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By Seamus Swords
Staff Writer
9 April 2010
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THE UK's number one movie magazine Empire has teamed up with OutNow DVD rental to launch their new online DVD rental service, Empire Movie Club.
The new Empire movie club DVD rental site promises to cater for Empire-reading movie buffs who want hand-picked film selections to keep on top of the best in cinema plus a two week free trial and free cinema tickets thrown in for good measure.
OutNow DVD rental will no doubt be hoping that with Empire magazine's backing it'll finally be able to provide some stiff competition to market leaders Lovefilm and Blockbuster as well as leaving its troubled past behind.
Empire-building
The Empire Movie club launches with the benefit of OutNow DVD rental's 65,000-strong catalogue of titles as well as a unique offer - 6 months worth of free cinema tickets.
The packages the film club is offering are highly competitive: the cheapest 4 disc limited offer costs £7.89 a month while the same package with LoveFilm costs £7.99.
Similarly, Empire's 3 disc unlimited offer weighs in at £15.89 - LoveFilm charge 10p extra for the same service.
On top of slightly cheaper prices, though, Empire Movie Club's free cinema tickets offer is the real ace up their sleeve that they hope will ensnare hardcore movie fans.
Those who sign up to the free trial and choose dvd rental package from Empire will have access to one free Cineworld cinema ticket a month for 6 months.
Unfortunately, the offer's many little catches - it's only available when booked online for a Monday showing - may put some potential customers off.
Film fans across the country may also be wary of the magazine's involvement with OutNow DVD rental which has been plagued by bad reviews in the past.
Big changes at top of OutNow should signal a change in the company's fortunes but only time will tell whether the company's second coming will really be a marked improvement.
A Troubled Past
OutNow DVD became very popular, very fast a few years ago with thousands of user signing up to one of its many DVD packages but whilst the site had a nice glossy finish and new innovative ideas such as labelling high priority DVDs in an effort to get its customer to return them quickly the complaints soon started to pile up.
Reviews suggested that the customer service had dramatically gone downhill and enquires into why this might be seemed to fall on deaf ears too.
Some disgruntled users even suggested that the company still took money out of their accounts after they had cancelled their subscription and eyebrows were also raised when the company dismantled its Sun Movie Club service.
Whilst the complaints are serious the last disgruntled comment on the Choose DVD rental site was posted over a year ago indicating that OutNow DVD has managed to sort out at least the most serious of its problems and started to offer a higher quality of service.
Let's just hope that this company doesn't fall back into old habits otherwise it could find itself lost in this hyper competitive market.
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