Amazon closer to killing LoveFilm

Amazon have moved another step closer to killing off LoveFilm By Post.

When they first took over Amazon made a complete mess of the transition. There was a lot of confusion, the website was badly broken and tying streaming video to their Prime delivery service just seemed weird.

But the price was right. I quickly dropped the Prime video service because it never worked well for me and the selection was poor. Which left me with unlimited disk rental for £4 a month. Fine.

That didn't last long though. As many people predicted the price soon went up. I found myself paying £8 a month for the same service.

I say the same service. It was actually poorer service than I ever got from LoveFilm. A few examples:

1) Patchy delivery

May be a coincidence, but there have been more delays and longer delays in turnaround since Amazon. I usually watch films on a Friday and Saturday night, posting disks back on Monday morning. With LoveFilm I always had new disks before Friday. With Amazon I sometimes don't get disks until Saturday or even after the weekend.

2) Dirty disks

With Amazon I often have to clean the disks carefully before they will play on my machine. Again, might be a coincidence or maybe Amazon are lazy about maintaining their stock.

3) Rubbish website

The Amazon site is geared to buying stuff not renting. Recommendations were a great feature of LoveFilm but all that is gone with Amazon. Most of the time you are shown films you have already seen, to try and make you buy the disk.

You can't even see all the films you have rented on the Amazon site. Just the last 200. I have been on LoveFilm since 2005 so I have probably rented over 1000 films by now.

It is very frustrating when you are searching for new films to watch and most of the results are either films you have seen or films you think you might have seen but can't quite remember.

I have suggested to Amazon several times that they need an option to exclude films you have already seen from searches. Each time I get a reply that says "you can see your last 200 rentals on this page...". Argh!!!!!

And now I read in the media that there is another price hike due in February 2016. My service will go up to £12 a month. According to the Amazon website I should have had an email in October telling me this... But I didn't.

This is the last straw. Not because £12 a month is too much, yet. But because the trajectory is clearly set. Amazon don't give a shit about disk rental and clearly want to kill it off.

They are doing it slowly so as not to alienate too many people in one go.

Well I am out. And you know what Amazon? I have found myself using your services for other things less and less as you have treated me badly as a LoveFilm By Post customer. Now that I am leaving you, maybe I won't shop on your site at all.

LoveFilm was a great service. Amazon have destroyed it.