UV MOVIES BEING LOST and/or DOWNGRADED at VUDU (starting on August 12)

[FelipeF]

We do appreciate it FelipeF...now, about the online Instawatch issues...

Yes, I know... I'll ask again...

[Rex Strother]

My movies are back at MYUV and back in VUDU. However, they have not ported back to MA (as of now) and are still missing there.
For the titles I had lost (but which are now restored), they now say BUY at MA.
This is only for the 3 movies that I lost via this UV-VUDU glitch.

[FelipeF]

My movies are back at MYUV and back in VUDU. However, they have not ported back to MA (as of now) and are still missing there.
For the titles I had lost (but which are now restored), they now say BUY at MA.
This is only for the 3 movies that I lost via this UV-VUDU glitch.

Can you check MA one more time and see if they are back?

[roycejr]

I hope the MA thing gets fixed...maybe that will fix my 700+ that were removed from MA back on 5/24/2019.

[Rex Strother]

Can you check MA one more time and see if they are back?

Just rechecked - all are still showing BUY at MA. My friends are all reporting the same issue - their movies got back to VUDU, but are not porting again to MA.

Perhaps UV titles porting into VUDU could be converted to VUDU "purchases" ... and then those purchases would push up to MA and resolve all the missing/reduced resolution titles?

[FelipeF]

Just rechecked - all are still showing BUY at MA. My friends are all reporting the same issue - their movies got back to VUDU, but are not porting again to MA.

Perhaps UV titles porting into VUDU could be converted to VUDU "purchases" ... and then those purchases would push up to MA and resolve all the missing/reduced resolution titles?

Can you tell me what titles are the ones missing from MA?

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Can you check MA one more time and see if they are back?

What about the 224 MA rights deletions and 3 UHD-to-HD MA downgrades that I experienced on 4/6/2019? Many other VUDU forum members have shared their first-hand accounts (like roycejr above) here about this having happened to them as well, and yet until today no one at VUDU has acknowledged on this forum that this issue was occurring or being worked on. MA says that VUDU needs to communicate / compare notes with them in order for these deleted MA rights to be restored. Is that even happening?

I am encouraged by your acknowledgment that some kind of UV / MA rights issue occurred on 8/12. That said, I'd like the missing MA rights back that you mistakenly told MA to remove over 4 months ago. You can pretend that it never happened, but you can't explain away that the vast majority of the films in my library that were affected on April 6th were films that I had already owned for several months / years. In my MA transaction history each deleted / downgraded title is tagged as "Vudu" with regard to the retailer initiating the transaction (i.e. MA rights removal), so you are most definitely 100% responsible, and therefore have an obligation to make this right. How many more months / years is it going to be before that happens? Four months should have been more than enough time for this to have been researched and repaired, but yet here we are.

BTW, I have never once unlinked my UV account from my VUDU account since well before January of this year, so none of this was caused by that. I've also had a support ticket open since late June. Your support rep asked ME to provide a list that details every title that you told MA to remove / downgrade the rights to. It took me 3-4 hours to compile, and I have not received a reply in the month and a half since I stayed up well past midnight to provide it to you.

[Rex Strother]

Can you tell me what titles are the ones missing from MA?

HARDWIRED, MURDER IN THE FIRST, I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL (UNRATED)

[DETROIT]

Folks, we are aware of this issue and have been investigating the root cause. I'll respond once we have a definite answer as to what's going on.

The original error, the root cause was UV deleted duplicates on users UV accounts and Vudu shows a transaction after already porting. MA sees it a refund/being removed without seeing the title is still there in its highest format. All you have to do is repush everyone?s current correct format of those rights of everything owned and the problem will be solved. When will this be fixed?

[DETROIT]

What about the 224 MA rights deletions and 3 UHD-to-HD MA downgrades that I experienced on 4/6/2019? Many other VUDU forum members have shared their first-hand accounts (like roycejr above) here about this having happened to them as well, and yet until today no one at VUDU has acknowledged on this forum that this issue was occurring or being worked on. MA says that VUDU needs to communicate / compare notes with them in order for these deleted MA rights to be restored. Is that even happening?

I am encouraged by your acknowledgment that some kind of UV / MA rights issue occurred on 8/12. That said, I'd like the missing MA rights back that you mistakenly told MA to remove over 4 months ago. You can pretend that it never happened, but you can't explain away that the vast majority of the films in my library that were affected on April 6th were films that I had already owned for several months / years. In my MA transaction history each deleted / downgraded title is tagged as "Vudu" with regard to the retailer initiating the transaction (i.e. MA rights removal), so you are most definitely 100% responsible, and therefore have an obligation to make this right. How many more months / years is it going to be before that happens? Four months should have been more than enough time for this to have been researched and repaired, but yet here we are.

BTW, I have never once unlinked my UV account from my VUDU account since well before January of this year, so none of this was caused by that. I've also had a support ticket open since late June. Your support rep asked ME to provide a list that details every title that you told MA to remove / downgrade the rights to. It took me 3-4 hours to compile, and I have not received a reply in the month and a half since I stayed up well past midnight to provide it to you.

I co-sign this. Same issue here. I NEVER UNLINKED MY UV.

[bestquality]

The root cause was UV deleted duplicates on users UV accounts and Vudu shows a transaction after already porting. MA sees it a refund/being removed without seeing the title is still there in its highest format. All you have to do is repush everyone?s current correct format of those rights of everything owned and the problem will be solved.

That was the last trigger. This trigger was slightly different in that UV didn't only remove duplicates. The Movies Anywhere symptoms are the same in both cases though. Every deleted UV rights token triggers a MA refund, but every additional UV right does NOT trigger a new MA purchase record. What follows is obviously my own opinion, nothing more.

How does Vudu pass along UV rights to Movies Anywhere? As far as I can tell, when it sees the first UV rights token for a movie, it sends a transaction to your MA account noting that you are entitled to it. If it sees additional rights tokens for the same movie it does not send additional transactions, effectively consolidating them all into a single transaction at MA. Reasonable behavior.

What happens when a UV rights token is removed? What should happen is that when Vudu sees the last UV rights token for a movie has been removed, it sends a refund transaction to your MA account indicating that you are no longer entitled to it. Instead, Vudu incorrectly issues a refund transaction the first (and maybe every) time it sees a UV rights token removed. This is a bug.

If you have acquired two or more UV rights tokens for a movie and one is removed, Vudu tells MA that you are no longer entitled to it by issuing a refund. MA only had a single record saying that you are entitled to it because of the aforementioned consolidation, and now has a single refund saying that you are not. The two records offset and the movie is removed from your MA account. But you can still see the movie in your Vudu account because you have the remaining UV rights token(s) and are actually entitled to it.

And because of the consolidation logic, even if a UV rights token is later added or restored, no new transactions are issued to MA that will restore your entitlements there.

For whatever reason in late May, it appears UV attempted to consolidate UV rights by deleting duplicate rights tokens. This triggers this bug at Vudu, which probably very few people noticed earlier because very few people had UV purchases removed and rights tokens deleted.

It would be nice if Vudu at least acknowledged the problem and that there would be a solution forthcoming, even if they can't say what the solution is or when it would be implemented. Silence lets things fester and makes people think the problem has not been heard or will never be addressed, which is surely frustrating and disappointing.

[MobbyCat]

I was affected by this issue today in the same way that Rex described. My movies disappeared, then reappeared in Vudu, but are still missing in Movies Anywhere due to the spurious deletions/refunds that Vudu sent to Movies Anywhere while the movies were gone. I have 22 movies missing in Movies Anywhere, including Life of Pi, Persepolis, Pale Rider, and many more.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

That was the last trigger. This trigger was slightly different in that UV didn't only remove duplicates. The Movies Anywhere symptoms are the same in both cases though. Every deleted UV rights token triggers a MA refund, but every additional UV right does NOT trigger a new MA purchase record. What follows is obviously my own opinion, nothing more.

How does Vudu pass along UV rights to Movies Anywhere? As far as I can tell, when it sees the first UV rights token for a movie, it sends a transaction to your MA account noting that you are entitled to it. If it sees additional rights tokens for the same movie it does not send additional transactions, effectively consolidating them all into a single transaction at MA. Reasonable behavior.

What happens when a UV rights token is removed? What should happen is that when Vudu sees the last UV rights token for a movie has been removed, it sends a refund transaction to your MA account indicating that you are no longer entitled to it. Instead, Vudu incorrectly issues a refund transaction the first (and maybe every) time it sees a UV rights token removed. This is a bug.

If you have acquired two or more UV rights tokens for a movie and one is removed, Vudu tells MA that you are no longer entitled to it by issuing a refund. MA only had a single record saying that you are entitled to it because of the aforementioned consolidation, and now has a single refund saying that you are not. The two records offset and the movie is removed from your MA account. But you can still see the movie in your Vudu account because you have the remaining UV rights token(s) and are actually entitled to it.

And because of the consolidation logic, even if a UV rights token is later added or restored, no new transactions are issued to MA that will restore your entitlements there.

For whatever reason in late May, it appears UV attempted to consolidate UV rights by deleting duplicate rights tokens. This triggers this bug at Vudu, which probably very few people noticed earlier because very few people had UV purchases removed and rights tokens deleted.

It would be nice if Vudu at least acknowledged the problem and that there would be a solution forthcoming, even if they can't say what the solution is or when it would be implemented. Silence lets things fester and makes people think the problem has not been heard or will never be addressed, which is surely frustrating and disappointing.

This is the common belief, but of my 227 MA movie rights deletions / downgrades from 4/6/19, only a very small handful had duplicate UV rights in my Ultraviolet locker. Almost all of them had only one set of UV rights.

Many forum members here began complaining about MA rights being removed / downgraded clear back in early April. The worst part is that this has continued to happen to DIFFERENT people on DIFFERENT days across DIFFERENT months. After it happened the first time, something should have been done to put a stop to it. My guess is that VUDU had no idea what caused the problem or simply didn't care about putting the time into preventing additional instances.

I have absolutely no idea what prompted VUDU to issue MA rights refund requests in my situation, but UV likely was tinkering around with my UV locker in some manner, prompting VUDU to issue MA rights refunds for some reason other than deletion of duplicate UV licenses. No matter the case it is now VUDU's responsibility to fix this, as they are the ones who caused these MA rights to be removed due to whatever UV-rights processing bug is embedded within their system.

Their lack of customer consideration in this matter has been absolutely abhorrent. This is not something that should be at the bottom of their list of priorities, as making customers wait for multiple months only serves to frustrate and upset them - especially when the waiting is accompanied by abject silence from the very company responsible for the problem. You summed this up beautifully, and it describes my own feelings about the situation. Silence makes people wonder whether ANYTHING is being done to make things right.

[qazzaq]

Everything people are going through are the reasons why I have left my vudu account unlinked from MA for over the last year. I admit, however, that it is an inelegant solution akin to pounding a small nail with a sledgehammer (worst side effect: now you can not redeem most codes on vudu since there is a new requirement to be linked to MA - really hoping this can be adjusted at some point).

I can't really blame vudu too much as there are multiple services all interacting with each other. We all want everything to work perfectly, and when it doesn't it makes everyone upset - especially when it involves purchases that we are unable to access the way you are entitled to.

I think once the UV backend is actually shut down it will put an end to all of these odd issues that have been popping up the last couple of years (hopefully!). Maybe there is still a chance MA will shut down and UV will come back!! I know, I know, but I can dream!

[sankoni]

My movies are back at MYUV and back in VUDU. However, they have not ported back to MA (as of now) and are still missing there.
For the titles I had lost (but which are now restored), they now say BUY at MA.
This is only for the 3 movies that I lost via this UV-VUDU glitch.

Rex, just out of curiosity, how can you tell titles were missing/restored at MYUV since there doesn't seem to be a way to log in there any longer?