in (again) before the lock!

if no one says that the US will get a decent release of delicatessen, i'm picking that up! yes, from bensons (or blackstar... but i tired of opening up accounts)

I think the majority of us here (myself included) have had great experiences with Bensons (I have bought about 20 HKL titles, South Park box sets, Delicatessen and others).

Keep in mind that a lot of European companies take longer holidays than Americans and they may be a little backlogged right now. Be patient.

Cuz they know how to live! Yeah!


cheers, Tony Block

P.S. I need a long vacation!

tell me about it..I have in-laws in England..all they talk about going on "holiday"..wish I could afford to do that myself

I don't think I'll be ordering from Benson's World again and my advice would be to avoid them. I live in the US, here is my experience with them:

My first order came in a box with no return address stamp which, I think, prompted customs to open the box. The box cutter they used sliced right through the spine of the DVD, cutting the artwork completely in half. Benson's World's response: "we always include a return address label."

My second (and last) order arrived this week. Two DVDs, that were shipped seperately for some reason. Neither was shrink-wrapped, one came with an invoice, the other didn't. And the artwork cover on one of them was warped and stained from water damage. The box was completely dry and unharmed so I doubt it was from rain during shipping. Benson's World's response: "We never send invoices because of customs. All the DVDs we sell are new, some are shrink-wrapped, some aren't." There was not even a mention about the water damaged cover.

Their prices may be lower but I think I"ll pay a few extra bucks and take my business elsewhere. I've ordered numerous times from Blackstar and have never had any problem. If you think it's worth it to save a few bucks, buyer beware.

well, for what it's worth, I've ordered three discs from them now (THE TERRORIST, BEAU TRAVAIL, DELICATESSEN) and had only positive experiences - all shrinkwrapped, all fine, etc. By contrast, I'm still waiting for three discs I ordered from streetsonline.co.uk at the same time as my last bensonsworld order.

That doesn't sound that bad to me. I ordered The Killer (HKL) from HKFlicks on January 19th and they just yesterday (30th) sent me an email saying they'd shipped it. That's 11 days to start shipping for an item that's supposed to be in stock (and that's without any kind of confirmation asking if I really wanted a Region 2 DVD) and this isn't even from an overseas company. I was a little put out by that, but I'll probably order from them again though, because they're a pretty good company. Another time I placed two orders to two seperate HK websites, and while one order made it to me in about 2 weeks, the other one took almost 2 months to arrive. Now that site, I don't know if I'll be placing any new orders at any time soon.

Streets blew Benson away with both delivery time and price. Ill stick with them now.

A lot of imported UK DVDs do not come factory shrinkwrapped. Sometimes the distributor or the retailer does it.

Just to counter some of the negative info in this thread:

Today I received the new HKL Project A part 2 (a Jan 27 release) from Bensons.

It arrived in perfect condition.

For you. I'm at one month now and counting with Streets. Supposedly, one title shipped two weeks ago, another just shipped, and another is still backordered. I haven't seen any of them.

I ordered not only from Bensons, but from e-tailers in Hong Kong and Australia at the same time. Even with FBO's insane credit-card validation system, I received my order from all of them before my Streets order.

To be fair, the prices on the three things I ordered from Streets were good - but if the merchandise doesn't show up, it really doesn't matter what price it is.

I've ordered from Benson's on a number of occassions, never a problem. Fast shipping. Good service.

Let's be real here folks.

#1 International shipping is a crap shoot. Its not always the fault of the shipper. Bensons use to have FREE DVD shipping, and now they charge something like a buck. Hey, if you want it hand delivered via courier, you'll have to pay for it. You can't have your cake and eat it to.

#2 The complaints about the email confirmation regarding Region 2 discs is ridiculous. Do you think Benson's does it just for the heck of it? They have some perverse kick out of holding up orders and sending out email confirmations? I'm sure they actually lose orders from people who don't want to bother responding. They do it for YOUR protection and there's. They've probably instituted this policy due to the number of English speaking folks who can't actually READ and UNDERSTAND English buying Region 2 discs and then returning them because they can't play on their Region 1 machines. As a sidenote, I would say at least half of the places I've ordered from have similiar email confirmation. You have to have some pity on these places, you can't win no matter what you do. You try to help your customers make sure they get the right material, and some will still complain. They could have easily planted a disclaimer some place on their website that said "we are not responsible for your Regional machine playing our discs" and let the suckers be stuck (which a lot of domestic dealers do).




thomas

ah.. but even before they started charging a somewhat nominal charge for shipping, you WERE paying for it.

How? they didn't refund VAT (as amazon uk does) and instead used it to cover the cost of postage.

Also, you now "pay" for it with higher prices - compared to those asked at their UK-only site, bensonsdirect.

Hemulen

I almost ordered a disc from them. They had a sale making it the cheapest place to order from - however at the same time a customs slowdown was happening in Canada so everything got nabbed at the border for customs/duties.

I e-mailed them wondering about how long the sale ran for and explaining my reasoning. Instead of being given a stright answer on the sale lengh the customer rep told me to place the order and that the customs slowdown would be over by the time it reached me???

I doubt he was that versed in Canadian politics to give such a prediction and felt insulted by the reply. I waited for the slowdown to end (about 6 weeks) and actually forgot about bensons (by accident...or I think so) and just ordered from Blackstar. Never again Bensons.

On the note of difference in prices for bensonsworld and direct - a few weeks ago:

M (Fritz Lang) - world - 12.79
M ____"____ - direct - 2.99

Now that is insulting.

I've ordered from Benson World in the past with no problem. Recently I tried to order a couple of discs, and pay via PayPal. A month goes by, and no dvds. I write them three emails. No response. Finally I contact Paypal and 2 days later Benson World refunds my money. What's up with that? No explanation. No apoligy. Nothing.

In this case. Nothing equals nothing. And they have lost a customer. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks to a place like Amazon UK and actually get what I want rather than deal with this kind of treatment.

I posted a thread about 2 months ago with my headache of an experience with Bensons World. I have probably spent a few hundred dollars over the years, but after my latest experience, I will never shop there again.

Yeah, skip these guys. I got tired of their empty promises to ship some DVDs and finally just had to cancel. I learned my lesson and am sticking to Blackstar, uh, I mean, Sendit.

Amazon, Sendit (Blackstar) and HMV hacve always been trouble-free orders for me, and my Bensonsworld experiences were frustrating to say the least. Guess where I don't shop anymore?

Isn't it funny how a company can go into the toilet so quickly? They use to have such good customer service and then suddenly it went south. Looking at all the complaints it looks like they are not shipping out anything properly?

I actually haven't had too many problems with Bensonsworld. Ordered 8 discs from them over the last couple of weeks and the first 4 have arrived pretty much on schedule (if my timing is right, there should be another 2 waiting for me at home today and the final 2 coming by about Tuesday or Wednesday next week).

Have to admit, they're not real good answering their email though.

Despite the warnings here I decided to order the special edition of A Fish Called Wanda from Bensons. I got the email about whether I really wanted to order a Region 2 dvd on 4-28 and sent them confirmation. I received the dvd yesterday,5-6. Not bad and an excellent price on this one. (...thinking about some Bergman now...)