Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Screenclick = Worst. Website. Ever.
For someone who likes films, I see surprisingly few of them because I am, conversely, not a big fan of cinemas. But I was a big fan of Moviestar.ie, the Irish version of Netflix. Moviestar provided a great service, had a great website, and as a bonus, provided me with several nice DVD players and bottles of champagne via their sponsorship of various awards I was lucky enough to take home.
Then I got an email in January announcing that they had been subsumed by Screenclick, and that I was now going to get “even better service and wider choice of movies on DVD.” What I actually got was no movies. At all. For six months.
Apparently, the postal address I provided to Moviestar (the one I, you know, live at) and that worked through my entire relationship with them simply didn’t work when Screenclick dispatched films. I went through this with customer support several times in April to no avail, and then in June films suddenly started arriving again.
The magical, successful apparition of movies in my mail slot and several emails nagging me to update my rental queue prompted me to finally log into the Screenclick.com website for the first time ever last night. Ten minutes later, Hollywood-horror-flick howls of rage and frustration were heard ’round the world. And they were not emanating from my DVD player.
Screenclick is broadly fine if you can type the name of a film you want to rent into the search box. For anything else, it’s useless. If you want to actually browse films, for example, you’re screwed:
- DVDs are listed by category and displayed alphabetically. Want to find a TV series to rent? You better like 24, because it takes up the first three pages of television listings.
- The “Watch Trailer” feature for individual film selections delivers audio only. Presumably this would be useful if I wanted to rent the podcast version.
- If I liked Juno, I want suggestions of more films like Juno. Telling me that someone who rented Juno also rented Die Hard 2 just makes me want to start taking hostages.
I strongly suspect the people behind Screenclick are just popping down to the warehouse to pick up whatever they want to watch, because anyone attempting to actually use this site would have killed themselves or fixed it by now. (Here’s a tip: if your customers resort to checking Wikipedia listings of Academy Award winners just to come up with titles to add to their subscription queues, your user interface is really, really broken.)
And the real pisser:
Screenclick (formerly DVDrentals) was established in 2001 when we realised Ireland could really use a service which was more convenient and less expensive than traditional video stores.
Thanks. We had that. You bought it, ate it, and killed its young.
I hope the Moviestar guys made piles of cash. Because they have to be spinning in it. And buying their films from Play.com.
24 Jul 2009
| In: Crankypants + Ireland | Tags:FAIL, screenclick
Oh if only Laser did online. Please please Laser….
24.07.2009, 9:05 amOh don’t worry about those Moviestar guys, they made piles of cash alright. Albeit, not from Moviestar, but from their scam premium line scratch card “You have won a prize” competitions where you pay 75,000 euro a minute to find out you won a fantastic free hotel break, so long as you are willing to fork out a few hundred euro to bring someone with you and agree to only eat in the hotel.
These guys are scum.
24.07.2009, 10:05 amWorst website ever? Have you not seen the new Be Broadband site yet?
http://www.bethere.co.uk/
24.07.2009, 3:02 pmhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/bethere_redesign_horror/
I am on the US t-mobile site right now trying to chat with an agent and it keeps refreshing to let me know that I’m #5783 in the chat queue. Now #5782! Thanks! So that’s definitely a worst website contender.
I don’t know – maybe I’m just very used to Netflix in the US, but I like the way this site works. I never saw the Moviestar site so I have no idea how that site works. I like the ratings, the rankings, the searching & filter capabilities, but I also like to spend ages on sites like this (my netflix queue was usually maxed out at 500. Because I’m lame like that.).
But it was the preview mention that caught my eye, I’ve never had issues with their video previews so I might ask them to take a look for you if you don’t mind?
Gotta run, I’m number #347 in the T-Mobile queue now.
[Full disclaimer: I have worked with some Screenclick developers on the SIlverlight sections of their site.]
28.07.2009, 3:28 pmSabrina, I whole heartedly agree with this post- I loved MovieStar and after months of roaring at the computer and sending scabbing emails to Screen Click I just gave up and packed it in. Back to Xtravision for me…
06.08.2009, 5:12 pmHi Sabrina,
I am writing from Screenclick. Some interesting feedback here and you will be pleased to know that we are taking
it on board.
In saying that I think you are maybe overly critical but we are in the middle of a substantial development phase which will see various elements (core function, additional retail, support and design) addressed over the next few months.
Hi Martha :) Hope all is well. The internet is such a small place. Some of your ideas will be implemented also.
Needless to say Netflix have set the bar but they have slightly more resources. Nonetheless Screenclick will have a big presence at Click Live in November (www.clicklive.ie) and if all goes well we will have the bulk done by then!
11.08.2009, 7:41 pmScreenclick is even worse – they are offering a “free trial” for which they charged me. Because I didnt cancel it. But it was a “free trial”. Noone from Screenclick has gotten back to the 4 mails that I have sent them.
16.09.2009, 12:12 pmI absolutely surely for sure cannot believe you are so cool and important that when you complain about a site someone from the site writes in and is like, We’ll fix that for you right away. Ma’am. Does Mom know about this?
You know, when I complain about something this does not usually happen. I have been complaining about my leaky kitchen sink for 2 months now and you could still float a small boat between my recycling bin and the laundry detergent.
Although I will say that the other day I called up 311 (do you know about that? they set up a non-emergency number in nyc so you have someone to call when your turkey will not cook properly on Thanksgiving) to report a broken streetlight. And the light came on 2 days later:-) So maybe this is in our genes:-)
22.09.2009, 11:34 amYou really need to chill. You say you live with a dog and a husband- methinks its time you started breeding so you can get a grip on life’s real priorities.Although you must teach the young ones to relax abit more than mammy does.
10.10.2009, 1:24 pmIt’s a pity it’s a weekend. I’m sure a reverse IP lookup from your place of employment would be interesting, to say the least.
And I’m sure that having a baby would immediately fix my aversion to crappy customer service and frustrating websites. Because that’s exactly how *that* works.
I’m so glad Peter ain’t me.
10.10.2009, 3:28 pmIrish web awards?
You up?