Back in April I expressed some surprise that Amazon were still offering DVD rental by post. It appears I was right to be surprised but just a little early as Amazon announced today that their LOVEFiLM By Post service is to die on the 31st of October this year.
Subscribers will no longer be billed after the 30th of September but after the 31st of October when you return your final DVDs that will be the end of the service.
Amazon say that “over the last few years we’ve seen a decreasing demand for Blu-ray and DVD rental as customers increasingly move to streaming“. They forget to mention that part of the reason for this is that they have heavily pushed their own Prime Video streaming service.
I find this a bit of a shame as the vast selection available on LOVEFiLM dwarfs that available on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Sky Movies or any other online streaming service available. It’s a frustration that streaming services generally have a severely limited offering (they’ll offer a random season of your favourite TV show, but you can’t binge watch every season which you get with a DVD box set or rented videos). The other snag is that if you want to watch many films you’ll find that they’re available, but at a price – even though you’re a subscriber the latest releases are always paid for and older films are often also only available to stream for an additional rental fee.
The beauty of LOVEFiLM was it’s vast range as was pointed out by readers in comments on the April article.
As a sop to LOVEFiLM customers Amazon are offering a cut price Fire TV stick to say thank you for being a loyal customer. To redeem your Fire TV stick for the discounted price of £24.99 (current price £39.99), visit amazon.co.uk/firetvstick, add a Fire TV Stick to your basket, and enter your single-use promotional code (which LOVEFiLM will receive via email) during checkout.
If you’re in an area with poor internet coverage or a capped monthly bandwidth limit then streaming videos might not be for you. If that’s the case then the end of LOVEFiLM means you’ll be cut off from your regular dose of DVDs and your only real alternative is to buy DVDs. Amazon may hope that this will be from them, other marketplaces are also available.
Of course you can always resell watched DVDs on marketplaces but that’s a whole lot less convenient than stuffing them into a pre-paid envelope and returning them whilst you wait for your next selection to arrive.
One Response
Cinema Paradiso as a postal DVD rental service with a larger catalogue than Love Film would be the obvious place for LF customers to switch to.
Not everybody wants Amazon Prime.