After Sunset: The Sun Movie Club Switchover Under Fire

EARLIER this year, the Sun Movie Club - the DVD rental company owned by tabloid, The Sun, and powered by OutNow DVD rental ceased trading.

Since then, a steady trickle of complaints from customers who used to use the service - citing continuing direct debits, DVDs turning up randomly and being unable to cancel subscriptions - have ended up at Choose Towers.

We've taken a look at just what happened, and what you can do if you have a problem.

Powered by OutNow

They're best known for boobs, celebrity 'scandal' and three-in-a-bed romps but not so long ago, the UK's best selling newspaper, The Sun, decided to make a foray into the heady world of DVD rental.

The Sun Movie Club started in the middle of 2008. The service was powered by OutNow (formerly MyMovieStream), which means that any customers were getting the huge choice of movies that OutNow offers.

With a great website, prices from £3.99 per month and with more than 65,000 titles to choose from, the Sun Movie Club was a solid choice, even though it was slightly overshadowed by the UK's two biggest companies, LoveFilm and Blockbuster. Upon launch, it even offered a whopping two month free trial.

Things seemed to be going pretty well until the recession hit News International, the company which owns The Sun and all of a sudden, changes were afoot. The Sun Movie Club merged into its parent company, OutNow, and it appears it's after the initial switchover stage that some problems began to crop up.

Complaints

Here at Choose, we've had a number of complaints from ex-Sun Movie Club customers. One ex-user said they had temporarily cancelled their membership three months ago but received two DVDs through their letterbox, completely out of the blue.

Others say that they are not even aware that The Sun Movie Club has been merged into the OutNow service and are wondering why they are still being billed and are unable to log in to the website.

"In the lead up to the changeover, we provided clear, prominent messaging on the websites and via various customer communications, especially email. We also set the system to allow the original Sun Movie Club customers to log in via the OutNow site," said David Morley, director of sales and marketing at OutNow.

OutNow say it sent e-mails to all customers to let them know of the changes, so we hope that it's just a case of a few customers slipping through the net.

"The OutNow service boasts a range of additional features and benefits and I'm pleased to confirm that the overwhelming majority of customers who have made contact with us have been highly complimentary and pleased with the changes," Mr Morley added.

Getting in contact

If you're having problems with the changeover from the Sun Movie Club to OutNow, then you can get in contact by e-mailing customerservice@outnow.co.uk, or you can call them directly for free on 0800 0087 240 (10am-5pm Mon-Fri)..

Comments