Hi people! I was curious as to what everyone's experiences have been with them. I've chatted with the owner before on the ADT chat and he seemed like a great guy. I decided to place a decent sized ($400+) order consisting of both regular and a few adult titles. Some of them are preorders and I found, on the last part of the ordering process, that they will charge extra to ship when things become available. Okay, I admit that some of the companies have spoiled me over the last year or two with more liberal shipping policies. I'm wondering if a proposal I made to them via email will be accepted (essentially a compromise on shipping costs) but I can wait if need be (my collection is good sized). To the point, has anyone bought from them as a regular customer? Have they been as good as I think they'll be? Another member here has indicated suspicion at them for not participating in the price search feature but I'm not sure if that suspicion is warranted. It might be a technical matter or just them wanting to limit future pricing wars (a big concern these days). I found a number of titles to be very competitively priced when casually glancing through the site. A new member seems to think they are swell. I take that with a grain of salt because he made conflicting statements about 5 star. I do trust Steph about these matters and she thinks they are a good company. That's enough for me to make a good sized order by itself but I was still looking for some other feedback. Thanks
HoustonDon - I would like to clarify the situtation with Adult DVD Empire and our price search. I had a nice conversation with the owner of Adult DVD Empire about a week ago regarding participation in our price search. They are interested and do plan on being involved in the price search at some point but have their development staff working on other projects at the present time. Also, keep us posted on the policy suggestion. I think it's great that ADT members are willing to provide the stores with feedback on ways to improve. [This message has been edited by Drew Black (edited June 23, 2000).]
I've received a few emails this morning from people in regards to the company that were, shall we say, less than favorable. Apparently, DVD Empire had a boxed set on sale and then increased the price (which I bought it for) and then retroactively increased it again-even for preorders. My concern is two-fold. If I order a product and the order is accepted, a deal is made. After that point, it isn't fair to increase the price on the customer. What is gnawing at me even more is that they never notified me of the increase yet my order reflects the new, higher, price. I'm not going to go into the situation any more than that in this forum but it really makes me wonder. If push comes to shove, I'll cancel the item from my order and decide if they should be given a second chance. I don't want a company going broke from a dumb mistake they made but at the same time they should at least come clean about it and make an offer to those of us who want a fair deal.
I was just reading something about that a couple minutes ago. It seems they are going to correct the price change (according to the people who have emailed/called Customer Service) so if you ordered it for the lower price - you will get it for the lower price. ------------------ -[url=464748]Richard</A Proud to be in California!!
I spoke with Erica, a super nice CSR, and she confirmed that they would honor the original price. Some people got it for about $71 (it cost me about $84) and it was due to a studio trying to cheat them with a newer, higher MSRP. I think the problem for some of us has been that their system allowed their prices to incease on already accepted orders. Hopefully, they will change the automatic nature of the system so this won't happen in the future. I don't want them to lose money (my understanding is that they will force the studio to keep the agreed upon price originally offered them) and would've let them cancel the title if need be (you can get the titles that make up the set at Columbia House for about $9 each) but she said it was okay. When I placed my order originally, I was clueless that this was a big deal. Having received emails about it, I checked out the dvdtalk forums and saw a lot of posts concerning the matter. I noticed two things: 1) A lot of grumpy people were giving the company no slack at all which struck me as unfair to the company. and... 2) Everyone who spoke with Erica thought she was great and that she probably saved more customers for the company than fixing the price did.
I used to order from Adult DVD Empire a lot. However, I haven't ordered anything from them in hte last 6 month, nor do I intend to do so again. I used to order from them, even though their prices are higher than many other sites because their service was second to none. Usually, if you ordered early enough in the day, your order would be in hte mail the same day it was ordered, and since they are located in Pennsylvania, I would often get my orders the next day (using standard shipping). The thing that has stopped me from orderering from them was their service went downhill, and they did nothing to remedy the situation. In 3 of the first 5 orders the I made from Adult DVD Empire this year, at least one of the discs that I received was not the disc that I ordered. In each case the disc was something with a similar title (Part 1 instead of Part 2, things like that). What this means is that they are picking inventory incorrectly. Items have a part number for exactly this reason. When the pickers get inventory, they should be picking the item by number instead of the title. I manage an IS group that supports the warehouse operation in my company. The people in the warehouse that we recently dumped used to do the same thing. When we took over our own warehousing operation, we took the product name off of the pick tickets so that they couldn't look name. After they hqave the item, we will show them the name to verify that they didn't mis-pick. The part that pissed me off was that they refuse to refund the return shipping cost of the discs, even though it was their screw up that caused me to have to return them. There is no way that I am going to continue to buy from them when: their prices are higher than other stores, they have a flawed warehouse operation (picking by title instead of part number), and then I have to pay an extra $3.20 on top of that to return the discs when they fuck up.
I've used Empire routinely for a period of about two and a half years and have found their service to be, without a single exception, the best around. I recommend them highly and have no doubt they will live up to your expectations.
A couple of clarifications... The reason we haven't entered any price searches is that at the present time we are restructuring our pricing, and we want the searches to reflect that update. We should have our prices to several searches within the next two weeks. As far as the mis-priced Box set. All customers that pre-booked that title at the lesser cost have had their pricing restored to that lesser price. And lastly, about inventory being pulled by item number vs. title. Obviously, the item number system is more accurate. However, approximately 90% of adult DVD's do not issue item numbers. so we decided to stick with the title system. I assure you that while the isolated mis-pull will occur, for the most part our warehouse workers are incredibly accurate. I hope this clears things up a bit.
Mike (aka: MasterB), thanks for the official clarification. I was going to have the in stock items shipped and then switch it back to ship all at once for the rest of the order but over the weekend several of the in stock items went on backorder so it wouldn't be worth the extra cost. I'll have to wait. :l Thanks again (and tell erica we all said "Hi")...
I wanted to give an update to a post that I made here last week. In reply to the post that I made, I received both an e-mail and phone call from DVD Empires VP of Operations. He expressed concerns over the problems that I have had. He said that company policy was that I should have received refunds for the return shipping costs that I had incurred, and that he would take care of issing the appropriate credit. He also offered me a free disc for my troubles. He agreed with my concern over picking inventory by title instead of part number, but attributed it to a flaw in their software that they are hoping to correct. However he also stated that they historically have had only about a 3% shipping error rate, and that my having 3 shipping errors in such a short time was an aberration. He's probably right about that, but I still believe that even a 3% error rate is way too high (here's an example of why picking by title doesn't work: there are two different DVD's that DVDEmpire sells, Mind Games and Mindgames. I don't care how careful the people in the warehouse are, when there are different discs with such similar titles, there are going to be mistakes). Although I still have issues with the way that they are fulfilling orders, I have to admit that I was very impressed that they cared enough about my problem that they went out of their way to contact me immediately.
Personally, I will not order from anyone else unless there's a title I can't get from DVD Empire. Their website is sooooo much better than anything else out there. I don't even bother doing price searches. I'm willing to pay a little extra for the superior user experience and customer service of DVD Empire. Who else has order tracking, order history, a wish list, screenshots, huge boxcover images, customer reviews, professional reviews, scene indexes and cross-reference links on just about *everything*!!! The site is a true joy to use. It's like the Amazon of adult DVD sites. There's no other site out there that even comes close. I'm sorry to hear that other's have had problems with them. So far, except for the annoying procedure of having to FAX them some info for my first order (I'm in Canada), I've had nothing but great service from them. That's where I go to buy all my DVD's... both Adult and Mainstream. BTW, I have no relationship with DVD Empire at all other than being a happy customer.
Takeo - Your feedback is very typical of what we receive about Empire. It certainly doesn't make us think that you work for them. (Or even that your cousin's friend's former college roomate's girlfiend works for them.) It's nice to hear about any store that treats their customers right.
mrB I tried to order from them many months ago. But when I went through the checkout section I got a message like "there are adult items in your order, please remove any adult items in order to complete your order". Basically, it wouldn't let me buy any porn! Stick with [url=138595]www.adultdvdnow.com</A instead.
In response to this thread, I would like to get my 2 cents worth. I dealt with Adult DVD Empire only once, last year, and prior to buying a DVD player. I wanted to order a few VCDs that I could play on my PC. They weren't that expensive, so I ordered 4 titles (3 Seymour Butts/Shane and the Pam/Tommy Lee VCDs). They sent me 2 of the correct discs and 2 CD-ROM versions of the others. I e-mailed them and asked them about the error. They asked me to send the wrong disks back. So I did. And what did they send me back? 2 COPIES of the same CD-ROM version of one of the titles ("Seymour Butts:Bustin' Out My Best"), even though I included in the return package, photocopies of the the covers with the corners circled which show the difference between the words "CD-ROM" and "CD-I" or "VCD". I gave up! Since the cost of returning the discs again outweighed the costs of the discs (at least to me) and wanting t avoid the hassle, I never bothered to send them back. One of the discs is still sealed! Since moving to DVD, I have been using and will stick with AdultDVDNow.
