Nothing's built to last. Planned obsolescence, spotty to non-existing QC, Made in China junk - but keeps most of us pretty happy cos of a very small price at the register when checking out those products...at least until the next Holiday season comes around by which time last year's goods are guaranteed for the landfill (if not already). Not that any of this is NOT obvious to any of us :-)

I agree electronic devices do have a limited life span and quickly become obsolete these days. I can't complain too much about the DVD players since they were about 10 years old. One was taken out by a power outage that killed it even though it was plugged into a surge protector. Nothing else was damaged fortunately. The PS3 was closing in on 6 years old when it suddenly stopped working while playing a DVD. Apparently the yellow light of death did it in. I could exchange it for a refurb, but since I'm not a gamer it doesn't seem I need another one now. However I'm doing my part to help fill up the landfills.

I personally plan to pick up the three individual digibook releases, even if they are a little more expensive. Eventually they will be $15-ish each.

I never received my set from Amazon.co.uk. First time I didn't receive something from their site. Due to the negative info about packaging, crushed boxes and Region 2 DVDs, I decided to request a refund instead of a replacement. Prices this holiday season have been so cheap on blu rays, I have bought a lot of stuff. I will wait for a deal on the US set.

I tried to process a return. The site wanted me to pay for international return shipping (which would be refunded later). That seemed excessive to me so I did an online chat with a CSR. He quickly processed a refund and sent me an email that said :

Hello Decker,

I understand that you wish to return the item from order #XXX-XXXX-XXX

There's no need to return this item. You're welcome to keep, donate or dispose of it--whichever option is most appropriate and convenient for you.

I’ve requested a refund of GBP £18.00 to your payment card which should be processed within 2 to 3 business days. Please note, this does not include your bank’s processing time. You’ll see this amount credited on your next statement.

When the refund is completed, we'll send you an e-mail confirming the date, amount and payment details.

I thought that was pretty cool. I can still take the blu rays out of the crushed box and watch the movies even if I can't enjoy all the special features. Now at least the price is right.

received my box last evening. the box was not as 'crushed' as I thought it would be - yes the edges are all 'stressed' and that's not hard to explain due to the flimsy manufacturer packaging of the item, the only way that could have been avoided is if Amazon were to include a much bigger box with plenty of packaging material. I personally am not in favor of green-unfriendly solutions like this (actually, you can argue based on that that I shouldn't be collecting physical media :-)) I could live with the slight disfiguring of the package but what's unforgiveable is that dastardly design inside that houses the discs. I understand they were attempting some clever design to minimize space but its utterly user unfriendly - you can easily snap a disc and crack it when extracting it from its slots. And despite such a design, one of the BD's and one of the SD/DVD's were floaters. Horrible is an understatement for the packaging design.

Am not gonna give Amazon grief on this - the film BDs themselves are in good condition and the price more than makes up for some of the shortcomings. But Amazon needs to get its act together with the product description - dunno if the manufacturer provides that or if its Amazon generated.

I did tell them they need to change the item description.

You're too forgiving about the way Amazon.co.uk ships. They use cardboard sleeves that are absolutely prone to being crushed, rather than a box which wouldn't be smashed like that. My Universal Monsters set doesn't sit right on the shelf because it got crushed in the overseas shipping as well

I sent it back today...
The amount allotted to me for return shipping was $4.94 while the actual cost of shipping was $20.45!!!

I wouldn't mind if this was an item I decided I didn't want, but I'm sending this back as the product was advertised as "region free" when only part of the set is actually region free.

I've only had to "return" two items from international Amazon sites over the past 10+ years but each time they just gave me my money back and told me to keep, donate, or throw the item away (similar to Decker's response).

I'm surprised they're making you pay for return international shipping. I guess I was just lucky.

Another vote for flimsy packaging, though. I buy CDs from Amazon Japan occasionally and on more than one occasion they've arrived damaged.

I have been pretty fortunate so far to have received my UK packages in fairly decent condition. Also, as a personal opinion only, I believe there's a level of compromise that could be made in that the package is 'traveling' quite a bit from its point of origin which increases the risk to the packaging. Amazon is good about addressing those issues and could as a suggestion, use a stronger reinforced cardboard packaging while minimizing package size. But am sure everyone here will agree with the price benefits we realize from overseas content as opposed to the price gouging out here in the US for the same. And that some compromise could be made while realizing that benefit.

Well to Amazon UK's credit they just emailed me that they are going to refund the full shipping amount.
I order from them all the time (mainly music) and never had an issue before.

Good news : It seems that the DVDs are at least playable on the computer, so I can at least watch the special features discs on my computer. Maybe everyone knew this -- I didn't though

Bad News : The UV code (one for the set) is not redeemable for people with US Ultraviolet accounts.

And yeah, the way the discs are housed in the digipacks is HORRIBLE. I've never seen anything like it and it doesn't work at all. They're super-hard to remove and I had a floater as well.

There's a program out there called annonymx that allows you to redeem UK uv codes through Flixster. I already had all the movies in my UV account but for those who don't there is that or disc to digital.