ebertofsmut

I just received a email from express.com check it out:

Dear Valued Customer,

Express.com would like to take this opportunity to share some important
news about our company. Express.com is under new ownership, and the top
priority for the new team is to refocus on the aspects of our business
that made us the #1 movie store on the Web*: an ultra-wide selection of
DVDs, fast and reliable order fulfillment, award-winning customer service,
and an overall first-class shopping experience for our customers.

Over the next 30-45 days we will be restocking our DVD inventory so that
we will once again have all the movies you want when you shop our site,
including pre-orders and pre-releases. We are also planning a huge
storewide sale to clear out many of our overstocked DVDs, CDs, video
games, electronics, accessories, and entertainment collectibles so that we
have room for all of the new inventory. For those of you who subscribe to
our Express Insider Newsletter, keep an eye out for an e-mail from us soon
that announces our "Sizzling Summer Sale." You won't want to miss it.

We at Express.com would like to thank you for your loyalty to our site. We
recognize that we have had some problems in the past few months, and we
appreciate your patronage, whether your last order with us was last week
or last year.

Thank you again and we look forward to your next visit to our site. We
promise that you will be pleasantly surprised.

Sincerely,

The www.express.com team


P.S. If you would like to comment on this email, simply hit "Reply" and
email us your thoughts. We value our customers' opinions. If you have a
question regarding an order, please do not reply to this email, but
instead email us at <mailto: [email protected]>

*Ranked #1 online movie store by Forrester PowerRankings.

HKFlix

Yeah, I received an email from linkshare a few months ago saying express.com had declared bankruptcy. Since then, I haven't gotten any replies to my emails to express and had to cancel a couple orders after they were just never shipped after being "sent to warehouse" for weeks... Hopefully the new ownership will be better, because I was planning on never going near the place again...

Adboy151

Thanks... Bushdog.

ebertofsmut

When it was up and running it was one of the best sites. But then it stopped getting all the new releases. I noticed it started to suck when they started going on to other stuff to sell and not just DVD's hopefully it will be just as good it was before. Hopefully..

ebertofsmut

I was just trying to help adboy151 god...

Big Pudge

i however did NOT know this, and think it is GREAT!!!! i loved this site, i liked goin there to see the front and back cover arts of all the dif dvd's!! this reopening just may bring me back to pre ordering from e marketers!!

majortom

On 2/24/01, I posted the following message:

"Note: Please take this for what it is worth because I am not disclosing names.

A good friend of mine is a sales rep for a studio. He said he called express.com on Friday (2/23) to push a new release. The following is an exact quote from the express.com purchasing agent (female):

"We are not buying anymore product. It is over and my resumes have been sent out."

This would explain why they are so drastically out of stock of product. What scares me is they are taking orders for out of stock product.

Take this for face value considering I am not mentioning names. The only reason I posted it was to warn the dvd talk community."


After much support and many flames we all know how this story ended.

I now take us to the present time, as we all know express.com is up to their old tricks again. So as a service to my faithful dvdtalk members, I contacted my friend in the industry and had him contact his friends. This is what I found:

Story 1:

Express.com has found a sucker with a lot of dough that has, in some fashion, bought out the company. They have hired a few key people back to begin the long process of crawling out of the disgusting hole they are currently in.

The problem with this story is that the sucker needs enough money to pay off all of express.com's debt. Once this is done he needs enough money to buy in a stocking inventory, this is where it gets interesting. My source tells me that most major studios have cut off express.com and will never sell them direct and the three major distibution companies will only sell to them COD.

So if this white knight has enough bones, and I have yet to mention operation costs, to fund a business on COD then express might be back.

Story 2:
There is no sucker with a lot of dough and the email is just a ploy to get you to buy they rest of their dead inventory so they can have cash when they finally shut down. ( I will admit story 2 is all fiction, but in the tradition of PUD...**** it)

And remember as I said before:
"Take this for face value considering I am not mentioning names. The only reason I posted it was to warn the dvd talk community."

This time lets have a little more fun because express.com have
****ed many of us, including me, in the past year. Remember I was right on 2/24/01.

Good day and happy DVD talking and buying.

Major Tom

lschoch

I don't know about this. I got burned by these guys before when I felt my prebooks would be delivered and they never came.

I'm all for competition and I wish them the best of luck, but I don't plan on placing any orders with them until I see a good many threads about how their service has improved. I would also like to see a few more pre-orders up there besides one or two big titles.

One of the thing I used to love about the old Express is how they used to carry every title and give them the same attention. It's cool to have Hannibal on the front page, but I also want to see some of the lesser known titles.

I already switched all my orders to DVD Empire, and they haven't let me down yet. Express is gonna have to impress the heck out of me before they ever get my credit card again!

Once fooled, shame on them, twice fooled, shame on me!

lschoch

Sorry if I'm being redundant, but Major Tom has hit the nail on the head.

Remeber how many of us had our orders placed with them after experiencing years of good service, and then remember how many of us had to call time and time again just to get a fraction of the truth. They left without so much as a goodby note!

I don't buy that they are back in full swing! It's going to take some solid information to get my money off me, and I just got an e-mail so far with no specifics at all.

Don't you think we might all be jumping the gun with these high hopes?

Bushdog

WAY too many threads on this subject all. I closed down all of the threads on the first page except this one. If I closed your thread, it was nothing personal, nor were you 'bad', I just had to cut down on how this was dominating the board.

Thanks for understanding.

Dark Horse

I am confused? Somebody please explain:
Express has screwed how many people but yet some are happy that they are going to attempt a comeback? Did I miss something? Yes, competition is good, but not when a company is not up to par with the others. If they don't deliver the product then who cares how low their prices are. I have placed a few orders with Amazon and have not been let down yet. I luckily never placed any order with Express and from all the negative response I have been hearing I most likely never will. So, what great things did/do they provide over the others to make everybody so excited that they are trying to make a comeback?

dvde

I agree! When things were bad with Express everybody jumped on the band wagon and started to talk all kinds of madness. Now, they're coming back and everybody is in static. Give me a break people! Oh yeah by the way if they have prices they had back in the day, the same thing will happen again. So if your hoping or thinking that the prices are going to be as great as they once more, your smokin' crack. They sold everything at a loss and if these new owners are stupid enough to sell them at the same pricing structure, there smokin' crack.

ebertofsmut

Either that or marijuana.

gcribbs

bottomline- if they really were bought by a big money person they would be announcing this to the world. not just saying they had been bought by some unnamed company or person. telling the world adds credibility to this failure of a company. just like cdnow getting funding helped keep people comfortable in buying from them.

nothing makes sense- who would be stupid enough to invest millions to dig this company out when their customer base is damaged at the very least.

why only have a clearance sale to get rid of their inventory??

are they not going to need inventory? I know the inventory is older titles however if they added new titles then the older titles might sell as a normal course of business. unless there is not going to be a normal course of business at all.

it just sounds like they are going to have a one time clearance sale. then announce that the buyer changed its mind and they are gone. they need the buyer to make people feel comfortable in buying from them again.

the only thing they have that has value now is the name- but they will never get what they paid for it.

dvd-fisherman

Let's just hope this new takeover company can keep the competition going with amazon and buy.com.

RMan360

Cut and paste from another news site...

Express.com filed for chapter 11 bancruptcy protection from creditors. Then the guys who own the company created a new company, conveniently called "Express Media" or so and bought all Express.com assets at a hefty discount. It was 1 cent to the dollar or so. What this does is that they can buy the company and all inventory at a fraction of the original cost, but don't have to take responsibility for any claims, because Express.com is still responsible for those. However, since they don't have money - even the inventory buy-out resulted only in a fraction of what they owed - they screw all their creditors by giving them 5 cents on the dollar.

In simple terms this means that if Express.com owes someone $10,000 they only pay $500 and consider the thing settled. The chapter 11 protection allows them to do that, because Express.com is bancrupt.

At the same time, since they bought themselves out, they now own all the inventory worth many million dollars, but paid only about $100,000 for it. That's how you make money in this economy.

So, now they come back - supposedly under new ownership - but fact of the matter is, that they are still the same guys. They simply screwed everyone out of the money they owed them, and now go back to doing what they did before. Running a store without a clue or morals.

Seeker

Express is not going to come back. They might resurface, but they've really already drowned.

gcribbs

so my thoughts were right. this is another scam. they pretend to be back in business. sell the remaining inventory then close up shop and run with the profits from this discount they got on the inventory. no one will sell to these guys so they will never get more inventory of new movies.

another scam from these losers

jimbo

I hear Story 1 is true.

Quatermass

I received an e-mail exactly like the one that started this thread and I replied asking about the status of my existing pre-order that was placed a long time ago and still shows as pending on their web site. Their reply was worded in such a way that it led me to believe that the order would never be filled - it stated that it could take 1-3 weeks to restock, longer on some titles, then gave me instructions on how to delete my order. This was not a "form letter" so I think they were hinting that there would be no new merchandise, although they are taking pre-orders for a couple of things.

Also I received an e-mail today giving me advance notice of their storewide sale 50-75% off. I went ahead and ordered a couple of things, but a lot of items that were real cheap were "backordered" meaning they probably will never come.

In my opinion, these two events seem to support the closeout scenario mentioned in this thread.

ernestrp

Quatermass,

I to got the email about the 50 to 75% off sale and ordered 3 items. Now 2 say pending and 1 says Backordered on this order. All 3 items showed stock.

When you first clicked on the email it says something about you will not be able to order any out-of-stock items and they will not appear in your cart.

I wonder if they are really comming back or just trying to get rid of what they have left and then bye...Bye...

ernestrp

After thinking about it for the last hour I decided to cancel my order from their sale and not worry about it.

Quatermass

That was probably a wise choice. Being a glutton for punishment, I think I'll wait and see what happens. They have never billed me before they shipped anything, but I am guessing I probably won't get the $30 Monster Cables I ordered for 6 bucks. I don't really need them anyway but it was too good to pass up.

bboisvert

As I mentioned in the DVD Bargains forum, I spent about 20 or 30 minutes shopping around during the closeout sale. I filled up my cart with about $100 worth of stuff and went to check out.

It kept kicking back telling me that there was "a problem" with my credit card. I switched to a 2nd card, same message. A switch to a third card... same message. I gave up.

The site, this sale, and the stories about making a comeback are all pretty screwy. I wait a few months to see how this turns out before going back there.

msharkm

bboisvert,

Looking back, do you think that was really smart to give a financially distressed company 3 of your credit card numbers?

You've been around long enough to know that sites have problems and maybe you should just wait and try later in the day or tomorrow.