Help is just a click of a button away for consumers who are fed up with the limited range and late fees of conventional DVD rental stores. Now you can rent movies from the comfort of your home and all you need is a credit card and an internet connection.
Based on a new DVD rental model that is revolutionising the way consumers the world over watch movies, PushPlay is South Africa’s first online DVD rental service that offers subscribers DVDs delivered straight to their door.
For a monthly subscription, customers can log on to the PushPlay website and select from the 60Â 000 titles to generate a wish list. For R89 a month, customers can rent one DVD at a time, for R109 two at a time, for R139 three at a time, for R179 four at a time and R239 secures five DVDs at any one time.
Customers are able to browse by genre, title, actor or director and comment on or recommend movies to fellow customers.
As the selected titles become available they are mailed to the subscriber, who can keep the DVDs as long as required.
“Once you have selected your list online, you can put your feet up and relax,” says Darren McLean, one of PushPlay’s founders. “There’s a constant flow of freshly selected DVDs delivered to your door without you ever having to enter a video store.”
When customers are finished watching the DVDs, they drop them into one of the orange PushPlay boxes outside their local Spar or coffee shop.
When PushPlay receives returned DVDs in the mail, the next available movies on the list are sent to the subscriber. It is delivered within two days, ensuring an endless supply of DVDs.
Similar online DVD rental companies are already operating in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Germany, Japan, Turkey and Mexico. The most successful is Netflix, which operates in the US and has 6,8million customers and 90Â 000 titles. Netflix mails 1,6million DVDs every day.
Debora Wynne and McLean founded PushPlay in October last year. The had returned from living in the UK and were looking for a business opportunity.
McLean says he was exposed to online DVD rental services as a customer of Lovefilm, the largest UK service with a customer base of almost 400Â 000. He thought the service was such a great idea that when he returned to South Africa he looked into the possibility of setting up a similar service.
After negotiations with the South African Post Office and a series of test runs, they launched PushPlay in Cape Town. The Post Office installed a purpose-built track and trace facility for PushPlay subscribers so it can track the discs at any time.
“You can be absolutely sure of getting your discs within one to two working days,” says Deon Louw, spokesperson for the Post Office.
McLean says the service ran in Cape Town only from October last year till September and during this period they ironed out all the hiccups and problem areas.
Satisfied that the service was working effectively, PushPlay launched in Johannesburg in September. It has a meagre 3Â 000 customers, but McLean says it has plans to launch countrywide by the end of next year and has set itself the goal of securing 20Â 000 customers by the end of 2008. PushPlay plans to expand the service to Bloemfontein, Durban, East London and Port Elizabeth next year.
McLean says the majority of PushPlay’s customers are people looking for films they can’t find in conventional stores, such as art films, old classics, Manga films or TV series, which subscribers choose to watch at their leisure. If a subscriber is looking for something that is not in PushPlay’s range, they will order it.