A Month Of Fatso

January12

Before school had finished for the year, I was lucky enough to acquire a promo code for a one month free trial of Fatso. Fatso is basically what Netflix is in the US, except in New Zealand. Fatso allows you to rent DVDs from their website which they deliver in the mail to you instead of you going to the store and picking them up.

You start off by adding movies you want to rent into a queue. They have a large selection of titles, over 22,000 according to the website. Not being a huge movie person, I didn’t find the selection lacking, but more overwhelming for me. I feel that the range is more than adequate for any normal movie loving person. You can view movies by genre or by new release, most popular or any of their other categories. You can also search for a title if you want. This service works best if you have a large queue, and in that queue you have some titles that are not new release. If you only go for new releases, I think you are going to be disappointed with this service.

When you have titles in your queue, Fatso will send you out the number of DVDs according to your plan. For the trail, I had Unlimited with 3 DVD’s at a time. When you are looking at your queue, beside the movies that are out, it will say how high the demand for that title is. This will give you a good indication of how long it could be till you will be able to get that movie. When a disc is available for rent, there is a “Get Now” button which will automatically add the DVD to your dispatch queue ready to be sent out to you. For the new releases, it felt like a race most of the time, which the “Get Now” button only showing up on the hour, and you had to be very fast to get it. Sometimes the service would go down because of the demand, which is very poor on their part. I think they should have a better way of handling New Releases. However I was lucky to get 2 new releases on the day of their release automatically without having to use the “Get Now” feature.

You can see the status of the DVD in your dispatch queue. When the DVD has been sent out, it will say the date that the movie has been sent out to you. The service was really fast with the movie coming the next day, expect for weekends (which i understandable.) When you get the movie you are free to watch it as many times as you like and keep it for as long as you want (well for as long as you are continuing your subscription) and can send it back at your leisure. To send it back, back you just put it in the included envelope which is freepost and put it in any postbox. Simple. During the Christmas season, it did take about a week for it to return to them, although that is to do with the postal service and not Fatso. Although after the Christmas season, it only took 3 days to get there, which is much better. When you sent the movie back, you can go on the site and tell them you have shipped it back and they will then dispatch replacement DVDs, even before the ones you’ve sent have returned. The idea of this is that you’ll get movies while the other ones are still in transit so this will minimize waiting time and give you the best experience form the service.

One last thing I want to mention about the service is it’s movie recommendations. How this works is that when you rate movies on the service, it will go and find movies that people with a similar taste like and give you recommendations of movies they liked. This is sort of how the algorithm works. I found it to be very average, mainly because it kept recommending me TV shows when I just wanted movies. There was no way for me to say I was not interested in television shows so it would stop recommending me them. Maybe if I could have done that, the movie recommendations could have been better. I really needed good recommendations from movies to see, and unfortunately this service failed me there.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to continue my service and needed to cancel it. They make it very easy to do so and even help you out by extending your subscription time so you can watch and send back those movies that you still have lying around your home. 2 weeks is more than generous to give you to return these DVDs. In that amount of time, you can watch them half a dozen times and then send them back on time. They don’t delete your account when you leave them either, meaning you ratings, reviews and queue still remains for whenever you decide you want to come back, or in my case when you can afford it. Kudos to them for making the leaving of the service a great experience. It makes me feel bad for having to leave them in the first place.

Overall, I did love this service and would recommend it to anyone looking for a Netflix service, or anyone who loves renting movies. I think it’s great value for anyone that is more than a casual movies watcher. The postage both ways is fast and you will always have a movie in your hands. If I could afford it, I would have definitely continued my subscription with them. Do give Fatso a try. They have a 2 week free trial which is plenty of time to get a feel for the service and fall in love with it. After that, plans start at $10, although for the Unlimited with 3 DVD’s at a time will cost you only $32. If anyone out there wants to pay for a 1 year subscription to Fatso for me, feel free to!