Whats up with Benson World
 

I placed an order on 12/16...a week later they send me an email askig If im sure I want a region 2 DVD?????!!!!..I answer "I wouldnt have ordered a reg 2 if I didnt want it..why hasnt the order shipped yet?"..they then say it will ship between Xmas and New Years!!! nothing like pinpointing a time frame for an in stock item. Is this a normal occurence with them? 1 Week to confirm that you really want what you ordered? then another week to put the item on a plane to the states???? I understand that overseas order take a little onger than domestic but cmon..If I have to confirm everytime I order a PAL dvd then someone please suggest a better alternative

I think its pretty nice of them to confirm with us that is in fact a Region 2 DVD if they notice you live outside of Region 2. I could imagine some schmuck doing a google search for some movie on DVD and coming across their website, placing an order -- all the while not having means to play the Region 2 DVD. They won't ask you again. They haven't asked me since my first order.

I think on average it takes 4-7 days for the DVD to ship out. Upon shipment, it takes about 4 days to reach me in Illinois.

Another :up: for Bensons World.

Bensons World always asks this of a first time buyer outside of Region 2. I appreciated it. They should never ask you again. Why it took so long I don't know. I was asked within 24 hours of my first order.

As far as I'm concerned, Bensons World is by far my favorite UK dealer and I tried a bunch before making them the only one I now use. Their prices are decent and with no charge for shipping they usually beat the others on total price. My last order was made on a Monday and it was delivered to my house five days later on Saturday. It takes about three times as long to get something from Canada!

Looks like they now charge 50p for each DVD according to their website. Can anyone confirm?

No charge for shipping the last order I placed. That was about 2 weeks ago...

yes, they do charge 50 p for shipping..

(this from their "about us" page)

"Overseas DVD postage is currently 50p per disc."

http://www.mrbensons.co.uk/aboutus.asp#shipping

Hemulen

I just order Ring, Dead or Alive 1 and Tetsuo 1 from them on Dec 23, 2002. They really charge 50P per disc.
I haven't received their e-mail reminder regarding Region 2 disc yet.

well i can see the courtesy aspect of it but i still think delaying the order a week to ask a question like that is a little extreme..hopefully its a first time thing only.

I doubt they delayed the order for a week so they could ask you a question... or was it you who delayed the order a week by taking a week to answer back? My experience is they ask right before the order is ready to be dispatched.

:up: for Bensonworld here. Great service and pricing. I was surprised when I got my email from them clarifying regions, but I can see the necessity of it.

It's too bad they added the 50p/disc charge for shipping but that's still only about 80 cents. It must be a reality of the marketplace thing and maybe the postage rates went up in the UK (we all know they keep going up in the good old U.S.). Their prices are still competitive. I'll continue to use them.

no it wasnt me..i answered the day I got the e-mail which was a week later..WTF??????? You think Im making this up????

Deke, I believe you. I had a horrible experience with this mom and pop place over a year ago. Something was supposedly on order for a '2 to 3' day shipping turned into a mouth and a half. I emailed---polite, professional letters, because I'm not a jerk and it's only a dvd---about the status, they never replied. This went on and off for weeks and finally I cancelle and ordered from Streets Online. And then I was not properly credited to my CC...I didn't even bother to argue. For UK discs I order from Streets, Amazon and occasionally Blackstar...Benson's---they don't even exist in my book.

thanks for the info..mybe ill check those places out from now on

another thumbs up for Blackstar. Bensonsworld just seems so...I don't know "Amazon.co.uk Marketplace - they actually sell on there btw".

Blackstar does cost a touch more than Bensonsworld but their "top" issue is customer satifaction. That's worth the extra buck or two in my book. By far my fav. e-tailer. Ever.

I have placed many orders with BensonsWorld (I am in Australia) and have not once had a problem with them. If I have had cause to email them, they have always, without fail, responded within 24 hours.

regards, Tim...

Benson World has not yet let me down. Processing and shipping takes a few weeks to reach the U.S., but they do have good customer service and pricing, especially when they run their sales.

Didn't mean to make it sound like I didn't believe you. If it wasn't you who delayed in answering I was suggesting that maybe the order wasn't read to go until they asked you about it. Meaning, they didn't delay it a week to ask you, it just took a week to get the stock.

yes, they asked me also if i was sure about the dvd - region 2. they did send me the email like a week after i ordered. but, i didn't mind b/c it was overseas. (should my expectations change?)

since then, i've ordered again, and i have had no problems yet. so overall, thumbs up.

just waiting for another sale on the hkl videos...

just ordered from Streets..they had some cheap prices on stuff..thanks for the info

Me too, not only that, but when I told them that I had an all region payer that also played PAL formatted DVDs, I was emailed within, seriously ten minutes by RUTH, and informed that my order for Witchfinder General would be shipping out that day. five days later my DVD arrived in Illinois. It cost approximately $15.

Just ordered Delicatessen yesterday and The Idiots today, for approximately $26 each. Good prices when you consider that The Idiots is unavailable in the states and Delicatessen also unavailable, is like a Criterion release (anamorphic transfer, Commentary track and two featurettes in French, but all with subtitles).

cheers, Tony Block

well from the 16th of Dec it took a week for them to ask if I wanted region 2 for sure..and i just got an email today saying it shipped today..thats about 3 weeks for an in stock item to actually hit the shipping process..I can understand the order taking time once it ships becuase they are shipping overseas but to take 3 weeks to actually ship is ludicrous...oh well..the price ya pay to get non region one stuff I guess

So they made a mistake. If they were offering consistently bad service then yes, I would suggest you try somewhere else, but from the majority of responses in this post and from my own experiences over numerous orders, I would say that that is most definitely not the case... I suggest you get over it and say welcome to the wonderful and unpredictable world of offshore purchasing :)

I recently had an order with Amazon Canada for Goldmember Widescreen and they shipped me the fullscreen version in error (that shipped December 5th). I informed them of the mistake immediately it arrived and they promptly offered to send a replacement and made up an order on December 16th. Due to more technical hitches, that order has been sitting doing nothing since and has only today gone into Shipping Soon mode almost thee weeks later (after two or three emails and a phone call).

This is not an ideal situation, but I sure as hell am not going to stop doing business with Amazon Canada as a result. They (like BensonsWorld) are human and make the occassional mistake, but they are also far and away the best online dealer I have experienced in North America (and I have used many) - and in BensonsWorld's case, they are a small operation that would not have a modicum of the resources available to them that Amazon have at their disposal. Additionally, they would have been flat out at the time of your order with the christmas rush... of course things will occassionally slip through the cracks.

And please don't take this as a shot at you... I am just trying to put things into their proper perspective.

regards, Tim...

you say to get over it and other snide crap then say its not a shot? Damn!alll im doing is making an observation of what I think is poor service.. i was just seeing if this was the exception or the rule..obviously its the exception..i really dont know why people take offense when someone says anything bad about a vendor (unless you are a stockholder..who cares?)..ive gotten everything from straight answers(thank you!) to poeple questioning my intelligence as far as answering emails, etc....I have ordered from plenty of overseas vendors and this was a first so dont give me the welcom to overseas vendors..thats should have nothing to do with anything I have experienced..next time I will pay the extra bucks and go through Amazon( dont know about Canada but the UK one is excellent!) like I usually do..just thought I would give a cheaper vendor a try

Perhaps the "smiley" emoticon did not appear on your screen "Deke"?

I would be interested to know what you consider to be the "other snide crap" you accuse me of in your response.

The "welcome to the wonderful world of offshore purchasing" was in response to your comment: "oh well..the price ya pay to get non region one stuff I guess". I had (wrongly as it turns out) assumed you were relatively new to it. It was a harmless throw-away comment that was not intended to mean anything else - if you consider that to be a snide remark then I am afraid that that is your problem, not mine.

And if it helps at all, I have never been asked by BensonsWorld any questions regarding region encoding... perhaps they have had a string of returns where customers have found that they could not play them due to either region encoding or PAL/NTSC incompatibility, in which case I would not blame them for asking such questions. The delay in your case was probably just a simple case of human error - something which it seems you are not very forgiving of, if your comment regarding going back to Amazon UK is anything to go by.

regards, Tim...

no..i think you have issues ..first you give me "get over it " now its "thats your problem"....and neither of your responses really had anything to do with my original question..was just a bunch of editorializing on your end..anyway a few people gave me the answer I was looking for so I guess this thread is dead at this point..no reason to beat a dead horse ...so GET OVER IT and if you cant then I guess THATS YOUR PROBLEM