Frankly, I am very confused with all the finangling . I never had a CH account, and I was concidering opening one. I have spent the last 75 minutes reading all the posts and FAQs, and I am very confused. There are no dvds I find that I want and I do find several box sets I want, but am not able to get. I have decided that maybe I will wait to open an account.
I believe that my senior moment has finally set in.

Randy

^
if you don't want any of the DVDs on Columbia House, then it's not worth opening an account unless you perhaps do a TV Club account using code HDL or the others listed in the thread. With that you get 2 TV series for $10 to start then have to buy 2 more DVDs or box sets (there entire selection is available once you're a member). And you can stack those purchases with B1G1 free movie codes.

Be aware that there are thousands of DVDs available for enrollment at Columbia House, from most major studios except Disney/Touchstone/Miramax. We don't list all of them in these threads, just the newer ones that are, or soon will be, available for enrollment.

If you already have all the DVDs you want, then there is little point to opening an account. That is the case for many of us who have had lots of accounts before. In that case we tend to wait a few months until a bunch of new DVDs have been released and have become available for enrollment. Then we sign up and turn the crank again.

With regard to the box sets you want, if they are not available for enrollment through the TV edition of the DVD club, the best way to get them is to enroll in the regular club. But that would only work if there are seven or so regular DVDs that you want. If that's not the case then it makes little sense to join.

Another alternative is to join CH.com for $9.95. You get two DVDs, from a limited list of 200 or so, and you have to buy two more to fulfill. At CH.com all DVDs and sets are 40% off list price and shipping is free. However, one can sometimes find DVDs on sale for less at places like Amazon.

Columbia House isn't for everyone. It is best for those early in the process of building a DVD collection who think that doing so for $5 a DVD is worth the hassle of club membership and learning the complexities of optimizing CH accounts.

To check on whether or not Columbia House carries titles that might be of interest to you, go to columbiahouse.com, click on the "Join now" link (or enter an enrollment code, such as D50, and click "Go"). You can then search the CH catalog by title, director or actor. If it lists the title at 49¢, it is available for enrollment. If it says "Members Only" it is not (yet) available for enrollment. Sets and HD titles are never available for enrollment, except for the limited list of sets in the "TV Edition of the DVD club". [If you actually want to join the club, be sure to do so using a good enrollment code ("savings code") so that you get the best offer. This stuff is described in the Enrollment Codes thread.]

One caveat: buying DVDs for $4.80 from Columbia House can be habit forming — especially when one sees folks over in the bargains threads getting all excited over paying "just" $15 each for the same DVDs. Most of us have much larger DVD collections than we would have had if we were buying them at standard retail prices.

FW is "Fatwallet", a notorious discount coupon and bargain hunting website.

The rebates are from a site the name of which escapes me. But yes, it is considered bad form to discuss it at DVD Talk because using it to link to retail websites, rather than using DVD Talk's links, takes click revenue away from DVD Talk.

Thanks for the info. I was guessing "W" was for "World," and spent afew minutes searching Google with and without that. I found a mrrebate site, but that system seemed like a pain, and it didn't give free shipping/handling on opening a CH account, so the savings in the long run from a rebate were offset by a higher initial sign-up cost.

So now that I looked at both of the offers, it looks to me like the info blaze1984 supplied above was not exactly accurate.

The deal is to buy 5 DVDs for $.49 each, plus $1.99 s/h each, and have 5 to fulfill. Or, get 1 more to reduce your obligation and get free s/h, but pay $14.95 for it. So now you can get:

$2.45
+1.99*5
+119.97+7.99 (MASH example)
-6*4.80
=$111.57
-$15 rebate
= $96.57
= a savings of 75 cents
OR
if the rebate is only $13:
=$98.57
=an extra cost of $1.25

By taking the extra DVD to make the 5:5 account into a 6:4 account, you pay $14.95 more, but save $9.95, so you pay $5 for the DVD, which is higher than the $4.80 optimized price, so in this case, you lower your obligation, but essentially pay 20 cents more for the box set, which would, I guess, be an OK decision if you're going this route and if your box set that you'd like to get only satisfies 4 obligatory purchases, and not 5 (i.e., is priced inclusively between $79.95 and $99.94).

So this seems to be a wash in the case of the $15 rebate, and a worse deal in the case of the $13 rebate. In addition, in the case of using one of these rebate deals, you have to deal with a 3rd party and satisfy their requirements for getting the rebate paid out to you, which is not very easy unless you really get involved with their site.


In these examples and the ones above in my previous posts, I was using the B1G1 codes, because they are the most common. But a box set free shipping code would save another dollar or two, and a 15%-off code would be a much better deal.

15%-off MASH is a savings of $18.00. By using a 15%-off code instead of the B1G1 code, you lose the $4.80 value of the additional free DVD, so the savings is reduced to $13.20. That brings the box set cost down to $84.20 in a 6:3 account (and makes using FunCash on it COMPLETLY useless, because you'd use $40 in FC to buy it for $87.96).

Similarly, the Friends complete series seemingly-high price of $164.97 is now better than other retailers by using a 6:3 account, at only $2.94 + $164.97+7.99 -6*$4.80 - $24.75(15%) = $122.36. DeepDiscount's 20%-off sale had it at $127.91.

I just cycled a 6:3 account and got the Space 1999 Megaset (been wanting this for like 5 years) for a net cost of $33.11 by using thejester's recent code finds that included the 15%-off codes that expire 12/4. That was a $20 savings even over DD's 20%-off price of $55.13 (and was half off their regular price of $66.41).

I wish I had had a second 6:3 account ready that I could have used, because I would have liked to have gotten the same deal on the Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection. But I prefer to keep one fulfilled standard and one fulfilled TV club account open, just in case. Just have to be patient and wait for another 15%-off code to roll around...

^^ great analysis, didn't realize there wasn't free shipping with the rebate deal.

So yup, no good on my part. Even if you take the 6th DVD for $14.95 that makes shipping on the entire order free, that acutally just raises the total cost of the set (cause you save about $9.95 on shipping), but then end up paying $14.95 for the DVD --- so $5 for one DVD (which actually raises the total cost by 20 cents).

oh, and by the way, the rebates from fatwallet are very very reliable. I've gotten over $300 paid out through them over the years, and never ever had a problem. This includes getting a rebate where i bought a cell phone, ended up returning the phone cause i didn't get service in my dorm room, and they still posted the rebate to my account.