Checking out Hollywood Video and Gamecrazy |
Over the weekend, after a long hiatus from renting movies from retail chains, we signed up for the Hollywood Video unlimited rental plan, two movies at a time ($19.99 for the first month, $24.99/mo. thereafter). First two movies: Batman Begins and Wedding Crashers.
Sorry Batman fans, just ok in my book. Better than the last few Batman flicks certainly and I liked the part played by Morgan Freeman. Seemed like it had the same problem as King Kong, it took too long to get to the part I look forward to in these kind of movies. And when it comes to Batman, I still prefer the cheesy TV version over anything I’ve seen in the updated versions to date. Something about those comic WHAM! and BAM! that just worked. Or maybe it was Robin making bizarre exclamations “Leaping lizards, Batman.”
The Hollywood Video website offers movie rating if you are willing to register and enter in your movie tastes. You can also make a wish list to print out and take to the store.
We’re located between three different Hollywood Video stores, all about seven miles away so we chose the only one with the Gamecrazy store inside to get the subscription. Unfortunately you must pick the store you want the unlimited monthly plan at instead of being able to rent them at any store.
We also signed up our middle son, the gamer, for an MVP account for Gamecrazy. Getting too expensive these days buying games at $60 a pop that turn out to be shelf dust collectors. The Gamecrazy MVP program sounds like a pretty good deal for $19.99 USD for the first year and $14.99 for the following years.
It comes with free game disc buffing, a free subscription to a magazine of choice (chose Play) and 10% discount on used games and trade-in bonuses. We bought DOA4 used for the Xbox 360 for $40 USD. Like what I see here so far. This is a fun fighting game with some beautiful backgrounds and some well done videos. Screenshots don’t do this one justice, the water scenes are especially cool with the animated splashes.
Gamecrazy website lets registered users create wish lists but no ratings (?) or suggested game titles. Weak.
We thought about the unlimited game rental plan but the store inventory didn’t seem very good — at least the four times we visited the store over the weekend they had like two Xbox 360 games in stock. Not going to pay $20/month for that selection. I was told the weekly rental price of $6.99 for 5 days was going to be going up “soon.” Ouch. Maybe their selection will improve, or maybe we just hit the wrong stores at the wrong time (weekend).
Any readers have any customer service good/bad/indifferent stories for either of these services: Hollywood and/or Gamecrazy?
Speaking of video games, E3 starts tonight and I’m curious what kind of shots we’ll get to see of the PS3. Will PS3 pricing for the system finally, really be announced?
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Have they changed the rental plan to an actual unlimited time or do they still have a due date and late fees if not back by then?
I have the 3 at-a-time MVP program for a while and once I returned my items a day late and got charged $12 in late fees, on top of my monthly fee, I went back to Netflix.
Comment by Wayne — May 9, 2006 @ 11:38 am PST
Ooops…I meant “I had”
Comment by Wayne — May 9, 2006 @ 11:38 am PST
Hi Wayne - Hollywood has multiple plans which makes this sort of confusing. The guy explaining it to us was even confused and he was the manager. He kept having to look back at some cheat sheet he had behind the counter.
The cheapest plan they offer has a 5-day limit on returns. The more expensive one that I wrote about above and that we joined is 2 movies with no restriction on returns. I asked specifically on this point. It also covers all titles while the cheaper one only covers the ones they mark as “MVP.” Basically, the cheapest one they offer blows and I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody.
The more expensive plan mentioned above ($19.99 the first month, $24.99 thereafter for 2 movies at a time) is the competitor to Netflix. You can get more movies at a time with these prices with Netflix, but you can rent 10 in one day if you are willing to spend the gas and time to go back and forth to the store five times.
With rising gas prices and depending on how far away from the store one is located (7 miles each way for us, so add an extra $1-2USD per store trip, unless we can combine with other trips), it could be a wash compared monetarily to Netflix.
They also have another even more expensive plan that covers 3 movies out at a time. I think that one is $29.99 for the first month and $34.99 for each month thereafter, but I may stand corrected on that one.
Comment by TDavid — May 9, 2006 @ 12:09 pm PST