ushog
regarding the columbia house. you find out after you are involved in it that none of the dvd's or cd's you bought qualify for the fullfillment of their required amount of discs. any letter you send will be ignored.
their protocal is to keep sending bills hoping to wear you down. whoever you talked to has no interest in anything you have to say. his job is to simply do what he did, bull**** you, from a series of responses he has been taught. they can't report to any credit bureau and they have their own collection agency. you can't win straight up. don't even open their mail. if they send you a dvd or cd, keep it. their contract is bull**** to start with and you are not responsible for anything you did not order. you are under no obligation to notify any seller of anything that you do not want the next shipment. you can not sign away your right to ignore any request by a seller that you say "no", even thought the contract says you will. the contract is illegal. patience and throw it all in the trash. when you get the first letter from their "collection agency", consider it spam. if you respond, they will keep sending threats to you. just don't open them and you will not get bothered. they are a scam.
netflix is a great site for what it can do. you will seldom find the brand new releases, but you can find dvd's that no one else has. they have simple way of oredering a bunch of dvd's in advance. when you get the dvd, you rip off the cover label and when you finish the dvd and want to send it back it is self-sealable and postage is prepaid. as far as a problem dvd, they are no worse then any other rental place.
be careful of some of the promos from off the wall companies. you end up with a vhs that has been copied to a dvd without any filtering or enhancing.it's usually not as good as the vhs because the transfer process is junk. not unlike the early days of cd's, if you are old enought to remember. many were nothing more then a bunch of records copied on to a cd, blips, scratches, and all.