OT: Anyone use Columbia House or BMG Music clubs recently?

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 12:59 pm

I've belonged to both back in the day. BMG seems to have better selection but a lot of recent titles you can't selected in the initial free offer. CH doesn't have any restrictions but it doesn't have some artists like U2 and nothing other than pop, at least on their web site, while BMG has other genres.

The tricky thing seems to be shipping for each CD, taxes and some other fees which may not be divulged up front. I think CH said $2.99 per CD shipping plus taxes (do they tax at the regular price, meaning you're paying 8% on $15 or more?). This is also on the initial "free" CDs that you get for joining.

BMG seems to have a better deal, 12 CDs and you only have to buy one at regular prices. But I couldn't tell what they charge for shipping and how they tax.

Any other considerations from people who've used them recently?

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 1:22 pm

Just download em...you'll only pay for bandwidth. LOL

As for those clubs...they are a ripoff in every sense of the word. There is a reason they make money. The 3 dollars per CD shipping is the first way...and the second is charging you 15.99 plus tax and shipping on the CDs you need to buy to fulfill your agreement. You're better off going to best buy and buying cds for 11.99.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 1:42 pm

^^^ Agreed. I joined one of those clubs when I was 17-18 and it was virtually impossible to get out. I felt like I was dealing with the mafia "Everytime you try to get away, they just pull you right back!"

fatheadX · Post by **fatheadX** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:16 pm

A dissenting opinion: I've belonged to Columbia House for the past five or six years and I'm pretty happy with it. They were hit with a class action lawsuit a couple of years back and now they're pretty good at divulging the shipping costs up front, and they are indeed high. Note that they've been on the verge of going out of business the last few years, so they aren't making that much of a killing!

You've hit on the big drawbacks: selection is spotty, it takes a long time for them to get new releases, and shipping costs are high. That said, they usually have a "buy one at reg price, get three free" deal that works out to about $7 to $8 a disc after all the charges. I use it to buy greatest hits albums or fill in the back catalog of someone fairly mainstream. It's not for everyone, but if you can find that many discs you need, it's not that bad of a deal.

By the way, I just went to the website and put four random CDs in my shopping cart. It is charging me 4.5% sales tax. My total bill would be $29.89, with $11.96 of that being 'shipping and processing.'

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:30 pm

I just joined BMG for the 3 or 4th time in my life. I like it. I have never had a problem cancelling. It's a very good way to pickup box sets cheaply as sometimes they are 70% off. The fact that you can't select some CDs with your initial offer is really no big deal because it only applies to the first part of your order. Once you buy one you can use your additional 4 free selections on any CDs.

When I purchased my first CD (and it should be noted that it could be my only full-price purchase per the BMG agreement) this time around there was also a deal for "buy one get 2 free" so I ended up getting 14 CDs for the price of one. The total cost for everything was less than $70. That's a lot cheaper than Best Buy.

I think BMG is a great way to backfill your collection. I ended up picking up a lot older stuff like Rush and Bon Scott-AC/DC.

BBReBozo · Post by **BBReBozo** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:32 pm

Leebs, I just noticed your avatar. What do you think of the new Wilco CD? I'm waffling over whether or not to pick it up.

BTW, I joined BMG years ago and had no problem cancelling after they had the audacity to send me a f***in Michael Franks CD.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:44 pm

Can you guys decline the "Section of the Month" or the Week or whatever online?

So that they don't automatically send you CDs?

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:45 pm

BBReBozo wrote:Leebs, I just noticed your avatar. What do you think of the new Wilco CD? I'm waffling over whether or not to pick it up.

BBR:

I really like the new Wilco CD, but it is all over the place. There are a couple of songs that sound like Neil Young, a couple that mimic the Beatles, I hear a little bit of The Who, Replacements etc. There are three or four songs that stand out, but nothing that stands out as quickly as "War on War", "Heavy Metal Drummer", "Kamera", or "Pot Kettle Black" from YHF. It is a CD that will require many listens to truly appreciate. I am fairly disappointed in the lyrics. Not the content per se, but just the volume.

I told my wife that if this was their first CD I probably wouldn't be a huge Wilco fan, but since I am already a fan I can appreciate it more.

Leebo33 · Post by **Leebo33** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:51 pm

wco81 wrote:Can you guys decline the "Section of the Month" or the Week or whatever online?

So that they don't automatically send you CDs?

Yes, Wco. You can decline selections online. You can choose to get email notification and/or just decline directly on the site.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 3:07 pm

Glad to see it's no longer a pain in the boo-tay to cancel from these things. When I tried cancelling over 10 years ago there was no online site to try and cancel, no phone number to call, so that left you with mail. Needless to say, I had to write several letters before they would cancel my subscription. I ended up having to write a letter stating that I wanted to cancel my subscription and that I would no longer pay for anything they sent me and had it notorized. They finally stopped sending me stuff.

Brando70 · Post by **Brando70** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 3:18 pm

I had been in CH for a few years before cancelling. It's pretty good if you:

a) want to pick up a lot of classic albums and don't care about new releases as much, and...

b) wait for the sales. Unlike most chains, they will actually put good stuff on clearance from time to time. I remember they had a $0.99 sale a couple years ago, and I was able to pick up cool stuff like Aphex Twin, The Orb, and the first Liz Phair album. Even with S&H it was like $3.00 a CD.

I think you actually do save money, even with the regularly priced selections you have to buy. I would say on average I probably paid $7 a CD, which, if you buy a lot of CDs, is nothing to sneeze at.

Oh, and they are no more pesty than a magazine subscription you've cancelled. They will try to win you back but I've seen nothing sneaky.

fatheadX · Post by **fatheadX** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 3:58 pm

Columbia House no longer sends the selection of the month as the default, so you don't need to send anything back to them. I only order stuff from them every four or five months, so I rarely ever think about them. I did notice that once my bonus points got over 300 (you get a free CD for every 75 points), they suddenly wanted to cancel my membership and restart me with the 12 for 1 deal. Kinda strange, but once I used my bonus points, they stopped trying to get me to re-up.

Noledog · Post by **Noledog** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 4:25 pm

I know everyone on the thread is posting about CDs and stuff, but I have done the columbia house DVD club a few times and if done correctly you can build a decent colleciton of disks for pretty cheap.

Here is a link to a forum listing the numbers to enroll or cancel your membership (can also be done through their website, but there are certain disks you can only get by going through the phone).

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread ... did=107726

I did what they said in the post and ordered a bunch of disks that are normally 30-40 bucks in my initial enrollment and ended up paying around 40 bucks for disks that would have cost me 300 bucks.

Just a FYI

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 5:54 pm

Well $5 to $7 a CD isn't bad but obviously nothing like the "12 for 1 deal" covering up the fine print.

Plus, a lot of the selection are older titles so maybe retail price, especialy at sales, isn't that much higher?

In my case, I haven't bought CDs in a long time so the older selection probably won't matter.

I tried downloading a few songs last night. Mostly 128 stuff (isn't broadband suppose to be more widespread? why rip at such bitrates?) and slow downloads. Then you see one song which has all kinds of different time lengths. I hadn't downloaded stuff in a couple of years so I'd heard of spoofing by the RIAA, or fake files on P2P networks. How else would the same song be 4:50 to 8:12 and everything in between?

The DVD club may be worth checking out only because I would get 3000 miles. But I'm kind of easing off on DVDs as the next-gen formats are on the horizon. That's one good thing about audio, the CD has been with us 20 years and still going pretty strong, despite SACD, DVDA and compressed formats.

Brando70 · Post by **Brando70** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 6:59 pm

Personally, I have given up on P2P music downloading. For starters, way too much variation in quality. I agree WCO, wtf is up with the 128k bitrates? It's like I'm listening to a song taped off the radio. Plus there's all kinds of error goofs that pop up from time to time, not to mention the clever RIAA tricks.

I certainly like the pay-per-download idea, but I have limited venues for playing MP3s -- namely my PC and the MP3 player I use for the gym. Other than that, I've got to convert to CD format and burn to CD-Rs.

Also, while I certainly love the convenience of MP3s, they just don't sound quite as good as CDs, even at 192k (which is what I use). There's just a tad bit of "squish" that I can sense, especially on decent speakers. I can especially tell if I convert from MP3 to CD format.

Kazuya · Post by **Kazuya** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:08 pm

wco81 wrote:The DVD club may be worth checking out only because I would get 3000 miles. But I'm kind of easing off on DVDs as the next-gen formats are on the horizon.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be able to play DVD's on whatever plays the next generation...

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:19 pm

Oh they'll play. But I'd rather buy in the new formats too.

Kazuya · Post by **Kazuya** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:28 pm

wco81 wrote:Oh they'll play. But I'd rather buy in the new formats too.

I guess you'd better hold off on buying a house.. they'll have houses on the moon in a few centuries...

Seriously, I don't see why anyone would forgo buying DVD's in the here and now worrying about future formats. Any new format released anytime in the next five years minimum will fail miserably.