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nbahn wrote:

So I've decided to expand the subject of this thread to include rentals -- in addition to locking the "Anime Online DVD Rental Outlets" thread. Therefore, I pose the following question: Does anyone rent anymore? (I don't, as I'm a broke college student.)

Yes. I rent as well as have streaming plans with HuluPlus and Crunchyroll Premium so that I can access them via my Apple TV.

Currently I am renting from NetFlix (2 disk plan) and Rent Anime (3 disk plan).

Netflix's (www.netflix.com) anime catalog is not really that good and they don't add many new titles. For many of the titles they do have, they have not acquired additional seasons that have been released. Their service, though, is excellent and shipping times are two-three days to me. If they don't have a title in the distribution center closest to me (about 50 miles aways in the same state) they will send it from another distribution center as an "extra disk" so even though I have a two disk plan I occasionally will have three disks. They are not very good about adding missing disks back into their catalog even when the title is still in print so it is not rare to see they are missing one or more disks of a season for a title.

They ALWAYS ship a new title on the same date as the check-in email. In usually takes two business days for a title to get back to them and be checked in. So DVD turn-around is very high and I get a lot of rentals for the price $11.99/month. If a disk arrives broken (four times in the 13 months of service with them) they will resend the same title even before receiving the damaged one. I have never had to contact their customer service. Their site is pretty good and easy to use, however they do not have a "series lock" type feature to make sure that if you add multiple disks of an anime's season they will come in the right order instead of just whatever disk happens to be next available in the queue.

Rent Anime's (www.rentanime.com) anime catalog is pretty large and they have been adding new stuff but slower than it is being released and not all the new titles. They had a slump in the quality of their service as they were shutting down AnimeNation which was/is the parent of RentAnime. Their quality of service was improving but is a long ways from that of Netflix. They have one shipping center in Florida and I am in Oregon. I have had service with them for seven months and the average time here from the date of their email indicating shipping has been just shy of five days (ranging from 14 to 3) and shipping back indicated by the date of check-in email has been six days (also ranging from 14 to 3).

Although on their site it says normally within 24 hours after check-in they will send the next in the queue I have found it to average 42 hours (ranging from 0 to 288). They have many titles that are supposedly in stock and show up as low availability in the queue and contrary to what their FAQ says they don't quickly add more disks of the same title to keep up with demand. So all in all, the value for the dollar (a three disk plan costs me $19.95/month) I don't get many disks per month. The reason I rent from them is only because they have titles I can't rent from Netflix or can't stream (or the streaming version is one that has censoring blocking much more of scene than necessary or is done is such a way as to be completely obnoxious to me) the title. If a disk arrives damaged (six have come cracked in seven months of service being about ten percent of my total rentals from them) they say to email them and they will remove it from the current disks out and send the next available title in the queue. I have found that they may or may not actually do this before the disk gets to them.

They are not all that quick to reply to email and more often than not, they don't even reply at all though I know they read it. For example, I had a five disk plan and email to change it to a three disk plan because they were not able to ship me all five disks in my plan due to low availability of the titles in my queue and they changed the plan but never bothered to reply to the email itself. Although on other times they do reply and are very professional with their customer service. I have had to contact them multiple times, mostly due to damaged disks but to also change my plan from 3 to 5 and then back to 3. As well as questions regarding the service itself and disparity of what they are providing and what they claim to provide on their website.

I'm not sure what is going on with their company, service improved after AnimeNation was shut down and then it has been deteriorating lately - especially in regards to replying to email and turn-around time for next title in my queue. Several things on their website are behind Netflix, such as automatically reporting broken disks and changing plans to larger plans then show up in the plan type selection (they have a couple). They have three statuses for disks, low, medium. and high, but what each of these status actually mean is not all that clear or useful. For example, low status can mean that they have few of the title or that they don't have the title so if you add an upcoming title into your queue it will appear as low even though you were informed while adding it what the expected date it will come into stock is. So, if a title's status is low, you don't actually know for certain if they have it or not. (I've asked twice for clarification of if a title was really is stock or not, one time they replied to email and one time they did not). They do have "series lock" which Netflix does not have. So, in the end - this companies service is not really that good for the price and their customer service is inconsistent at best. But they are at least legitimate.

I have tried AnimeLane (www.anmelane.com) and even though they appear to still exist I never received any disks from them even after a month waiting and two months of charges to my credit card. I never was able to get an email back from any email address on their site and their phone number was disconnected. I had to resort to contacting my credit card company and claiming fraud on their part and getting the money back and blocking them from further charging my credit card.

In my research to figure out other ways to contact them I found they had at one time an Amazon store and at one time had very good reviews but for the last many months they have only had negative reviews with people saying they never received the anime they purchased from them. Even after five months they still have not removed my account from their website and still say I have disks out that I have never received, they still never replied to email even after reporting them as fraud to my bank and credit card company. I would stay away from them, they seem to be out of business but with their website still operating as if they were in business and still charging people and not delivering.

I would very much like to know of other rental services that have an extensive catalog of titles that people have had good experience with and preferably on the west coast so that postal times would be better.

So I JUST discovered how awesome Discotek apparently has been over the last couple years.

http://www.discotekmedia.com/store.htm If you look at its catalog there mostly seems to be an off focus on semi-niche stuff from around the mid 90's and earlier. i.e.: all the random stuff that got me into anime as a kid like Samurai Pizza Cats, Ronin Warriors, and Fatal Fury the Motion Picture.

Is that Blue Submarine No. 6 Blu-Ray an upscale or is it a native remaster?

I skimmed through this post and it looks good. Especially the first post with a breakdown on the different retailers.

Can anybody tell me about their recent experience with Funimation's store? Packed well? Good prices compared to others? Shipping fees? Would a collector like me have to be worried about damaged merch? I'm always worried when ever I shop online. There's some stuff and at least one store exclusive item I'm eyeing.

Details would be great so I can get a clear idea. Thanks for any advice or insight.

I can't answer for the Funimation store as I've never shopped there. I have bought from both The Right Stuf (TRSI) and Roberts Anime Corner Store (RACS) on multiple occasions, both anime and figures. Both provide excellent packaging. I've never had any merchandise arrive damaged from either. As an added benefit both usually have excellent prices and both offer free shipping with specific limits. Both will tell you what shipping will be before you commit yourself to purchase.

nobodyhome wrote:

Can anybody tell me about their recent experience with Funimation's store? Packed well? Good prices compared to others? Shipping fees? Would a collector like me have to be worried about damaged merch? I'm always worried when ever I shop online. There's some stuff and at least one store exclusive item I'm eyeing.

I've heard that a few people have had some issues with Funi store, but for myself the few times I've bought stuff has been pretty smooth. Now I've only bought anime there maybe 4 times and it was during sales so it may not give a complete view. An example, I bought Attack on Titan LE parts 1&2 with the chipboard box during a labor day sale which arrived securely packed in a box with no damage. My other purchases were also in cardboard boxes. However, each time I had multiple items so I do not know if they ship single DVD/BDs in bubble envelopes as some retailers do. I've gotten free shipping every time because it was over $50 in purchases (one time they were running a free shipping promo at same time with a sale--haven't see them do it since), so I can't tell you what regular shipping prices are like. I haven't had to pay taxes on what I've bought, but maybe if you live in Texas you would.

As far as prices go it really depends on what kind of sale they are running. The AoT set actually turned out cheaper than what other retailers were selling it at. They had a clearance section at one point where I bought Lupin III-The Woman Called Fujiko Mine LE at a great price. On the other hand, most of the time many new and current items will be priced higher than buying them from other places. So it shouldn't be your one-stop place for buying anime. Like most things you have to do comparison shopping. The store has changed and I haven't bought anything there in the past year, so I can't tell you if anything I've said has changed significantly.

Like Alan45 I would recommend The Right Stuf or RACS if you are very concerned about packing. They both do consistently good jobs and if you keep an eye out for sales you will get good prices. If you buy a lot of anime and merchandise than TRSI member program is worth it and during publisher sales they have very good prices on manga. Amazon is a last resort because while they sometimes have good prices its usually a coin toss whether they will ship your items in cardboard or bubble wrap. And if its in bubble wrap rest assured they or the ship carrier will stomp on it several times to make sure that its dead and not moving.

I do buy from DVDPlanet occasionally as they will have a sale and sometimes a 10% coupon at the same time that you can stack and so far received everything in cardboard. I don't shop from Deep Discount (supposedly owned by same company as DVDP but experience is extremely opposite) anymore, because one time too many items took weeks to deliver, they were poorly packaged and arrived damaged, wrong items, wrong labeling on website and after informing them they didn't change it, constant barrage of spam that took months for it to stop and rude customer support. Those are some of my experiences in a nutshell, hope it helps.

Is there ANY way to filter RightStuf's "Newly Added Items" page so that titles like the one that got added to their catalogue today don't show up when I'm at work?

I tried going from the link and also from the main page. Nothing works. The adult material filter on other lists doesn't work on the newly added page. At least they are not showing cover art.

You may have to take this up with Right Stuf!. If the can filter the other lists they can filter this.

Did anyone else get hit with address/credit card info confirmation requests during the Right Stuf 32nd birthday sale? Placed an order, got a request for scans of my ID and credit card (with most of the CC number blocked, of course). Order was canceled, I think, due to the zip code on my ID not matching the zip code on my registered shipping/billing address.

fuuma_monou wrote:

Did anyone else get hit with address/credit card info confirmation requests during the Right Stuf 32nd birthday sale?

Nope, and it was my first order from RS in like a year and a half. They've made some changes since moving to the new webstore, though. You should ask them for the reason for cancellation and if you've purchased stuff from them in the past tell them that it wasn't an issue before.

I would like to suggest any new customers avoid Robert's Anime Corner Store. I don't live in the US so they requested ID and credit card images. Fair enough, but when I asked CS a couple questions, they flatly refused to answer. I don't recall ever dealing with customer service who just won't answer my questions. Isn't that the point of customer service? So yeah awful experience with RACS and if you don't want to deal with their super crappy communication either, stay away.

Past wrote:

I would like to suggest any new customers avoid Robert's Anime Corner Store. I don't live in the US so they requested ID and credit card images. Fair enough, but when I asked CS a couple questions, they flatly refused to answer. I don't recall ever dealing with customer service who just won't answer my questions. Isn't that the point of customer service? So yeah awful experience with RACS and if you don't want to deal with their super crappy communication either, stay away.

All you’ve told us is they requested something that you believe is fair, but then didn’t provide it, so then they didn’t deal with you? Honestly that sounds extremely sensible, so if you could provide examples of the questions that they refused that would really help understand why to avoid buying anything from RACS.

ATastySub, the frequent retorts to my posts are getting a little creepy but you do have a point here.
I had 2 questions: 1 regarding a technical issue concerning the address format. The other was clarification about the CC/ID verification (in addition to explaining why I was hesitant in immediately providing it). There is no doubt that avoiding my questions was inexcusable conduct. My communication up to that point was cordial and to the point. In fact when the emails were forwarded to Robert himself, the person I was talking to strategically deleted the ones with my questions. This made it look like I was simply refusing to provide the verification info.

I won't make any claims about the reasoning behind CS's actions, nor will I deny the agitation expressed in my follow-up emails, but I'm genuinely confused as to the initial lack of interest in fulfilling my order.

Wanted to get an idea of other anime online stores to consider for video releases outside of Crunchyroll and Sentai Filmworks' stores. With Rightstuf's merger with CR, I haven't dabbled too heavily into alternatives for pre-ordering (exceptions being some stuff on Amazon and Sentai) since I had been a long-time customer with Rightstuf. But starting to have some reservations of wanting to do any business with CR. While my remaining pre-order with Rightstuf was honored through CR back in November, it has been a few days and a large pre-order of Discotek titles I made hasn't been shipped out yet (release date was supposed to be December 26 for everything). I had an issue with a pre-order I tried making with them earlier this year where the title in question was never shipped out upon its availability date, which I cancelled after two weeks of waiting and not receiving any information about its status.

The only other online anime store coming to mind for domestic releases is Robert's Anime Corner Store. Can anyone provide me with other options I may consider looking into?

Anyone know where Crunchyroll's customer support is located because I'm finding working with them to be a lesson in frustration. I've been pre-ordering a lot of figures and a little anime through their store as I figure since merging with RightStuf I can finally get some real use out of my 10% Mega Fan discount. I don't know if the free shipping tier changed or if they were doing a special during the holidays but where last year I had a few orders under $50 with free shipping, this year I have to spend more than $50 to get free shipping which means either adding something I don't want or waiting for something else to turn up that I want and hope the other thing is still available. So they keep advertising on every item in the store that the Ultimate Fan tier gives free shipping with no minimum and a 15% discount for only $5 or so more. For the amount I order in a month on there that seemed like a good enough deal to be worth it, I'll definitely save more than $5 a month in shipping and the extra 5% discount. So I followed the link on the order page and it took me to a screen that simply says "no stress, you're already premium" and that's it (I did find if you log out and go to the screen it gives you all sorts of info and paths to subscribe). No explanation of the tiers, no options to upgrade or downgrade tiers, just that blurb. I thought that was very strange so I sent an email to Crunchyroll:

Quote:

To go from "Fan" to "Mega Fan" there's a button, but there's no way to upgrade from "Mega Fan" to "Ultimate Fan". There's a section on the order pages that point out the benefits with a button to upgrade, but the upgrade page simply says "Good news! You're already Premium". But Premium has two tiers, why not give a way to upgrade from one tier to the other? You can't even see the benefits included with the tiers. I place a lot of orders in the store so the 15% discount and free shipping might be worth the extra costs, but I don't even know how much Ultimate costs, there's no way for me to check! As far as I can tell the only way to see the tiers is to log out and the only way upgrade is to first cancel, both of which seem like unnecessary steps to potentially give you more money.

I tried to be as clear and explain things as well as I could while also trying to incentive them by bringing up money. And it seemed like they were willing to at least work with me on upgrading.

Quote:

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out to us! I understand that you are having issues with upgrading your membership. I will do my best to help you.

We are able to schedule a plan upgrade for the next renewal of your plan!

Let us know if you'd like this change to be added to your subscription to be effective the following period.

Thanks for your interest and support!

Not a great solution, but it would get me what I wanted... or at least I thought so.

Quote:

Yes, if you can upgrade me that's something I would like to do. It really should be easier to do than contacting customer service. I'm sure more people would do it if it was as simple as pressing in a button in our account like when upgrading from "Fan" to "Mega Fan".

This is where I start to question their understanding of the English language because they seem to have become confused by that last part.

Quote:

Hi there,

Thank you for your response and for letting me know.

I will be happy to let you know that I have upgraded your membership to Mega Fan. You should be good to go.

Let us know if you need any further assistance. I will be happy to help you.

Thank you and have a great rest of your week!

Yes, that's right, they're "upgrading" me to the membership tier I already have. Rolling Eyes

Quote:

I think you might have misunderstood. I'm already a Mega Fan, I want to upgrade to Ultimate Fan.

I don't think that could have been any more clear, but the reply I got is just baffling.

Quote:

Hi there,

Thanks for your response and for letting me know. I apologize for the confusion.

Currently, the Fan Tier has a yearly option available. Our Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan plans can be purchased on a monthly renewal. This is how you can access to the Fan yearly option:

Go to the following link: https://www.crunchyroll.com/welcome
Select the Fan plan and click on "Skip free trial" or "Go Premium"
You will be redirected to a page with three billing cycle options: 12-month, 3-month, monthly.
Select the 12-month option and continue with the checkout.

We hope you find this useful. Let us know if you have any additional questions, we're happy to help!

Thank you!

At what point did I ever say I wanted to downgrade to a 12 month standard Fan tier? My reply probably comes off a hostile or critical of them, but I just don't know they could have jumped to such a conclusion from me saying I wanted to upgrade my account?

Quote:

You still don't seem to be listening to what I'm telling you. I never said anything about wanting a yearly subscription or wanting to downgrade to the Fan tier, I want to UPGRADE my existing MEGA FAN account to ULTIMATE FAN, there is NO BUTTON that allows me to do that. When I go to that link what I see is a page that says "No stress, you're already premium", I'm attaching a screen shot of the page so you can see for yourself. There are NO buttons, NO options, NO mention of two different premium tiers. Why is this so difficult?

This has been such a frustrating experience, I haven't received a reply yet, but I can only imagine what it'll be. It's very much like they're actively trying to keep me away from upgrading my membership.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Anyone know where Crunchyroll's customer support is located because I'm finding working with them to be a lesson in frustration.

Almost reminds me of my recent frustrations with them I had vented about in the "What did you just buy?" thread earlier this month. Here's the rant in question:

Quote:

Over the past couple weeks, I was not receiving any confirmation from Crunchyroll on the status of a large pre-order I made of Discotek titles coming out in December. After not receiving any notification on my order being shipped, I asked them if I could cancel it as things have dragged out long enough with me waiting. The customer service rep notified me that they were trying to charge my credit card several times to no avail and would cancel the order. However, I noticed a couple issues:

1. Not sure how, but their order system had broken up my order into separate shipments with 1 and 3 items despite none of them having shipped. In addition, it appears glitched as I'm getting garbage drop-down rows for additional items that won't open because there is nothing else within the order to separate. They just cancelled the shipment with the 1 item in it, while the remaining 3 items are still open with the order and I'm still attempting to have this order fully closed out.

2. Their order system was also glitched in that it assumed the credit card I used for making this pre-order was a Visa when it's actually a Discover. In the past with Rightstuf, I would have used Paypal Credit if I made any large costly orders so I could pay for them over time. But since Crunchyroll won't take Paypal payments with pre-orders, I had to wind up resorting to using my Discover card for this. At the same time, I have several smaller pre-orders I made using my debit card, which is a Visa. It looks like the debit card is being charged okay without issue since my pre-order of the Quintessential Quintuplets movie was shipped out last week and I received it just today. The glitch with my credit card is likely gonna be a problem with another pre-order I made on the card for the Abandoned Sacred Beasts set.

In essence, looks like Crunchyroll has some issues they need to sort out with their order system and is giving me some headaches right now.

To provide a quick update on this, CR's customer service finally closed out the order as of Friday after I was repeatedly having to correct them the past couple weeks when they kept glitching up the contents of the order instead of actually closing it out. They still haven't cancelled the Abandoned Sacred Beasts set I wanted done because the payment information has the same issue in screwing up who my credit card carrier is. Looks like I'll have to make another request for it. Otherwise, I'll allow any pre-order charged to my debit card up to March to be processed unless CR screws it up in any way. After that, resorting to either Amazon, Sentai's store, or Robert's Anime Corner Store for handling any of my pre-orders moving forward.

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