ch.com the dv2 replacement
 

ch.com seems to be replacing dv2. same type deal as dv2, but no way i can see to enter codes.
9.95 membership fee
2 free dvds
free shipping
40 to 60% off
need to buy 2 dvds but no listing of need to be 19.95 or more.

also i thought it was interesting if you cancel within 10 days they refund your 9.95 back to you. unknown whether you can fulfill buy the 2 dvds required and cancel within 10 days and get your 9.95 back.
Has anyone joined ch.com yet?

Offer Details

For a one-time membership fee of $9.95 billed to your credit card, you save 40-60% off list price on every DVD when you enroll in ch.com.
As a member you agree to purchase just two DVDs within the next 90 days - don’t worry, even those DVDs will be 40-60% off list price. And shipping is FREE on every order! Plus, as a thank you for signing up, you will get 2 FREE DVDs. Buy what you want, when you want it - you’re in control! We’ll ship only the DVDs you ordered, and you’ll never have to worry about returning cards. We’ll send complete details of how ch.com works and your Membership Agreement in your Welcome package. If you are not satisfied for any reason, contact Customer Service within 10 days to cancel your membership. Your $9.95 one-time fee will be refunded and you’ll be under no further obligation.
Offer limited to customers of the contiguous United States and may be withdrawn at any time. Tax added in states where applicable. All applications are subject to review. The ch.com service reserves the right to request additional information, reject any application, or cancel any membership.

I may try this one as well. It looks kinda like BMG's "your music" deal where you get free shipping on every cd order with no type of commitment.

I was browsing their selections and they have the Return of the King Extended Edition and the new Gone With the Wind for $23.99 each, free shipping.

The selections you get to choose for free are limited. They looked to be a mix of $20 and $15 titles like Troy, Collateral, Harry Potter, Spider-man, etc.

If you call in, you can choose from all of the available enrollments.

I joined. I also found these prices:

Ultimate Matrix Collection: $47.95
Godfather Collection: $45.57
Nightmare on Elm Street Collection: $77.99
Karate Kit Collection: $22.17
Dracula Legacy: $16.17

all with free shipping of course

Anyone thinking that if this takes off well, they'll replace the standard Columbia House club with this? I doubt it, haven't been with columbia house long enough to know much about them, but it's a possibility that's crossed my mind.

Very unlikely. The regular DVD accounts have inducements designed to entice casual buyers. The DV2 accounts seem to be targeted at those folks who don't like the complexity of the regular club. DV2 has been around in one form or another for several years now. I doubt that it gets much use compared to the regular club, but that is just a guess.

anyone have a list of the actual available movies online with dv2 when signing up. i think they are different titles then when you hit preview selections

Just tried to sign up, and it asked for an acct. number. Is that from my regular CH account, or would this be a new one? Thanks.

I just got a 'we want you back' email that has a one time fee of $4.95 for 1 free DVD with 2 more to buy. I'm trying to decide whether to get the 1 free or the 2 free for $9.95.

Was it ever determined that the ch.com club has a $5 web discount off your first order (like the regular DVD club)? One problem I see is that you could fulfill with two $14.95 titles, but after the 40% discount, the total wouldn't be > $30.

Nightmare on Elm Street Collection: $77.99

I have a feeling soon or later they'll release 2 Disc special Edition on all these movies plus new BOX SET.

After you join, are there any box sets. I cant find any on the site under preview.

you can buy pretty much anything under any other CH account under the "CH.COM" banner..their usual sales you can't usually partake in ..as well as the fun little 6 digit codes usually don't work..

Wow, 40% and free shipping on box sets is better than Columbia Houses regular offer. I had been getting frustrated waiting on box set sales.

I haven't seen it mentioned here so I thought I would point out that you earn $2 Fun Cash for each DVD purchased. Even the titles that are less than $6. Boxed sets earn more of course, and the Fun Cash can be used to buy DVDs at their CH regular price (not the discounted price). They also have special offers occaisionally that are pretty good. I recently took advantage of $10 off an over $40 order. Managed to pick out some cheap DVDs I wanted and earned enough Fun Cash to get another DVD for about $1.
Apparently the Fun Cash can only be used during certain redemption periods, but this appears to be a few times throughout the year. Also, each day CH has a special DVD on sale. Go to the website and click on the Cart. In the upper right hand corner will be the special of the day - usually priced at $5.95 or $6.95, but not always. Bond films, ST Nemesis, and a number of others appear with some regularity. I joined when it was DV2, got 2 DVDs for $9.95 and only had to buy one at any price (I think) over the next year. Still a great deal, but after you've picked out the cheap titles you want and only want new releases the regular CH DVD club is going to be a better deal for those titles.

FYI, This is not true if one uses the box set as a fulfillment purchase. Even at the usual 25% to 30% off list prices, plus the shipping charge, most box sets are a better deal at the regular club. Each fulfillment credit is worth about $14, under the current membership and pricing structure.

So, a box set at the regular club that has a "special club price" of $44.95 (2 fulfillment credits) would actually have a relative cost of $44.95 - (2 x ~$14) + $7.99 (shipping) = ~$16.95 + $7.99 = ~$24.94

If the list price of the set was $59.95 then the CH.com club 40% discount would put the price at $35.95 (free shipping). To most of us $24.94 is a better deal than $35.95. Buying from the CH.com club is a lot less hassle though.

The regular club is an even better deal if one waits for a sale and/or free shipping before buying the set to fulfill the account. I bought many of my sets during 40% off sales plus free shipping as fulfillments for regular club accounts. Since then Columbia House seems to have wised up and 40% off sales no longer coincide with free shipping promotions.

These numbers are why most of the veterans of this forum buy sets as fulfillments on regular accounts. The CH.com club used to be useful for funcash purchases when one could use funcash to buy sets: the 40% off plus free shipping made funcash purchases less expensive. Now that funcash is almost worthless, going to the trouble to transfer it to a CH.com account isn't worth the hassle IMHO.

I would still rather buy the box set from CH.com and fulfill at Columbia House using two buy one, get one free's or 2 buy 3 titles for $23.

And if you can fulfill at Columbia House during the buy 1 at $19.99, get one free doesn't that come to about $24 shipped for two titles (which might cost you an average of $6.50 will anoth account). If so, wouldn't that have "cost" you $10 extra, not $14 as previously quoted as the incremental "cost" of a fulfillment.

I dont get hung up on fulfillment
 

I dont get hung up on fulfillment. I havent quite approached it from the open fulfill, close concept yet. I have 2 accounts, 1 with my wife, 1 in my name. I can get 30% off every day on box sets, so 40% and free shipping along with no sales tax seems a better deal for me.

Perhaps I am not using the math to my advantage as you may have figured out.

There is no reason you can't do both B1G1F deals and buy sets as fulfillments. All it takes is patience and more accounts. And you can buy sets as fulfillments and get free DVDs along with them using B1G1F (this is especially handy during "free shipping for three" promotions).

As for the numbers, I was using $14 as a convenience but since you mentioned it, here are the rigorous numbers:

• The current average cost of a DVD with the best LMTD type membership, using standard $19.95 fulfillments, is $5.86 per DVD.
• The cost of fulfilling an account with two regular $19.95 DVDs is $19.95 x 2 + $4.98 (shipping) - $5 (web discount) = $39.88, or $19.94 per fulfillment DVD.
• The value of each DVD is $5.86, therefore the balance of the fulfillment cost is $19.94 - $5.86 = $14.08 per fulfillment credit.

Since one has to fulfill the account anyway, in order to buy DVDs at an average cost of $5.86 at Columbia House, one has to pay the $14.08 "excess" cost on something, whether it is a regular $19.95 fulfillment DVD or a box set. Therefore each fulfillment credit is worth about $14. When buying sets, this fulfillment credit greatly reduces the "relative cost" of the set.

I hope that is clear.

A strategy note:
To buy a set that is "worth" three or more fulfillment credits (because it has a "special club price" of $59.95 or higher), it is best to decline the $9.95 "bonus" DVD when enrolling. This will cause the account to need three fulfillments, which will be covered by the set purchase. And since the $9.95 bonus DVD cost is more than the $5.86 membership average it isn't a good deal in this situation (but it is when one is buying $19.95 fulfillments).

Then you are missing out on taking full advantage of low Columbia House prices.

Yes.

I am not being flip. People come here to learn how to use Columbia House memberships to best advantage and "open, fulfill, close, repeat" is usually the best way to get the most DVDs for the least cost. Whether or not you choose to do it this way is up to you. My concern is that nobody else gets misled into thinking that CH.com is a better deal for sets than the regular club. In most cases it is not.

I'm not sure what I wrote made me seem like I did not understand your math. I understood it completely. I just think it's wrong. Your calculation of the $14.13 "excess" cost includes the web discount but also assumes that you would be lax enough to always buy a single $19.95 title and not try to combine it with an additional discount. I'm at a total loss why you are so quick to assume the one discount while completely ignoring the possibility of the other. Or the free shipping that you may end being entitled to by getting 4 titles instead of 2. If you're going to be calculating savings down to the penny (as you have done), I really think that you should include all of the savings.

Feel free to disagree - I'm cool with that. But don't think that explaining your math further (since I already understand it) is any more likely to convince me.

Your point is well taken, sorry if I offended you. Columbia House deals can be complex with a large number of possible iterations. We generally do calculations based on the standard deal because it simply isn't practical to cover all the possible temporary offers and the like. The current standard deal terms include:

• using the best available enrollment codes (LMTD or equivalent).
• placing the fulfillment order on the "$5 off first time web orders" website. This discount has been in place since 2003 and is in no way a temporary sale offer. Until or unless CH discontinues the web discount, it ought to be included in cost calculations.
• Assuming no tax, since tax rates vary considerably by state.
• fulfilling with $19.95 DVDs. These are the minimum required purchases. Occasionally one can get lesser cost DVDs to count for fulfillment and this will, indeed, lower the average cost. But purchasing $19.95 DVDs is the standard. And since many pre-orders are priced at $19.95 these can be quite good selections.

Since free shipping isn't always available, it usually isn't included in the calculations. The interesting thing about free shipping is that it doesn't change the value of a fulfillment credit very much. (In part because one has to buy a "third" DVD and it usually is priced higher than the average cost of DVDs in an account, but mostly because a lowering of the average cost of a DVD by 50¢ or so doesn't change that $14 fulfillment credit figure much.)

You are, of course, free to make these calculations however you wish, using whatever deals you expect to be available. Please understand that trying to explain the concept of "relative cost" to newcomers can be quite difficult and I have had plenty of opportunity to observe that people often get confused about it. The basic problem is that they tend to look at the price of fulfillments, whether sets or regular DVDs, and not consider that they are being purchased as part of a package, thus lowering the relative cost of the purchase considerably.

The notion that a set purchased at 40% off list with free shipping at CH.com is "cheaper" than one purchased as a fulfillment selection in the regular club at 25% off list price, plus that stiff shipping charge, is a perfect example of this. 'Taint so.

As i see if i take $6 average dvd per fullfillment cycle, $40 set is same as 2 dvds used for fullfillment, so relative cost of $40 set is $12. Similarly $60 is around $18 if you decline one extra fullfillment at enrollment time. (note that $40 and $60 is not full price of set but special club prices which are usually 25-30% off ) In some case it can be even less costly like now with DVD sale and B1G1. So using sets for fullfillment greatly reduce their relative cost. The $6 also is on high end since with LMTD you could get average cost less than $5 too.

Lizard has a valid point, however in my particular case I am very selective when it comes to adding DVDs to my collection. I only buy movies that I know I will want to watch repeatedly -- otherwise, it is more cost effective to simply rent a movie for $4 if I'm probably not going to watch it more than once. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for me to find 7 movies available through CH (and another 7, and another 7, and another 7...) that I want in my collection. So I don't cycle through accounts repeatedly as others do. When I do want to purchase a tv season box set, I find that the CH.COM club (with 40% off and free shipping and funcash and occasionally a six digit code) is usually the best price available now that Amazon's Share The Love program has disappeared and the DDD 20% sales are bi-annual (at best) . So for me, the CH.COM club is a *very* good way to add box sets to my collection without having to also add a bunch of movies that I really have no interest in owning. Big thumbs up for the CH.COM club from me.

^ That, of course, is a perfectly valid reason to buy from CH.com. Cycling accounts in the regular club can be a hassle and buying DVDs as a package isn't for everyone. CH.com is a better deal than most other sources of DVDs, as you say.

Go for it!

yep
 

yep lizard, story of my life. I actually joined for the first time about 6 months ago. I always had a bad view of Columbia House because I figured the dvd club was like the cd club. I have always though BMG was the better club there because you could join buy 1 and quit.

No, I in no way want to mislead anyone. If I follow your math correctly it is far better to use the join, fulfill, quit. I was really refferring to just buying box sets at the club as far as price to price. More for the club member who goes the other route.

And you guys are great at teaching. I never imagined the deals that could be had at Columbia House

I'm gonna keep the ch.com acct. I finally got accepted yesterday. It appears most any dvd they have will count as fulfillment. I added the new American Psycho to my cart for 11.99 and it said counts toward commitment. Some good prices and free shipping helps.