Selecting your rentals

Selecting rentals is simple. Organising them, however, is another matter, though still fairly simple. Maybe too simple.....

The site gives you a rentals list of the stuff you want. To add things to this list, you click the red "RENT" buttons next to titles you want (which can be found by browsing the site or by using the search box). This was fine for DVDs, but when I clicked "rent" on a blu ray title, it came up with a box saying something like "you do not have a list for blu-rays, add anyway?" I still don't understand what this meant, but I'm guessing it's about the lists thing (which I'll talk about later on).

Well, when you click rent, it gets added to your rentals list. Lovefilm recommends having at least 10 titles in the list so that you won't be without a title, which is fair enough. This isn't just a "brah brah" plain list. You can customise it somewhat....

You can set each rental you want a level of importance: High, medium and low. Obviously, rentals set to high will get a higher priority than those in medium. I suppose if someone has title A set to medium and someone else has title A set to high, the person with the high gets the title first. It seems slightly limiting to me though.

On the rental list, the titles are split by importance (each importance is individually listed alphabetically). Something else that I noticed while selecting titles is that a little hourglass may appear on items. A grey hourglass means that the title is a little popular so there may be a wait before it's sent to you. A red hourglass means that tht title is VERY popular so there may be a long wait.


You can also reserve titles that haven't been released yet (like I reserved the Negima spring and summer specials that come out later this month). In this case, the title will have a yellow "RESERVE" button instead of the red "RENT" button. This is added to a seporate list below your rentals list. When Lovefilm get a copy in, the title is copied to the rentals list. I don't know what importance the reserved title gets, but I assume it'll be high as you've reserved it for a while.

Something I found really interesting was that you can put TV boxsets on your rentals list. I found this out by looking for Death Note volume 3. Now here's the cool part, you can actually rent discs in the boxset seporately (this is great if you just want to see the bonus features dvd). Alternatively, if you rent the entire boxset, the discs are sent to you in order.

Above your rentals list shows the titles you have at home and any pending deliveries. Lovefilm decided to send me both discs of Death Note volume 3 as my first ever rental. When it arrives, I shall report back.

It begins....

Hello everyone. I'm Peter and I signed up to Lovefilm UK on 4th March 2009. Before I begin, I want to make one thing straight: I am not paid to make this, I am a legit customer.

The other day, I was at an anime club which I go to every month. This time, the main guy was giving out some cards that allowed people to get 2 months free trial if they entered the code on said card. I picked one up and thought I might give it a go.

Before I signed up, I went round the internet looking at people's experiences with the company. Some said they loved it, some said they hated it. There were arguments contradicting each other all over the place. I looked at their selection of films (especially their anime section) and I decided to sign up. Of course, after searching the internet like mad for people's opinions, I thought I might make a plain and easy to understand blog so I can share my experiences with the world to help them make the right choice when it comes to Lovefilm.

I won't bother the boring details of the signup process as that was simple enough (only took about 5 minutes). Look out for the next post detailing how you select titles.

EDIT: FYI, I took the movies only option so no games rentals for me, though I may change in the future.

EDIT 2: Also FYI, I took the most popular choice of "unlimited rentals - two discs at home at any one time" package for £12.72 per month (obviously paid attention to the VAT change)