Playcentric.com ... How are they?
 

Have any of you ordered from Playcentric.com before. THey have the cheapest price for a DVD I want, but I have never ordered from them before, so I thought I would ask first

You should do a search in the STORE forum on Playcentric.

They had been very bad in the past and seem to be taking steps to improve overall customer service / shipping efficency.

My last 3 orders have gone quite well, while my first two orders before that (Most notably the Simpsons Season One fiasco) have been disasters.

I agree with speedy1961. They are terrible. I will never use them again. My last order that they screwed up, was for the live-action, Anthony Quinn version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The specs on the webpage I ordered from were for this version (foreign film, Jean Delannoy director, stars Anthony Quinn, Gina Lollobrigida, etc.). They sent me the Disney animated version. No big deal. I wrote them and told them about it. They acknowledged their error, and had me ship it back (at my expense). They then sent me a replacement. It was the Disney version again!! This was only the latest in a long line of screwups. I was tempted (for about 1 second) to pre-order Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, because of the good preorder price. If they sent me anything, it would probably be Season 1. Or maybe The Sopranos. Don't let their good prices sway you!! They are obviously completely clueless.

The DVD Talk Main forum is for discussion of DVD releases... the Store Forum is a better place for this thread.

Moving thread.

They got me everything I ordered okay, just make sure you know what you are ordering (don't order any DVD which has a separate Canadian version unless you want the Canadian version). Their customer service is worthless, so if anything gets screwed up, its a long wait to a resolution.

I've used them a lot and they are okay. I didn't find shipping took much longer than from any where else and the price is better.

When an error was made, Playcentric did make sure to correct it.

Also, if you are going to use them, sign up for their e-mail and you will get coupons every month.

My last order was with them and I'm happy because I saved so much money and everything was okay.

avoid this company like the plague they are dreadful. I certainly will not be using them again

I made an order on the 16th and it was in my mailbox when I came back from vacation on the 22th. That's great service for me.

I've done several preorders with them and everything has gone smoothly. I received everything prior to the street date and the price was certainly great.

Playcentric has some very good prices sometimes and with the coupons they become even better, but I will never order from them again. The problem with Playcentric is that their customer service is horrible, in fact there is very little customer service at all. If you have a problem with them be prepared to wait a week for an email response to your problem and forget about calling them because they have no cs phone number. The next problem is that Playcentric sells everything as if they have it in stock, when in reality not everything is in stock. I placed an order for an apparantly in stock item only to receive an email from them stating that the item was on backorder with no ETA!, but they had done me the favor of charging my credit card in advance and would ship the item when it became available. No thanks, Playcentric, I will pay a couple of extra bucks to deal with a reputable company with good customer service.

I disagree. They've done a great deal to improve over the last year, and although not perfect they're much better. They've been responding to emails within as little as a day, to as long as a week, but they seem amenable to actually fixing things now.

I just ordered over $100 worth of DVDs, and they made 1 mistake. They rectified it within 2-weeks along with a backorder, which I'd say was pretty good.

I got stuck with the Canadian version of Scream. On their page, until I notified them of it, I was supposed to get the Collectors Series. However, I only got the "Widescreen" across the top one. They said I could send it back but I am trying to trade for it sealed so... we'll see. If nothing happens, I will mail it back for a refund.

Playcentric
 

Hi. I'm a first time poster here, also just placed my first order with Playcentric, despite some of the concerns I saw here. Went to DVD Price Search and looked over some of the Playcentric reviews there as well. Seems like their rep has improved over the last several months, not as many problems. Decided to take a chance because of the good prices. Here's what I ordered:

HERCULES (GOLD) $12.57 $9.07 1 $3.50 $9.07 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
JAMES &/GIANT PEACH(GOLD) $12.57 $9.07 1 $3.50 $9.07 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
JUMANJI (LTRBX/DD) $14.78 $11.28 1 $3.50 $11.28 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
ALICE IN WONDERLAND(GOLD) $17.01 $13.51 1 $3.50 $13.51 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
BIG LEBOWSKI, THE (LTRBX) $12.48 $8.98 1 $3.50 $8.98 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
Bridget Jones's Diary $14.73 $11.23 1 $3.50 $11.23 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED
HIGHLANDER (DTS SP.EDIT.) $11.77 $8.27 1 $3.50 $8.27 N/A N/A DVD RECEIVED

The coupon code worked great, better deal than the $1 off plus free shipping they're pushing. At checkout, I took them up on the offer of a free upgrade from 1st class air mail to priority shipping with purchase of 3 DVDs.

Question: how do you know if any of these come in the apparently dreaded Canadian version??? Just curious. I realize the Highlander DVD is not the Immortal Edition, but that's ok. Jumanji is, acccording to the web site description, the Collector's Edition. The Disney DVDs seem like safe bets. Ditto for Big Lebowski and Bridget Jones. What do you think? Thanks for any input.

I just learned from purchasing at DVDSoon.com that a movie that is VF is Canadian. Actually French, stands for version French or something. I'm not a parisian. -- Patrick

I just bought the Ken Burns' Baseball box set from Playcentric for $99.35 with free shipping.

It's going for $152.98 at Amazon, and $169.99 at my local Best Buy.

I placed the order and the DVDs were in my hands exactly one week later.

I'll definitely give these guys another try. Especially if I can save 30-40% off a box set.

Those of you that have done it recently, how long has it taken to cancel an order?

Crappy customer service!!!!!
 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! They've got no freaking customer service!!!!! Being the sucker I am for those great prices, I placed 4 pretty big orders with them between 6/27 and yesterday, and of course nothing is showing as shipped yet, even though every order was upgraded to Priority Shipping with the 'buy 4 dvds' deal. Crap! Plus, no response, except automated crap, to my requests for updates on these orders. Sole consolation: I used American Express Blue, so I think I'm protected $-wise if these jokers screw up/me. Any thoughts?

Just my $.02, I pre-ordered Traffic CC >1 mo ago, which eventually got backordered. I decided to wait it out, and to my surprise, it came in today! The other 3 titles I had ordered with it had been shipped immediately and were at my doorstep within a week. I never had to contact CS, though. So I can't speak from that end....

Any chance my Playcentric orders might show up even though the Order History page is not showing any of them as shipped? Just wondering if anyone has had that happen.

I have received shipments from Playcentric even when my order status shows as "Received", rather than "Shipped". This is a screwy outfit - the deals are pretty good, but I'm at the point where saving a few dollars is not worth the hassle.

Woo Hoo! Maybe there's light at the end of the long dark online tunnel that is Playcentric order processing....

I just preordered TNG season 4 (hey, gotta get them all) and even though it's not shipping till august, they already charged me.

Do they do that on all preorders?

I've ordered 3 times from PlayCentric.com, so far very good experiences, they do however charge you in advance for pre-orders, but thats ok, I just order 1 week in advance.

I should note that I'm in Tokyo, their shipping is cheap, and everything is well packaged.

I'll use them for the entire STNG series.

-g

Re: Crappy customer service!!!!!
 

Update: The status of my the first 2 orders changed this morning to "Shipped." Amazing. Out of the 35 or so total titles in the 4 orders, 2 are listed as backordered. I guess that's a pretty good ratio, for Playcentric, from what I've seen here.