Columbia House Canada Thread

[bluraykingcanada]

Some improvements that I would like to see:
1. Always free shipping if order amount is more than $39 like the last promotion they had. This will make it similar to Amazon.
2. As others said ability to check order status. When items ship, the tracking number, what items have shipped.
3. Ability to indicate if the item is in stock or out of stock.
4. Ability to apply the star dollar towards online purchase.
5. More selection on blu-ray titles.
6. Preferably to have exclusive editions like Future Shop Steelbook Exclusive
7. Price match if lower price is offered by competitors
8. Site navigation needs improvement especially to sort by price.
9. More special deals for members especially in the current economy environment

More to come if I come across more ideas.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by CanadianKrazyMods

why not create 2 orders?

Well it's a little more expensive since you would have to buy more than 1 at full price but that's pretty much what I did. I had 4 separate orders of 8 under the 60% sale.

[bluraykingcanada]

Originally Posted by CanadianKrazyMods

why not create 2 orders?

You could but you would have to pay 2 items at regular price instead of 1 if everything were on the same order.

[bluraykingcanada]

Originally Posted by Jimbo976

Well it's a little more expensive since you would have to buy more than 1 at full price but that's pretty much what I did. I had 4 separate orders of 8 under the 60% sale.

Did you try contact the customer service and ask for a refund for the items that you paid full price? It may be worth giving it a try and you could have another blu-ray

[TheZoof]

I have placed 2 orders with them so far and I am happy for the most part.

Prices are good and have an ok selection.

My concern is that I want more choices. I am looking for "The Last Emperor" and a few other rarer blu discs but they don't stock them.

[sschen]

Just checked one of their live chat operators to follow up on my order placed on 19/12/2008. Was advised my order was actually shipped on 29/12/2008. The last operator I talked to about a couple of weeks ago told me my order was shipped on 19/12/2008, oh well, perhaps it is a typo?

All titles on my order were shipped except Journey to the centre of the earth which is still on backorder. It is being shipped to Edmonton. The website says to allow 10-14 business days, so if I don't count the new year and the actual shipped day itself, this is the 11th business day.

I also don't like the fact that my credit card is charged on the day of the order? They should really charge on shipment date like amazon. Will keep you guys updated next week, hopefully when i have received the shipment bar the backordered "Earth 3D"

[alienofwar]

Thanks for keeping us updated.

[thecardman23]

yeah i like getting all this info regarding other ppls experiences (althou at times the comments are unsettling and make me doubt i'll recieve my order as they promise) but i too will continue to keep posting when my order arrives for the rest of you. thanks.

[actyper]

I had an order ship out on the 7th (wed) which hasn't arrived as of yesterday. So i'm not entirely sure that the "ship date" is the physical ship date. Since the product ships from Scarborough and I live in the neighbouring Markham area.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by actyper

I had an order ship out on the 7th (wed) which hasn't arrived as of yesterday. So i'm not entirely sure that the "ship date" is the physical ship date. Since the product ships from Scarborough and I live in the neighbouring Markham area.

Yeah it seems pretty suspect doesn't it? The only thing I can figure is they really get shipped from the US and then re-directed to people in Canada. This would be similar to how amazon.com ships to Canada. Amazon.com Blu-rays get sent from a warehouse in the US to a warehouse in Canada via some kind of bulk internal shipping and then sent to us via Express Post or Expedited Parcel from Canada Post. The packaging looks like it all originates in Canada but in fact the actual movies/invoice inside come from the US.

The only other possibilities are:

-they pay some dirt cheap fee to Canada Post to ship the packages at some super low class that travels really slow

or

-they really don't get picked up by Canada Post (my definition of shipped) for days after CH says they are shipped.

I'm still just on the original Columbia House and have a movie that apparently shipped out to me on Dec. 31 that I have not received yet. I could have walked from a warehouse in Southern Ontario to my house here in Eastern Ontario in the past 13 days.

[nolook]

ya wish they would carry stuff like baraka

hopefully they have another free shipping/60% off sale soon...

[Dave J]

Originally Posted by Jimbo976

I'm still just on the original Columbia House and have a movie that apparently shipped out to me on Dec. 31 that I have not received yet. I could have walked from a warehouse in Southern Ontario to my house here in Eastern Ontario in the past 13 days.

Don't feel too bad. I live no more than a thirty minute drive from CH's warehouse in Scarborough and it still takes a couple weeks for me to receive some shipments.

Don't care though as long as I can get my blu-ray movies dirt cheap.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by Dave J

Don't feel too bad. I live no more than a thirty minute drive from CH's warehouse in Scarborough and it still takes a couple weeks for me to receive some shipments.

Don't care though as long as I can get my blu-ray movies dirt cheap.

Yes I agree. I know I do complain about the shipping delays but it is more of the case that they are not telling the whole truth though that I am complaining about. When they say that an item is "shipped" they have to have a different definition of shipped then most people would think.

In the end whenever it shows up at my house it is cheap and i still have unwatched Blu-rays to keep me busy till then. I knew all about the slowness when I signed up.

[Salinger]

Originally Posted by Jimbo976

This would be similar to how amazon.com ships to Canada. Amazon.com Blu-rays get sent from a warehouse in the US to a warehouse in Canada via some kind of bulk internal shipping and then sent to us via Express Post or Expedited Parcel from Canada Post. The packaging looks like it all originates in Canada but in fact the actual movies/invoice inside come from the US.

That can't be true of all orders, possibly some, but definitely not all. I've ordered quite a few BD's from Amazon.ca and I always get them within a day or two if in stock and that's with their free shipping. The last order, just before Christmas, I ordered on a Sunday, I actually had the order delivered to my office Monday afternoon! No way it could have originated from the US.

I'm still on the fence about CHCanada. I really don't like the idea of having my CC charged at time of order. That's not good business.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by Salinger

That can't be true of all orders, possibly some, but definitely not all. I've ordered quite a few BD's from Amazon.ca and I always get them within a day or two if in stock and that's with their free shipping. The last order, just before Christmas, I ordered on a Sunday, I actually had the order delivered to my office Monday afternoon! No way it could have originated from the US.

Amazon.com != Amazon.ca

I was talking about Amazon.com which until the Cdn. dollar tanked was almost always much cheaper than amazon.ca. amazon.ca does ship from within Canada like you said.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by Salinger

I'm still on the fence about CHCanada. I really don't like the idea of having my CC charged at time of order. That's not good business.

Isn't it charged at the time of what they call shipment? Amazon.ca and amazon.com work the same way. They charge your credit card the day they ship. The shipping just takes less time from either amazon than it does from CH.

I have only seen CH charge my credit card on the day they claim an item has shipped. So my Visa gets maybe 5 or 6 different charges as each of the items in my order of 8 items get shipped out over a period of time.

[Salinger]

D'oh! Sorry, not reading carefully enough!!

Originally Posted by Jimbo976

Amazon.com != Amazon.ca

I was talking about Amazon.com which until the Cdn. dollar tanked was almost always much cheaper than amazon.ca. amazon.ca does ship from within Canada like you said.

[Salinger]

Originally Posted by Jimbo976

Isn't it charged at the time of what they call shipment? Amazon.ca and amazon.com work the same way. They charge your credit card the day they ship. The shipping just takes less time from either amazon than it does from CH.

I have only seen CH charge my credit card on the day they claim an item has shipped. So my Visa gets maybe 5 or 6 different charges as each of the items in my order of 8 items get shipped out over a period of time.

Nope, I can only go by what I'm reading here, but at least the last two people to comment on it have said they had the charge go on their credit card, the day they placed their order.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by nolook

ya wish they would carry stuff like baraka

hopefully they have another free shipping/60% off sale soon...

Yeah it kind of sucks that they don't carry them all. I used to always just buy everything from amazon.com since it was usually pretty close to the cheapest and they had everything. So now for the ones that CH doesn't carry I have to hunt around for bargains. I was at HMV, Blockbuster, and Walmart today checking out prices. I found that Blockbuster has some really good prices on some items and HMV wasn't too bad either. Walmart is hard to tell since they don't seem to change labels on items when the price goes down.

I have found that amazon.ca is usually pretty good on most Blu-rays but some just don't seem to be on sale anywhere. I'm not going to pay $30 or $32 for new release Blu-rays so I've pretty much just stopped buying new releases until they go on sale. In the meantime I still have some that I have not watched yet and am still getting 1 or 2 each week from CH until the end of Feb. Hopefully by March they'll have another free shipping CH deal and some more pre-order titles will be available from them.

[Jimbo976]

Originally Posted by Salinger

Nope, I can only go by what I'm reading here, but at least the last two people to comment on it have said they had the charge go on their credit card, the day they placed their order.

Ok that may be a difference between CHcanada.com and the orginal CH then.

EDIT:

There is this from Lolo though who says she works at chcanada.com

Jimbo976: There's really no need to check the "status" of your order because we process orders twice every day--in the morning and at night. If an order comes in overnight, it's shipped first thing in the morning. If it comes in during the day, we ship it by end of day. After that, as I said above, you're at the mercy of Canada Post.

So it seems both statements may be correct. They charge your Visa the day they "ship" or they charge your Visa the day you place your order. Since Lolo says they get "shipped" the same day