Zip.ca is really pissing me off.
As you know, I loved Netflix, and I was very disappointed that their planned expansion into Canada didn't happen. I signed on with Zip, the Netflix equivalent, as soon as I could.
When we first joined, Zip was missing one key feature of the Netflix experience: you couldn't put your queue (called a ZipList here) in priority order.
For Netflix users, the queue is sancrosanct. You're always updating and changing the order, bumping movies up and down. Your queue is your wish-list of every movie you might ever want to see. You never expect to see the ones at the bottom of the queue, you just keep adding titles anyway. You keep the movies you most wanted to see in the top 10 or 15, and those are the ones you get.
On Zip, movies were sent to you from your list in random order. It didn't matter what order your list was in, because you had no control over the order you'd receive them. Not ideal, but that's what they offered, and I went with it.
Then, as part of a general upgrade, Zip instituted a priority-order system.
Or they said they did. I still appeared to be receiving my movies in any which order. I gave it a while, but it never got any better. When I complained, they told me it wasn't happening. Don't you love that customer service? You have a problem, and instead of hearing thanks for your feedback, we'll try to do better, you get an argument about how what you know is happening isn't really happening.
Supposedly, if your first-choice movie is not available, they try for #2. If #2 is not available, they try for #3, and so on down the line. That would be great. But it's a little hard to believe when I was receiving #18, #16, #20, #5... And the movies on my list are not Hollywood blockbusters. So either they have very limited quantities of each title, or they really had no idea how to work the priority-order system.
An irritating customer service rep emailed me a list of the movies I had received and what number they were supposed to have been on my list. Almost every number was wrong. #18 was listed as #8, #22 was listed as 2. Either they're outright lying or their problem is worse than I thought.
The last straw was when I added a movie to the very end of my list - #23 - and it was immediately sent to me. They're expecting me to believe numbers 1 through 22 were all unavailable?
If I watched movies all year round, I might not care so much. I'd see all the movies on my list eventually. But I only watch movies from November to April. The rest of the year, I'm watching baseball. During baseball season in New York, I'd watch movies on off days or after day games. But now when there's time off from baseball, we want to hang out in our backyard, enjoying the night air with happy pups and a glass of wine. (You can't imagine how much we enjoy that. It is absolute bliss.) So this winter, I'm eager to see my top-choice movies before April rolls around.
Allan had an idea borne of frustration: delete everything from the ZipList except our top-choice movies. That way they'll be forced to send you the movies you want.
I did that.
Now I'm getting emails saying there aren't enough movies on my ZipList, so I'm in danger of not receiving movies. I'll wait.
This can't be good for their business.
No comments:
Post a Comment