Britain - Tesco DVD Rental Program

I don't know if any of you have tried the Tesco DVD rental program. You can find it on their main webpage on the left under "DVDs To Rent".

I tried the Amazon.co.uk program and it worked fine. The major difference is that Amazon's top priced rental program only allowed you to rent 6 DVDs a month, whereas Tesco's program allows unlimited DVD rentals per month. Both only allow you to have a maximum of 3 DVDs out at one time.

Both programs mail the DVDs to you first class post in a flat, stiff paper mailer which serves as a free return envelope. Tesco's program costs about £14 a month.

Why use such a system? Well, my family found out that we rarely watched the movies on Sky and I'm going to downgrade my service, dropping the movie channels. The savings will pay for the Tesco rental program.

In addition, you get to decide which movies you want to watch, they have movies you can't get at Blockbuster or your local rental store, and it works out to pennies per DVD. If you only rented 10 a month that works out to £1.40 per DVD and at 20 DVDs it's only 70 pence! I know what you're thinking, there is no way I would rent 20 DVDs a month. That's what we thought. Then I taught the wife and 3 kids how to order and trust me, we will probably rent that and more. In comparison, my local rental stores charge from £2.50 to £3.50 per dvd. Heck, even my library charges £2.50 per dvd!

There are several categories we use that you can't get at other rental stores; Concert, childrens and comedy DVDs to name a few. Then there are some oldies but goodies as well as TV series. My teenage son and I love Red Dwarf. The wife and I love the Concert DVDs. I've currently got a ZZ Top dvd and just sent back two Dire Straits. And today I just got a Billy Conolly World Tour.

Tesco also allows you to create a prioritized list of movies you want as well as "reserve" new releases before they become available. We've only been using the program for a month, so it remains to be seen how well they can provide new releases. We currently have 75 dvds on our list.

As I said, dropping the Sky movies channels pays for the Tesco program and for my money is a far better deal.
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