DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

A person asked me the other day when will the “HD DVD Fire Sale” series end on the blog, because he said he was bored to tears with it. I told that person that the question he should have asked is not when this blog series ends, but rather, when the HD DVD fire sales end – because as long as the sales still go on, my buying continues, and if my buying continues, then I have to justify spending so much money by pretending that I’m doing it for “research” purposes on this blog.

So my “research” continues, and I’ve now picked up some more titles. But first, an update on my existing orders. Everything bar the EzyDVD orders have now shipped (EzyDVD’s original planned shipping date was the 28th, but they were nice enough to send me an email telling me that they’ve received stock early so they may ship on the 12th instead). I have cancelled “The Ant Bully” from my EzyDVD order, since I’ve heard one of my Toshiba redemption titles may be this one, and I don’t want duplicates (and to be honest, this was not one of the titles that I would consider a “must-have”). I have yet to receive the Playbox and DVDCrave orders, but I expect them to turn up on Monday much to the chagrin of my postman, who has been coming up to my house with deliveries for about 6 days in a row now. Amazon’s Universal title prices are still higher than what they once were ($11.95 for HD DVD only titles and $16.95 for combos – now $13.95 and $17.95 respectively), but I found a store called DVD Pacific that could do these titles for $11.50 and $17.09. Not only that, their shipping is a lot cheaper than Amazon to Australia.

But I still did consider ordering from Amazon, simply because they have this thing called a “Post-Order Price Guarantee”. What is means is that if the titles you ordered drop in price within 30 days of shipment (not the order date, but the shipment date), then they will refund you the difference. I’ve taken advantage of it just recently (got $4 back – every little bit counts!), and it works like a charm. You can read more about their policy here, and contact them here to get your claim. A couple of recently discounted Universal titles, some down to $9.95, would mean you get get a few dollars back if you ordered recently. Here’s a small list of the recently discounted titles:

The Amateurs – $9.95
Backdraft – $9.95
The Big Lebowski – $9.95
The Bourne Identity – $9.95
The Fast and The Furious – $9.95
The Mummy Returns – $9.95
The Pianist – $9.95
Pitch Black – $9.95
Planet Earth – The Complete BBC Series – $55.95
Pride & Prejudice – $9.95
Shaun of the Dead – $9.95
Tremors – $9.95

Anyway, the price at DVD Pacific was too good, so I ordered it from them. And for “research” purposes as well, it makes sense to buy from a new store, as opposed to doing the same “research” with Amazon all the time. So far, I’m impressed (I will have a nice little roundup of all the online stores I’ve dealt with recently in a future blog) – ordering was easy, communication was prompt (email updates), and very little delay between ordering and shipping. This is what I ordered:

DVD Pacific Order #1:

• American Gangster (Combo) – $USD 17.09
• Eastern Promises (Combo) – $USD 17.09
• Scent of a Woman – $USD 11.50
• The Pianist – $USD 11.50
• Shipping: $USD 7.95
• Order Total: $USD 65.13

You may have noticed by now that the title of this blog contains the phrase “JB Hi-Fi Stuff-up?”. Let me explain. JB Hi-Fi is an Australia chain store selling cheap music, movies and basically anything home entertainment. They also have a somewhat separate online store. I have shopped with them in the past, and didn’t have too many problems. That is until Thursday night.

Someone posted a link on a forum that JB were doing the Planet Earth HD DVD for only $18! That’s an amazing price, because it normally retails for $100 here – even the DVD version is $60. So in my excitement, I make my order (for just one copy, since I don’t want others to miss out) and everything seems to be going through perfectly. The news broke, and thousands of orders were made, many from the US. Some of the eBay scum came and ordered 50 copies, as they are known to do. But I was confident since my order was fairly early, and not a bulk order which JB might reject. Also, it’s a local order and JB said they will honor these first and it will be on a first come first served basis. But on Friday afternoon, I receive an email from them that my order has been cancelled because they did not have enough stock, and this is where the fun began. Apparently, I was not the only one affected, and even people who ordered much earlier than me missed out. So did JB even have any stock, many wondered. But some people then began to say their order shipped, and many of these people had ordered much later than me, or ordered multiple copies. There was apparently no pattern in which order was processed, and which were rejected. Suffice to say, there are now a lot of angry people trying to get an answer from JB, but they’ve been silent about it. I saw this post on a forum with a open letter type thing to JB, and I will publish it here for further promotion (my order number was #72773x):

Dear JB Hi-fi,

I am writing in regards to the Planet Earth HDDVD special that was recently advertised on your website.

While I am sympathetic to the fact that there was an overwhelming demand for this product and your supplier could not provide adequate stock, I and many others feel that you as a company have handled the situation extremely poorly. Several questions have been raised within the community and we would like them addressed.

How many copies of Planet Earth were available and how many orders were actually filled? The data that I currently have indicates that approximately 14 orders (#727642 – #727656) were filled, and yet within only hours of the special being made available, several hundred orders were placed. Could you not have anticipated the demand that this special would result in? Why were people still able to place orders many, many hours after the allocated stocks would have been gone?

However, the sore point within the community is seeming unfairness in the way in which orders were filled. From the data I’ve collected, orders #727642, #727647, #727655, and #727656 were all filled, and yet orders #727616, #727622, and #727639 (all containing Planet Earth HDDVD) were not. How was it decided which orders would be allocated stock and which ones would not? Why were the orders not processed in a sequential order? It only seems fair in a case like this that those who ordered first should be given preference.

This email and any response given will be posted to several websites and online communities. Should these questions not be answered adequately, or at all, then I will be doing the only thing that I can as a consumer — I will stop shopping at JB Hi-fi (online and brick and mortar stores), and will be encouraging as many people as possible to follow suit. I have no doubt that other people who feel that this situation has been handled poorly will take similar action.

Yours sincerely,
The Internet

I will post any response from JB on this blog, but until that time, it’s probably wise to avoid JB Online if you would like to ensure you get what you ordered.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.