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PlanetDVD Store: WebWatch One Unhappy Customer

If you're a fan of Hill Street Blues, a groundbreaking 80s crime drama that ran seven seasons on NBC-TV in the United States, you probably know the series copyright holder, 20th Century Fox, has no plans to release seasons 3-7 on DVD. (Even Hulu.com only has seasons 1-3.) We know no way, short of catching reruns on some obscure cable channel, to see any Hill Streets after season 3. That is, until PlanetDVD came to our rescue! We found a sponsored link ad for their store on IMDB's Hill Street Blues index page. PlanetDVD advertises a "brand new box set" for $129.99, all seven seasons complete. So we decided to do a little mystery shopping.

To our surprise, given PlanetDVD's online reputation and red flags such as no address or phone number on the site, a blind registration, a look and name-sound similar to legitimate online store DVD Planet, and a cut-and-paste job from Wikipedia, they actually sent us something resembling a "box set." Sort of.

First, the box arrived with no return address or contact information, except the number from an apartment block in Qingdao, China. The packing slip listed in the customs declaration box the contents were a "gift accessory" worth $15.The "box set" had a suspiciously homemade look to it, with three plastic videocassette boxes stuffed full of hand-numbered discs, each bearing a simliar "Hill Street Blues" logo to the official seasons one and two releases by Fox. The video boxes were lined with hand-photocopied paper.

Predictably, seasons one and two were ripped directly from the official Fox release, with relatively good quality. Not so great for seasons 3-7, however. Source material was recorded from Britain's Channel 4 on-demand service, its intro logo appearing at the beginning of each episode. At least three of the 24 season 3 and 4 discs are unwatchable, either due to heavy signal dropout, intensive skipping, or just failing to play. Those that did play featured picture quality comparable perhaps to a VHS tape, not a DVD.

We tried complaining via PlanetDVD's customer service e-mail, but received no reply.
So: Don't buy DVDs from this online store. You're probably going to get poor quality, pirated DVDs.

We'll be posting more here about other possibly shady online DVD shops selling those hard-to-find TV shows and movies.

Posted by Beau Brendler on May 11, 2009 01:55 PM |

Comments

I ORDERED BARNEY MILLER COMPLETE SERIES OF 22 DVDS
FROM DVDPLANET STORE THEY WERE JUNK!!! STRAIGHT FROM CHINA!!!. WHEN I COMPLAINED TO PLANET DVD STORE I WAS TOLD THEY NEVER RELEASED THE COMPLETE SERIES AND WHAT I GOT WAS A FAN COLLETION OF DVDS (RECOREDED STRAIGHT FROM A TV SET WITH THE TVLAND LOGO ON THE BOTTOM. BUT THEY OFFERED TO REORDER THEM FROM A DIFFERENT SUPPLIER. WE RECEIVED THEM A FEW WEEKS LATER AND THEY ALSO WERE SENT STRAIGHT FROM CHINA!! THEY WERE WORST THAN THE FIRST TWO VOLUME SET!!!!! IF DVD PLANET STORE AND PLANET DVD STORE ARE TWO DIFFERENT WEB MERCHANTS THEY ARE BOTH CROOKED AS A RIVER BED BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT ANSWERED MY LAST E-MAIL TO KATHY CONNOR E-MAIL STOREDISCSMANIA@GMAIL.COM THEY DON'T WANT TO HERE FROM ANY MORE COMPLAINTS OR THEY WOULD MAKE THIS RIGHT WE PAID $69.54 FOR THESE TAPES DON'T ORDER ANYTHING FROM EITHER ONE OF THESE WEB SITE. THEY MUST BE ONE IN THE SAME.

SARAH WYGANT
11176 COUNTY ROAD 10
MONTPELIER, OHIO 43543
kathywygant@verizon.net

Posted by: SARAH WYGANT | November 23, 2009 01:08 PM

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