So, where to shop now that I'm no longer shopping at the CNL?
Spent a couple of hours looking around for a replacement DVD retailer for the C & L Internet Club.
I really should have done this ages ago, but let a misguided sense of loyalty to a company which repaid that loyalty with bait and switch tactics keep me from taking my business elsewhere, and sooner.
It turns out that they're not that good a retailer either. They really haven't changed much in six years, if DVDTalk forum goers are anything to go by.
And their prices pretty much suck unless you're a walk-in customer who shows up at their inconvenient X% off times.
Even anime, which is supposed to be their specialty, is cheaper elsewhere if it's not on clearance or during their big once-a-year sale.
I was pretty surprised to find out that DVDBoxOffice, which has somewhat inflated regular prices to account for the fact that they offer free airmail shipping worldwide, often had cheaper "regular" prices for certain titles, like the Utena and Rurouni Kenshin boxsets.
The prices drop further when you consider that if you live outside of Ontario, or wherever they have their shipping centre, you only pay the GST and they have a long-standing arrangement with Visa, giving people who pay with it 15% off with a shopping cart coupon.
And all this from the convenience of one's own home, without having to walk down from poorly planned overpass onto a busy highway to trudge over to CNL's out of the way warehouse and getting one's shoes crusted with yuerrk from the walk and being treated like a criminal once one gets inside the doors.
Admittedly, the bus routes have changed in the past year, so that now there's a stop right outside, but that only makes it marginally less inconvenient to get to and from.
Another place that looks good for Canadian DVDs is CD Plus. Again, free shipping within Canada, no PST if outside Ontario, and while their regular prices aren't that great, they've got a nifty selection of Canadian-made DVDs which the CNL mostly doesn't stock, and the free shipping/reduced taxes offsets the difference.
For francophone DVDs, I've been buying from Archambault, which is quite decent. They have very fast pack and ship time for stuff in stock, give free shipping over $35, offer 10% off with Visa coupon, and will ship things as they come in at no extra charge. I try to load my orders there a little and get a bunch of stuff at once.
Of course, the prices for most DVDs in Canada is ridiculous, since a lot of times, the MSRP seems to assume that they're using an exchange rate based on the peso, as far as I can tell.
Best places to shop for big studio DVDs is, of course DeepDiscountDVD. They briefly had a Canadian site last year, but that died due to their selling at a discount from the Canadian MSRP, which, as I've already mentioned, are ridiculous.
But they had really good prices on Canadian-made titles, which I regret being unable to get because I was mostly broke and horribly distracted last summer. I wish I'd been able to buy something while they lasted.
They've since merged their operations to ship CDs and Books and other stuff as well, so I hope they keep up their habit of holding the bi-annual 20% off DVD sale. Now that I've finally got a little more in the way of disposable income, I intend to make up for lost time.
They've kept the flat rate Canadian shipping, which I think is a good sign, so far.
Amazon.com's also pretty good. They actually ship from inside Ontario, so while they'll charge PST and for shipping, your purchases will bypass Customs. And they tend to have a rotating list of 50% or better off of Box Sets and the like, which usually takes the prices down to about two-thirds of what you'd pay on Amazon.ca or elsewhere.
I haven't shopped there myself, but the RightStuf seems to be pretty good. Their non-discount prices are high, but they offer weekly sales, a bargain bin, have some sort of club card where you can save 10% off even the weekly sale items.
Plus, they offer free shipping to Canada on orders over $150, which seems a bit much, but when you consider the inflated prices of anime to begin with (which is why I only ever buy the stuff on clearance or in sets, since there's no way I'd pay $30 a disc for a measly 4 half-hour episodes, repeat until the series is complete) and the fact that you could put the bundle you saved from their regular Canadian shipping of $7 for the first item and $2 for each following into buying even more stuff, I'd say it works out.
I stupidly chose to pass up buying a bunch of DVDs which were much cheaper at the RightStuff, even factoring in shipping costs and customs/taxes, in order to get them at CNL's Anime Clearance Sale instead, under the impression that I was Supporting Local Business While Earning Valuable Customer Reward Points.
But C & L's notion of customer loyalty goes only one way, and it's not in the direction of the actual paying customer.
So, yeah. Lots of places to buy which are infinitely better than shopping at the CNL, which you should avoid.
Practically the only advantage that I see is that if you really need to inspect your DVDs in person before purchasing and know exactly what you're getting into and buy the right item at the right time and are sure you'll never have any problems whatsoever with it and don't mind being treated like a dried-up cash cow if you don't buy often enough for their tastes, then yeah, you can still shop at the CNL.
But I really wouldn't advise it.
I really should have done this ages ago, but let a misguided sense of loyalty to a company which repaid that loyalty with bait and switch tactics keep me from taking my business elsewhere, and sooner.
It turns out that they're not that good a retailer either. They really haven't changed much in six years, if DVDTalk forum goers are anything to go by.
And their prices pretty much suck unless you're a walk-in customer who shows up at their inconvenient X% off times.
Even anime, which is supposed to be their specialty, is cheaper elsewhere if it's not on clearance or during their big once-a-year sale.
I was pretty surprised to find out that DVDBoxOffice, which has somewhat inflated regular prices to account for the fact that they offer free airmail shipping worldwide, often had cheaper "regular" prices for certain titles, like the Utena and Rurouni Kenshin boxsets.
The prices drop further when you consider that if you live outside of Ontario, or wherever they have their shipping centre, you only pay the GST and they have a long-standing arrangement with Visa, giving people who pay with it 15% off with a shopping cart coupon.
And all this from the convenience of one's own home, without having to walk down from poorly planned overpass onto a busy highway to trudge over to CNL's out of the way warehouse and getting one's shoes crusted with yuerrk from the walk and being treated like a criminal once one gets inside the doors.
Admittedly, the bus routes have changed in the past year, so that now there's a stop right outside, but that only makes it marginally less inconvenient to get to and from.
Another place that looks good for Canadian DVDs is CD Plus. Again, free shipping within Canada, no PST if outside Ontario, and while their regular prices aren't that great, they've got a nifty selection of Canadian-made DVDs which the CNL mostly doesn't stock, and the free shipping/reduced taxes offsets the difference.
For francophone DVDs, I've been buying from Archambault, which is quite decent. They have very fast pack and ship time for stuff in stock, give free shipping over $35, offer 10% off with Visa coupon, and will ship things as they come in at no extra charge. I try to load my orders there a little and get a bunch of stuff at once.
Of course, the prices for most DVDs in Canada is ridiculous, since a lot of times, the MSRP seems to assume that they're using an exchange rate based on the peso, as far as I can tell.
Best places to shop for big studio DVDs is, of course DeepDiscountDVD. They briefly had a Canadian site last year, but that died due to their selling at a discount from the Canadian MSRP, which, as I've already mentioned, are ridiculous.
But they had really good prices on Canadian-made titles, which I regret being unable to get because I was mostly broke and horribly distracted last summer. I wish I'd been able to buy something while they lasted.
They've since merged their operations to ship CDs and Books and other stuff as well, so I hope they keep up their habit of holding the bi-annual 20% off DVD sale. Now that I've finally got a little more in the way of disposable income, I intend to make up for lost time.
They've kept the flat rate Canadian shipping, which I think is a good sign, so far.
Amazon.com's also pretty good. They actually ship from inside Ontario, so while they'll charge PST and for shipping, your purchases will bypass Customs. And they tend to have a rotating list of 50% or better off of Box Sets and the like, which usually takes the prices down to about two-thirds of what you'd pay on Amazon.ca or elsewhere.
I haven't shopped there myself, but the RightStuf seems to be pretty good. Their non-discount prices are high, but they offer weekly sales, a bargain bin, have some sort of club card where you can save 10% off even the weekly sale items.
Plus, they offer free shipping to Canada on orders over $150, which seems a bit much, but when you consider the inflated prices of anime to begin with (which is why I only ever buy the stuff on clearance or in sets, since there's no way I'd pay $30 a disc for a measly 4 half-hour episodes, repeat until the series is complete) and the fact that you could put the bundle you saved from their regular Canadian shipping of $7 for the first item and $2 for each following into buying even more stuff, I'd say it works out.
I stupidly chose to pass up buying a bunch of DVDs which were much cheaper at the RightStuff, even factoring in shipping costs and customs/taxes, in order to get them at CNL's Anime Clearance Sale instead, under the impression that I was Supporting Local Business While Earning Valuable Customer Reward Points.
But C & L's notion of customer loyalty goes only one way, and it's not in the direction of the actual paying customer.
So, yeah. Lots of places to buy which are infinitely better than shopping at the CNL, which you should avoid.
Practically the only advantage that I see is that if you really need to inspect your DVDs in person before purchasing and know exactly what you're getting into and buy the right item at the right time and are sure you'll never have any problems whatsoever with it and don't mind being treated like a dried-up cash cow if you don't buy often enough for their tastes, then yeah, you can still shop at the CNL.
But I really wouldn't advise it.
Labels: shopping
posted by Alexander the Drake at 10:41 pm
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