Seventymm February 22, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Movie Rental , trackbackI thought the online movie rental market was a fantastic sign of internet arriving in India. I still think that is true, but didn’t expect the market to spawn so quickly.
I was myopic when I thought Seventymm™ and Madhouse.in were the only couple of startups in this area. Turns out that they are the only two funded startups in this area. Heck the total number of players is six, as of my last count (Check out all the Indian movie rental websites on our lists page)
Back to Seventymm. The site look slick, which is no surprise given the $7 million funding they got from Matrix Patrners last september. But digging around on the web, I found my enthusiasm for seventymm fading away. Thejo’s blog provided good details, you can read his post here, but I’ll summarize the biggest disappointments here:
- ‘No due date’ is not true- you need to return the movie in two weeks
- There are hidden, unadvertised fees
that jack up the Rs.199 plan by Rs.2499 
The ‘free’ trial, as one reader points out, is not free after all- you pay Rs.1000 refundable deposit + Rs.200 registration fee + Rs.199 for one month waiver.
Geez… Talk about overdoing concept arbitrage. They can cherry-pick the concepts that worked abroad, but massacre them when porting back to India. Wake up, Seventymm, before you blow all the $7 million away.
Comments»
Man..I have a bitter experience to share . I signed up for the “new” seventymm on a 1 month free trial basis ( free means you pay Rs1000 refundable deposit + 200 Regn fee + 1 month waiver of Rs.199 ).
1. They don’t say anything about the queue when you sign up. Initially I chose 4 movies. I got a mail saying I have a “short” queue. The Terms & Conditions mentions that we should have atleast 10 movies in our queue.
2. I ordered DVDs but what I received is VCDs.
3. In one case , I got a DVD that has a region error. After calling up customer service I came to know that I should call up the service center of my DVD manufacturer and get some “fix”. So much R&D for movie watching!
So what do u think I am gonna do ! Promptly unsubscribe !
Dear Raja Elangovan,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It does sound painful- I’m going to update my review with some of the facts you pointed out.
I don’t claim to be an expert/smart subscriber of online services, but all evidence points in favor of dumping Seventymm for now. They have the bad symptoms of a big corporation, even before achieving that size. All that multi-million dollar funding is perhaps a bad thing, after all.
Seventymm movie collection is down to dumps. And most of their collection is in VCD. I have repeatedly asked for DVD movies but they end up giving me VCDs. Ridiculous, they remember calling me only when they have their collection due. Rest of the month, I don’t exist. After constant reminder to collect the movies from my home, they failed it till date.
I would NOT , repeat NOT recommend anyone to go for their services. It is a booby trap and god knows If I will get my refund back.
Unfortunately too true about the “free” experience, I cancelled after two weeks but they are yet to pick up the movies. Curiously, when I first registered I was charged 1198 including the registration fee, and was told on the phone that the regn. fee would not be refunded. However the billing activity shows an amount for 999 ie only the refundable deposit, perhaps because I spent some time arguing about the lack of information surrounding the free offer, including the ridiculous suggestion that i should have 30-40 movies in my queue !!! Fingers crossed for the refund!!
I also cancelled my membership with seventymm today only. Had been using them for the last 4 months and it seemed to be going reasonably okay (once they sent a vcd instead of the dvd). But once I had to go out of town and customer service lady told me that my unseen movies will get credited over to next month ( I had 4 movies a month account) but when later when I got back to them about the supposedly credited movies, I was told that this is not possible (basically telling me I was lying). I told the person to cancel my membership immediately. Later on when I called up to verify if my account was closed or not (didn’t trust them), the lady asked me for the reason, so I again told her the whole story, she offered to help out by talking to her senior and finally told me that they would offer me the credit, so I withdrew my request for cancellation. A couple of days later when I again called up to find out why movies were not delievered, again the whole story got repeated that they can’t offer credit. I got so pi…. off that I just asked them to cancel it for good this time. BTW, I am in Delhi NCR region, and their customer service (in handling issues) just sucks
Ridiculous….they have the worst customer service (they deliver movies only when they can and bad luck if it clashes with your work timings)
I ordered for Aliens but repeatedly got Alien (3 times) even after telling them that there is an S at the end. I got pissed and cancelled the service.
I had to be behind them for 2 months and shout and threaten them with court before they gave me my refund back
These are really f**** services, All the Movies I got were totally scratched.