A personal experience with movie download provider Movielink underscores the disconnect between the service provided and what the consumer expected.
Disembodied Phone Voice: You have been connected to Katrina C.
Katrina C: Welcome to Movielink Customer Service. Please wait one moment while I pull up your account.
Joseph: Hi. I downloaded two movies a while ago, but I haven't had a chance to watch them.... and they both expire within the next two days. Could you please extend this for me?
Katrina C: Unfortunately we can't extend past 30 days.
Joseph: That's not really fair, considering I paid for them and haven't watched them. Please, may I speak to a supervisor?
Katrina C: We are not allowed to extend past the 30 days. We give you 30 days to watch them.
Joseph: Seriously...you've got to change this policy. Why is this a problem? It's not as if there is a physical tape or DVD that prevents others from renting. The file is sitting on my machine and has all the security protocols to prevent me from watching it twice, etc.
Katrina C: I'm sorry, at this time we let you know that you have 30 days so we cannot extend past that. If you want, you can send a suggestion to our email suggestion box about the policy.
Joseph: This is really unacceptable. If you're not going to help me, I'm going to be forced to close down my account and use a more traditional service such as renting DVDs at the airport.
Katrina C: I'm sorry sir, but when you rented you knew you only had 30 days to watch them.
Joseph: MAY I SPEAK WITH YOUR SUPERVISOR?
Katrina C: If you wish to speak with a supervisor you can call 1-866-350-3330, Monday through Friday.
Joseph: BUT MY MOVIES EXPIRE TOMORROW!!! You're about to lose a customer for life!
Click!
The transcript above comes to you courtesy of Movielink, which I now like to refer to as Moviestink.
This is a real conversation and the names have not been changed in order to expose yet another example of how traditional behemoths have yet to grasp the power of the Web, broadband, the empowered consumer and the digital future that’s theirs for the taking, if only they’d let go of the reins they so tightly hold.
Allow me to set the scene:
Movielink, an online movie download service, is a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios. Movies on offer come from the above studios as well as from those of Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, Artisan and others, on a non-exclusive basis.
Call them the Orbitz of the movie business, perhaps. However, in reality they’ve taken on more of a recording industry reputation -- an offering that got lost in translation, somewhere between the old Napster and the new iTunes.
When I first stumbled upon Movielink, I was besotted. The ability to download a feature film in 20 to 30 minutes, which played back in full-screen with perfect clarity, was ideal for a frequent traveler like me. No external DVD-Rom drives to carry around; no need to purchase DVDs that aren’t must-haves (and by must-have, I refer to anything in the “Lord of the Rings” ilk).
The ability to download a movie over a latte and biscotti at a local Starbucks was, indeed, sublime.
I soon became the archetypal propagator -- a self-indoctrinated connector from the annals of Malcolm Gladwell. I got a real buzz through spreading the good word about this service…and even took this passion to the next level by sending in suggestions and ideas to the folks over at Movielink.
If I had a dollar for every time I told someone about this company (all glowing reports), I think I might have closed my 2004 and worked on my golf game instead (I sense a growing chorus nodding in concurrence).
But alas, the honeymoon ended too soon. If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, then this link was the one that turned a love affair into an embittered, relationship-ending battle. And true to script, the empowered and loyal-less consumer of today (that’s me) was at the center of it all.
The Movielink story is one of paradox and oxymoron. The paradox in question is the love-hate relationship between old school (moron) and new school (ox). Quite clearly the company is being run by those who get it, and run into the ground by those who don’t.
To assign a 30-day window to 650MB of dormant content sitting patiently on an individual’s hard drive, and to give that individual 24-hours to watch the movie is just plain stupid. And then trying to charge another $2.99 for a 24-hour extension was only adding insult to injury.
I didn’t mind paying the same price as a Blockbuster rental, $4.99, but I certainly did take issue with being bullied into watching a movie within an arbitrary time frame.
In a broadband reality where digital downloads present the movie studios with a migraine of mammoth proportions, I was a first-hand witness to the best-case scenario of a company whose hands were tied and the worst-case scenario of an old boys’ club that refuses to accept the inexorable march of time and impact of change.
Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation for all parties concerned -- except of course for Netflix, In-Motion and Blockbuster.