annoyed

Well I paid my subscription fee and about a week later they put my account on hold and sent me an email saying "unable to authorise payment blah blah blah" so in my opinion don't bother wasting your time/money on c**p like this

Trying to trick you into handing over your money

So i get a letter in the post giving me 1 months free trial and if i become a paying customer i would get a £20 lovefilm voucher. So i contacted them through my lovefilm account asking them if i would be able to get this £20 voucher on my lovefilm account. I was told by them that i would.

So today i contacted them again after just sending my first payment and asking if i could know the ETA for when i will get my voucher and they told me that i was actually not entitled to get this £20 voucher as i was a paying customer before. This is not true as the only other time i used lovefilm was for another trial.

So they could of been honest from the start seeing as they already knew that i was somehow not entitled for a voucher but instead they decided to lie to me and then only tell the truth after i started paying.

I recommend everyone not to join lovefilm and just join one of the many better services such as netflix.

Fine until you need to cancel...

I subscribed to LoveFilm for quite a while, despite not really using the service to it's fullest. The instant streaming is poor (Netflix is far superior), the way they send low priority list fillers over the new stuff is irritating, but the worst aspect is what happens when you try and cancel.

I cancelled with them in February. They are still taking payments from me, despite the customer services team claiming they aren't. As it's on a continuous payment basis, even changing my debit card hasn't helped as "they don't need all the details" (quote direct from Barclays). It seems that once they have your details, they are going to keep taking money whether you are an active subscriber or not. Essentially, they are stealing my money.

So far, I've spent hours on the phone to various LoveFilm departments. They seem to be based in a country with a thick accent and little understanding of English, judging from the number of times I've had to ask for clarification or had to repeat what I've said. Frustrating!

I've finally resorted to emailing LoveFilm's Operations Director, Fern O'Sullivan (fern.osullivan@lovefilm.com) directly in the hope that she can pass my complaint on to someone that can sort the problem out. Judging from their track record so far, I'm not holding my breath.

I'll update this when they respond, however.

Avoid.

Fraud!

DO NOT USE THEM!

They offered me a two month free trial with credit vouchers I put in the codes to come back. These codes would not work, so tried several times. They ended up taking four payments from my account! After I had complained and informed them, they still took it out several days. I have emailed them and they say it will take 5 -7 working days to be approved and refunded. This was after finding they took two payments, I then discovered another two so have now had to email them again. It is fraudulent and a mis selling of their products. I would not recommend them due to this situation and their poor choice of films available instantly. DO NOT USE! I have read feedback on this site and a lot of it is negative, which is bad news for the brand, but they appear to not care as they keep repeating the same bad customer service and poor business mistakes.

AVOID!!! - take money from your account without permission, rubbish customer service and awful cancellation procedures.

Trying to cancel Lovefilm is very very difficult. There customer service is rubbish. I have probably sent them 20 emails, and they refuse to read the email and just send back a standard response that doesn't relate to my email at all.

I originally ordered a 6 month subscription for my niece via Groupon. I was assured that once the subscription ended I wouldn't be charged further as I wouldn't want to continue beyond the 6 months. But of course they did take money from my account without my knowledge or permission. Trying to get them to stop has been so much hassle as the account isn't in my name but my niece. I've had to stop the payments with my bank because they wont.

AVOID at all costs. Also their range of films/tv are rubbish and no where near as good as some of the other providers.

AVOIDDDDDDD

i decided 2 try the free trial. the cancellation process is utter crap. i tried cancelling b4 billing date but the system would not allow it then they cancel following many cancellation requests after billing me. thiefs.
customer service was v unhelpful. am paying a months bill and not even using it. daylight robbery.

Lovefilms but can't watch them!

Having been a customer of lovefilm years ago on a disc delivery basis and after using netflix for over a year now I thought I would try lovefilm's on demand service.

Now netflix is far from perfect with content, however there is a reasonable selection, I can watch them whenever and wherever I please, and I never have problems with streaming or buffering.

Lovefilm however is awful in many ways, I couldn't stream anything through my PS3 due to constant buffering and once you leave a wi-if area you cant watch anything full stop. Now imagine a modern media demand service which has no mobile connectivity in 2013.

Poor content, poor connections, poor UI

Not much else to say really

Good films but you can't watch them!!!

I took the free trials with both Lovefilm and Netflix... Lovefilm were by far the worst.

Whilst they had a good selection of movies, every film I tried to watch would either constantly pause whilst buffering or display an error saying there was a problem with the service.

Cancelled the trial soon after and won't go back. Prefer Netflix as never had these problems with them.

Shit Service!

Having tried Netflix for 5 months without any problem, I decided to have a go with Lovefilm.
My oh my, the very first day I got my subscription running, I started having my blood pressure running high.
I couldn't log into my account on ps3 to watch any movies although my log in details were usable on a PC.
I decided to call customer service and they told me its the first time they have ever heard this so I should wait for some hours and try again.
I decided to use my pc and all I saw was movies for DVD rentals, they all looked badly arranged. Netflix instant was rubbish as well, you mostly won't find the movies you want.
I said ok, I'll give it a try on my iPad instead. As I tried to log in, the report I had was that I cannot use this iPad because it is jailbroken.
If my iPad is jailbroken, what has that got to do with Lovefilms? Are you Apple? Apple even allows JB devices on their network.
I finally decided enough is enough, called them the same day and requested for account closure immediately and a refund. I will better stick to my Netflix than have some liars telling me how to waste my time. .

Lovefilm does not even deserve a star!!!

Terrible, should have listened to the reviews

As with thousands of others, I signed up for a FREE trial and was subsequently charged even though I CANCELLED my FREE trial before it had ended. AVOID!!!!

This can only be a joke

Signed up for the trial.
The movie selection is ridiculous, old and mostly uninteresting movies.
Went on the the TV Shows, and it was even worse. Series not complete (e.g. Ep.1, Ep. 2, Ep. 12 ....) and mostly outdated.

Complete waste of time!

Constant scratched discs and the customer is never right

The only problem I really had for the first few months was them sending badly scratched discs that didn't work. They were quite OK with me returning these and did in fact give me extra rentals as compensation. However they really let themselves down when a disc they sent out did not turn up.

On reporting the none receipt of my rental they sent me out some sort of standard reply which implied I had a number of lost discs recorded on my account, when this was in fact their first failure to deliver! All other rentals had a arrived and been returned successfully. They warned me that if it happened again they would most likely cancel my account. On balance they did also imply that it might be the fault of royal mail or some unforseen security issue at my address but as I live alone that cannot be the case. I can understand them blaming delivery services, but blaming a good customer after a first incident where there is no indication whatsoever that I was at fault, it's just cheeky.

So overall the service would get 4 stars, but the numerous scratched discs, the bad customer service and accusations, lose them a whole 2 stars.

bad service,not worth it.

exactly half of the discs skipped. The range isnt great-I like the tv stuff-it looks like a lot but its mostly the first/early seasons. When I tried to cancel I found I couldnt do so online and called them. He asked me a ridiculous amount of questions,then not asking me,said he would put me on a cheaper package, so i said i wanted to cancel again. then again he said, ok I will put you on a payment holiday. Then he tried to con me into having it for another month. I had to shout at him to get the cancellation. Might have gone back to them if theyd got more titles. NEVER would now.

I would rather lick my own arse

Lovefilm: Paul, please add 10 titles to your rental list.
Paul: OK Mr Lovefilm!
Lovefilm: Here you go Paul, have 2 low priority films instead of 2 high priority films!
Paul: why do you keep doing this Lovefilm??
Lovefilm: Here have one top priority film, and one which is not even on your list!
Paul: But i don't have post natal depression! Goodbye Lovefilm.
Lovefilm: How about we offer you a £2.99 deal for 1 rental per month?
Paul: So, you want me to reduce to a lesser value offer?
Lovefilm: Yes!
Paul: Hello Netflix!! :)

A nightmare throughout

I only used lovefilm as amazon gave me a promo code after i brought a blu ray player, i rented the Futurama boxset which arrived promptly BUT.. the disc were in a terrible condition and wouldnt play on my games console or dvd player, i emailed customer support and they asked me to mail this one back and they would send me a replacement, and the replacement disc was just as bad! it did read but it kept skipping and stopping, it made me laugh when i told them YET AGAIN that the discs werent fit for purpose, all they said was "they passed our quality control" what quality control??? the discs looked like they were scrapped on concrete, at this point i had enough of lovefilm and decided to cancel, what a nightmare. The guy i spoke to had very poor english and i couldnt undertsand him very well and vice versa. he wouldnt let me cancel, he kept offering me further promotions and 'one month free', i firmly told him i was unsatisfied and wanted to cancel my account but he completly ignored this and asked me "what are your favourite movies"? what has that got to do with anything??. after 10 minutes of telling him "please can you cancel my account" he finally did, at this point i was nearly losing my temper. never again.

hardly ever watch lovefilm. netflix the way to go.

Having paid for both netflix and lovefilm, ive found very little to watch on lovefilm. They had a few decent tv programme s for children. However I sold my wii and brought a samsung smart tv and all the good stuff dis appeared. You would think being an amazon company with lots of money they would have rights to a Hugh selection of tv and films. Sadly this is not the case. Total waste of money. Netflix is far better.

Blatant frauds

Lovefilm were fine when I was subscribed with them, it was a pain to end my subscription, but aside from that, no qualms. A year later, after I had cancelled my subscription, they started taking £5 from my account every month. This continued for quite a while until I finally eventually came to my sense and noticed it. Their customer service over email was appalling, I recieved a reply and the fellow insisted I probably had another account with them and this is what was causing the deductions from my account. I sent a reply recapping my problem and confirming I had only ever had the one account, and I recieved no reply. You would think such an issue would be top of their list to solve, but no. I got a refund of £20 from Visa eventually, which was some comfort. I would never deal with Lovefilm again - such ignorant customer service and underhand dealings are unacceptable and I would urge people to stay away - yes the free trial is nice, but there are other providers of such a service and if you do opt for the trial (like I did), watch your bank account afterwards.

Poor Choice of Films.

Lovefilm instant is very well marketed - to be fair, they don't use clips from any movies that aren't actually available to Instant customers. However, it is a little misleading in that it claims to have a huge selection of films, when the choice is actually very disappointing.

I'm an avid movie fan, and I'll watch pretty much anything, but each genre is very disappointing, and you end up feeling as though there was no real point in bothering. For example, the 'teen' section is massively disappointing, and is missing classics such as 'The Breakfast Club' and 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. So maybe they have some modern hits to make up for this? Unfortunately not - it would make a lot of sense for them to have compensated for their lack of classic choice by selecting modern hits such as 'Mean Girls' and 'Clueless', but again they come up empty.

This seems to be the same pretty much across the board - 'Psycho', surely a staple in any horror movie playlist, is also missing, as is 'Carrie' (for those with a more modern taste). In fact, the whole site is pretty shabby in terms of films. Ironic, considering the name of the company.

A saving grace is the selection of television, with whole seasons of 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Criminal Minds' available up to recent season for those with a taste for drama. There are even great kids TV shows such as 'Pingu' and 'Fireman Sam'. Don't worry, I'm not one of those people who still only watches kid's shows at 19, I'm just looking back fondly on my childhood..... But again, it's supposed to be a site for films, and although it boasts an impressive selection of nearly 3,000 titles to watch in movies alone, the choice is so poor that you end up not wanting to watch anything, and if you do, it's because it's the best of a bad bunch. (And maybe the occassional guilty pleasure, ahem, Burlesque, ahem.)

Basically, sort it out, Lovefilm! Get up to date, and get some decent movies, please!!!!!!!!

Brilliant USE them

How can any one not love Love film Cheap and unlimited !

Great !

Stay away film lovefilm - they steal money from your bank account

I left lovefilms 6 months ago and for no reason at all they took £10.89 from my bank account without any permission a week ago Feb 2013 and several weeks later sent discs !!!!

This is STEALING and a FRAUD and many who don't check their accounts will fall foul of this as it will not be picked up - with no discs being received to raise suspicion - they are just criminals - BE AWARE AND DO NOT USE THEM

4 emails to their customer service department and I am still being ignored
If you cancel your subscription make sure they confirm it and not suspended your account as they will try and con you to do

lee williams

Nat Beard found this review useful

love films are a rip off

have just cancelled my lovefilms after the trial,not once did i get a film delivered that i had ordered,after i cancelled they still kept sending films i didnt pick and even though it only £4.99 a month they have taken £9.99 out of my account even though i only had them a month. later i will try netflix but i will read the reviews first

Never got to try

I never applied for a free trial with them to see if the service was worth paying for and because the people living previously at my address did, I can either be a fully paid member (which does not seem to be that great anyway) or be denied their option to try before you buy. Thank you lovefilm, I'll definitely give my money to someone else.

Different platforms - different content

Was rather disappointed to discover that the content which I can watch on my laptop is not the same as the content which I can watch on my Sony Smart TV. I wanted to watch Heroes but after surfing through the content on my laptop because it is easier than doing so on the TV, I then tried to watch it with my wife in the living room. It wasn't there on the TV list of series available!

So I rang LoveFilm and the operator told me that this is a known constraint and highlighted that PlayStation content for example is also different.

I don't think I'll renew my subscription as that is a bit of a blow.

i love films but clearly they don't!

what an appalling selection of b movies & filler movies, i could watch most of these free on youtube. i found 6 movies in the entire catalogue worth watching, but couldn't watch them properly as the 'silverlight player' that you have to use to view movies on this site doesn't work well at all. at least they offer a months free trial, lets see how easy it is to cancel!!

Some great foreign films , shocking , bad streaming and buffering

Had Love film two years ago for 12 months and really enjoyed selection of foreign films . Came back to them this October and well never more , despite having fibre optic broadband I have had constant problems with streaming and buffering , some days not possible to watch anything at all , gave up after 3 months of trying . I have now switched to Netflix and it works perfect.
LOVE FILM - NEVER MORE FROM ME

Why are there so many negative reviews?

On New Years Eve, and through Groupon, I was able to buy a 3 months subscription to the service, which includes unlimited DVD rentals (2 at a time) and unlimited streaming, all for £7. A few hours later I received a confirmation email from Groupon with the promo code to get the 3 months, and it was easy from then on.
I created an account and I was off straight away, putting approximately 11 titles in my rental list. I was also able to stream a massive library of films and TV programs (look under collections) onto my iPad. My first two discs arrived on the 3rd, which was decent considering New Years was working day, and they were shipped the next working day.
I sent them back after watching them in the resealable envelopes, which they received the next day, and then shipped the next discs, 2 days after I returned the previous two.

Issues (Small Ones Though):
-Slow ipad app, with no history or recently watched, but still very functional
-Sometimes the discs you really want can't be sent immediately, but they try to send the highest priority titles you have put in your list

Inept, crooks!

I purchased a 6 month subscription gift voucher for Love Film that was supposed to be redeemed 'On or before 31/12/12'. When I attempted to visit the URL instructed on the gift voucher it informed me that the promotion had expired despite being within the time required.

I contacted Love Film and they said they couldn't do anything about it. They have taken my money and refuse to provide the service paid for. This is one company I will NEVER trust again. They are constantly spending money on promoting themselves to try and get new customers and yet when they have one they can't even provide the service that has been paid for.

Instant streaming to a smart tv is a waste of time

Tried instant streaming now we have BT vision and a smart tv.
What a waste of time !
Seems that much of their film catalogue is not available for instant streaming, though they don't tell you this beforehand.
Only 1 out of 10 on this one Lovefilm / Amazon.

DO NOT PUT YOURSELF ON A PAYMENT HOLIDAY!

I joined loveiflm on a 3 months for the price of 1 and was paying the highest package, after the 3 months I phoned to stop as I could not afford the package I wanted each month. I tried to cancel my account over the phone, and they told me they will stick me on a 3 month holiday instead and that way I am entitled to more promotional offers, 3 months came and I received no offers, I phoned again and they said there was none going that's why and they said they will stick me on another 3 month holiday as once again I was assured you get offered the best promotional offers. Once again no offers. A week ago allot of my mates received a email offering 3 months for the price of 1 to cancelled accounts. I tried to do the code as-well and it told me to contact customer support, I contacted them and was told obviously that my account had to be cancelled to get that code. I explained how that's all I ever wanted for the 6 months but was told holiday would see me with better offers, They didn't even apologise to me and they just said there's nothing they can do, I asked for my account to be cancelled on 2 occasions over emails. They never replied, I then emailed one last time before I asked to speak to the manager, I asked them to delete my account for good or just cancel it, they did both and once again just responded with out no sincere apology, and the replies were pretty blunt, I have never been treated so badly. I have now deleted my account with Amazon and the Amazon associates programme. I will be avoiding all Amazon company's or anything related. There customer services are awful. So stay away if I was you, and if you are with lovefilm and you cant afford to carry on, make sure you cancel your account, even though they make you phone before you can cancel your account, that's because they try to downgrade you and offer you loads of stupid offers, and if you say no to all of that they tell you we will stick you on holiday. So good luck with it.

Have a few bad points but also some good - not quite as bad as some of the reviews!

I've had LoveFilm for roughly 10 months now and originally got it as we had to get rid of Sky and free-view really doesn't have much choice. I have had some bad buffering experiences in the past and a few times when 'Lovefilm instant is not available right now' which did really annoy me at the time as obviously if you are paying for something you should be able to use it. I complained over email to Lovefilm every time this happened and did receive a small refund each time i complained. It has got much better recently though and this hasn't happened for a while. They have also (slowly but surely) started to add much better films to instant and to rent. The buffering has also improved and i was entertained for a good couple of months watching Prison Break again from the beginning.

not happy at all

sales person overly pushy, after free trial there was no mention i would be charged, was under the impression i would have to verify that i would like to start paying, sales person took my debit card to look at it and said she wasn't taking any account details and i wouldn't be charged, extermely misleading as i was charged. totally not happy as i signed up for the free trial ages ago (only to get the sales person off my back) i have moved address over a year ago and don't even use the email account that i signed up to this service with so therefore now dreading trying to cancel the account as i have heard you have to return all DVDs they have sent you which may prove impossible for me. also find it suspicious that when I go on online banking in my direct debits and standing orders there is no mention of lovefilm so i would not be able to cancel this transaction with my bank. there is probably a reason for this im aware. Overall i would not recommend this service to anyone.

appalling, hard sell and take money after account closed, seems impossible to get back

Tried to cancel 6 months ago as had not received films for 6 weeks and they could not explain why. The hard sell to take a holiday from the contract was relentless and they stated that if i took a holiday then they would contact me after 6 months to ask if i wanted to reinstate. On this basis i agreed to holiday.

I have now noticed that they took money last month without asking and me and despite 5 emails demanding that they stop stealing my money and refund me they are continuing to ignore me.

I have now emailed them to tell them that they will owe me £50 if they take anymore money. The problem is that credit card companies cannot stop the payments as requested and we can only fill in a dispute form to get the money back! unbelievable!!!!!!! Hate this company!

Oh Dear..

Not worth your time let alone your money, unless ofcourse you really like watching really old movies that no-one has ever heard of.

Honestly Don't bother, if you like watching movies from this decade or the last, get something like Netflix, they actually have stuff worth watching.

(using Instant, which is the only useful thing as you cant spontaneously watch a movie if it takes like 2 days to arrive)

Bad films, bad customer service, bad service

I stuck with it for three months plus my free trial period but gave up in the end. The online content is awful. Mostly very old or mediocre films (at best - they bulk out availability with god-awful dross) and a strange choice of television serials (the entire back-catalogue of Thunderbirds?), and no classics (where's Blade Runner or Citizen Kane?). But that wasn't the worst of it. That was their support. The films kept failing to play on my computer. There's nothing wrong with my PC/connection and I use Silverlight for other applications and it works fine, but clearly there was a problem somewhere. Phone support didn't know anything technical. Email support send a string of copy+paste emails and they don't actually read the problem and constantly suggest remedies that you've clearly told them you've already tried, the worst of which is to downgrade Silverlight to an older version. All quite frustrating and disappointing.

Daniel Drahos found this review useful

bad selection for streaming, charged me after i had canceled.

Only got this for the freetrial, was not even worth the effort of signing up, all the o.line movies are terrible, I canceled my membership before the.end of the free trial but had to do so again today after discovering they had billed my bank account. Not happy at all

Lovefilm but they don't want to rent them to you!

Lovefilm being owned by Amazon have a secret policy that is ‘get people to buy’ before they can rent. Being a film rental company it is surprising how many new films you are currently unable to rent. Not that you can’t rent them from Blockbuster or your local library. Bizarrely they are unavailable at Love we are not going to let you rent them film. You pay your money and … Now, I’ve been a customer for many years but recently (Dec 2012) it’s gone beyond a joke. I assume they are losing customers left and right and they should. Join another rental company.

Slow and Buffers every 10 seconds (i have 11mb speed and netflix works fine)

i paid 4.99 for 3 months Service(Special offer), i tried to watch a film Apparently HD and the quality was Terrible and buffered every 10 seconds i was shocked how bad this was. i also have Netflix and sky on demand and they both work fine i have not yet seen a buffer wheel in Netflix and the quality is brilliant. i phoned Lovefilm to cancel and ask for my money back the next day (BY THE WAY ITS 5P A MINUTE) and they try to keep you on the phone as much as possible and place you on hold for aslong as they can. i would suggest every one stay clear of lovefilm and try netflix(not as much titles as lovefilm but newer films) or blinkbox(apparently 10,000 films pay as you go and 900 free) . BTW the lovefilm guy told me they need a user to have 5.4mb second connection to get good service and netflix only needs 0.5 (I dont know if this is correct) so they told me netflix is better in one sentence

Lovefilm good response from London

Judging from most recent reviews it appears only London seems to get good service. I have had no problems with streaming or disc delivery. Although I have noticed google chrome shows lovefilm.com to be an unsecure website. Also that after having a disc delivered and returned they just made the same film available for instant viewing, this happened at least four times. I have only used the service for three months. I would like to see instant service include dvd and blu ray extra features like making of and deleted scenes then we can do away with discs altogether, provided lovefilm can retain the license to stream the content as I have noticed many films become unavailable after a time.

Hazard a guess many other reviewers might have had streaming problems due to there internet connection and service provider rather than any technical fault with lovefilm.com. I only say because when I came close to my own download limit streaming grinded to a halt, took very long to load or did not even start at all.

I have simultaneously been a member with lovefilms main competitor and have had no problems either in fact its been a better service but lacking in new content.

Appalling customer service and very slow turnaround of disks

I had been a customer for some time on a now defunct 15 credits for 6 months deal. Their website could not manage to show my contract renewal date properly.
Due to their use of 2nd class post and poor organisation, it was taking over a week between DVDs, so I decide to cancel just before my contract was due for renewal. Various confused responses from their offshore customer service centre and inducements to stay, but I stil left. Then they billed me for the next 6 months anyway. Now they're not answering my emails and I have disputed te transaction with my credit card company. Absolutely dreadful and a mire of appalling customer service.
Do not touch. I now use Cinema Paradiso and it's first class post, brilliant selection of DVDs/Blu-Rays and incredible customer service: I had a foreign language film I reported as I couldn't get the subtitles to work from laptop or DVD player and they replaced it before I returned it. Credits also roll over.

LoveFilm Instant :Don't waste your money

No Streaming app for Android based devices. LoveFilm has streaming app for android based Amazon kindle device but wont release app for other android based device. Unless you are planning to buy or own a device that supports lovefilm don't waste your money .

Sonny Lloyd found this review useful