September 2009  (It sure is not on the verge of  being dishonored though.) and has been issued from Bangalore -maybe that explains part of the delay.  Truly shoddy customer service. It just isn’t worth the stress of following up on things…. and the whole idea was to de-stress and relax once a week watching a movie. Sigh! Never again will I opt for any online movie rental -unless they use streaming video, but definitely not from seventy mm -they don’t deserve any business!

• 28th January 2010 : Amount finally credited to bank account after 5 1/2 months. Looks like the spam text messages have stopped too (or maybe it is too soon to rejoice). End of story and stiff lesson learnt.

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