Had an opportunity last night to finally break open my Stooges collection (new chronological sets). First disc played fine, second disc refused to play at all. Second set, both discs played ok. Took the bad disc downstairs to my plain vanilla dvd player(my main player is a Toshiba A35 HD) and it failed on that one also.

So I've got a bad disc. No apparent scratches, it wasn't a floater or anything just bad.. Unfortunately these had been in my unwatched pile for a while, and it's long past any window of returning these. What do you do in a case like this? Do the companies (Sony in this case) guarantee them ie.. some kind of warranty? Am I just out of luck? Not a huge investment or anything, just want to have all of my Stooges!!

I usually try to contact the manufacterer when this happens. It depends on the company though if they'll replace it. If that does not work you could always return it to the store and claim that it was a gift and you don't have a receipt. Good luck!

We had a LOTR3 box set that was missing disc 2 and had two disc 3s. We did not open the box until well over a year from when we purchased the set. We contacted the MFR and got no replies back. Finally contacted our local Best Buy and explained that we got it as a "gift" and did not have the receipt. They said they could look up the person that purchased it if they used a credit card. We said they might have used cash. We were eventually able to get an even exchange on the set.

I did that just a few months ago..Tried to watch The Black Hole for the first time and i bought it 4 YEARS EARLIER through Columbia House DVD...Currently going through my collection to watched unwatched movies using My DVD Spot collection, rating each one as I go along....I assumed everything I owned was "unwatched" did it from scratch

Having this problem with my flipper copy of Gettysburg. Hadn't watched it for many months, then popped it in the player one day and it started freezing up about midway through on both sides. Bought a second copy and now its starting to glitch. Ugh!

This particularly sucks since its one of my favorite films. I'm about ready to pick up a dvd copy program and tranfer the thing to two seperated disks before the flipper goes south (NPI) completely.

Just happened to me with the 2-disc Stagecoach in the John Wayne/John Ford box. Every disc in the box plays fine except for Disc 1 of Stagecoach.

As an aside, anyone know if the single disc Stagecoach is disc 1 of the 2-disc? It would save me some money if I could just purchase that instead of buying the 2-disc again.

So, you have pointed out a good reason not to let that "unwatched movies" pile grow too large. I always try my best to watch everything I buy within 30 days of purchase - that way if I have any problems (and I have had a few) the store is happy to exchange it for me. The couple of times I bought too many DVDs at one time and couldn't watch them all within 30 days I had a problem and the store was very understanding and also exchanged that DVD for me.

A friend of ours just found out that her 2-disc "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" she got for Christmas has two Disc 2's. Also, I was at a local used CD/DVD/Video Game store (Book & Music Exchange on Bardstown Rd. in Louisville for anyone who is familiar with them) and they had a used copy of "seaQuest DSV: The Complete Second Season" that had 2 disc 1's. For the $5 they were asking, I should have bought it, rented it from Netflix and sent them back the superfluous disc 1, saying they'd screwed up. I didn't, though, and the set was long gone the next time I was there.

As for discs that didn't play right, the only one that comes to mind is "Godzilla" (2000). We found it in the $5 dump bin at Wal-Mart and figured we'd blind buy for that price. Halfway through the movie, it started skipping terribly. Oddly, the disc looked pristine. We were able to exchange it, but I can't honestly say if the replacement is any better since in nearly five years we've yet to get around to trying to finish watching the movie.

Usually if I run into that problem, I just take the loss and buy a replacement copy on eBay/Half/Amazon/SecondSpin.

As a last resort, I buy another copy, bring the old copy back for the exchange, and either give the sealed new copy as a gift, or wait until after christmas and return it to the retailer as a gift.

Call the studio. WB has exchanged multiple disc for me that were defective. (HD DVD combo disc). They have one marketing person that takes care of it and I am sure most studios do.

I forgot to mention another similar problem. My wife recently ordered for me the three-disc "Wizard of Oz" box set from Columbia House. There are supposed to be replicas of various items packaged in with the box. When I finally got around to examining my box, I discovered that I had two sets of replica stills/lobby cards/whatever they are, but I'm missing the rest of the items altogether!

I've had two major instances and never rectified either.

Quantum Leap: S3 - one of the great Universal DVD-18s. Disc one side one wouldn't play.

Northern Exposure: S2 - the discs are labeled correct but one disc has the same episodes on both sides. It was pressed wrong.

That's what I did when a Fox CSR told me in no uncertain terms that my 2-year old, yet just-opened copy of Office Space with some kind of junk embedded in the plastic read side was not under warranty by Fox indefinitely. I strongly endorse this tactic when it's necessary to punish bad company policy.

I've never had any problems with single disc movies but you have to watch multi-disc sets like a hawk. Even if I don't intend to watch them anytime soon I immediately inspect multi-disc sets as soon as I buy them. I would say a good 10 to 15% of all big sets have problems of one kind or another. From wrong discs to one badly scratched discs to missing items, it is apparent the people packing these multi-disc dvd sets are not doing a very good job. Looking for a complete pristine dvd set of larger sizes almost always requires multiple returns for me to mix and match. It's why I stopped buying large sets over the Internet. I will say this problem disappeared for the most part when I switched to Blu-rays, as the hard coating basically makes them immune to the "floater" problem.

I had a similar situation with The Office (UK) complete series that I received as a gift. I contacted the studio, Warner Home Video in this case, who had me send the whole set back to them and after a few weeks I received a replacement at no cost.

Sony series have been the worst as far as scratched non floater discs in my experience. King of Queens, Married w/Children, you think I'd learn to inspect them when purchased.

Wow, I can't believe someone actually bought this movie (granted it was a blind buy) it didn't work and actually stayed in line at Wal-Mart customer service just to finish watching it.

I'm sorry but that movie was terrible and not worth the trouble.