I've been wanting to get Blue Harvest and Something Something Something Darkside for several weeks now. Particularly, I would like to get a digital copy of it so I can stream it to my Xbox through Windows Media Center. It's not available on Zune so I came across Amazon's Video on Demand service and saw that it is available for purchase and download. Sweet! So I looked closely over the information page for usage rights, expiration and all that jazz. It turns out that it is available for use on two devices and will never expire after a certain amount of time. I'm cool with that, I just want it on one device and I want to watch it as many times as I want. Perfect.
After a detailed look at the page, I saw no red flags. So I chose to purchase and download the file. Once I confirmed the purchase it took me to a page that asked me to choose the download location. Under normal circumstances, this would simply mean that you need to choose where the video file will be downloaded to. Not with Amazon Video on Demand. Here it's asking you where you want to download the Amazon Unbox Video Player, the program you are required to use in order to watch the video you now own. You can't even download the video until you download this program. I could have went further and tried to figure out if there was a way to convert the file to watch on any program, but I was tricked and I was irritated.
I went back to the product page to look back over it. There was not a word about needing the application to watch the video, nor a word about the video being in a strange format. I hovered over all the "see details" links and everything...not a word. Looking back over it, I did see that some things were worded vaguely, but they certainly did not inform you that you would be restricted by some stupid video player.
On the bright side, I immediately contacted customer service for a refund as soon as I realized what was up. They graciously refunded my money even though Amazon officially does not refund digital download purchases. I really didn't deserve the refund but they were kind enough to do so. I am very satisfied with their customer service. However, I am very dissatisfied with Video on Demand and their forcing a proprietary video player on you to watch videos that you own. Let's hope that if I ever purchase a DVD from them, they won't require me to use a special Amazon DVD Player Plus!
2 comments:
I disagree where you said you didn't deserve the refund. Since you were deceived into buying a movie, and apparently a new program to go with it, then you deserved that refund whether or not it goes against their no refund policy.
As much as I like Amazon, it is ridiculous that digital services have come to these types of transactions. There is absolutely no reason to force a program onto a customer.
Notice that their program is for PC, not Mac. This means that Amazon knows that you have Windows Media Player. Yet, they take the difficult route. MP3 is the universal sound file, and there are video files that can be enjoyed on every computer, too.
You are right. I did deserve a refund because of their deceit, but was at the mercy of their terms. So they were gracious in the fact that they did refund me despite their policy.
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