Hannie Caulder (VUDU 81932) - HD purchases downgraded to SD

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Bumpity, bump, bump...

I will never forget / forgive this. EVER. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

This was rights theft plain and simple, as my purchase history no longer shows what I MD2D on 1/7/23, just a greyed out rectangle, no film title, and the $2.15 price paid. There was NO STRONG desire to reach out to Paramount to get this resolved for all of us. If you REALLY cared, you would have pushed this HARD with Paramount and then replied here even if they refused to provide HD rights.

In addition, you should have also refunded the MD2D price that all of us affected paid for the HD MD2D rights if we can't even watch the film in SD. As stated previously, I have no stated rights on the Hannie Caulder film page at FAH.com, can't watch the film, etc. Rights (HD, SD - the whole ball of wax) have clearly been taken away when you consider everything that I've described here. Felipe, you can say whatever you want to the contrary, but what I've described here paints an EXTREMELY different picture.

[Toddwrtr]

I started a support ticket with VUDU today after talking to a CS rep on the phone for half an hour about this. I still had the MD2D receipt from January 7th in my email, so I screenshot that and sent it.

You are likely to have better luck contacting Paramount (the studio that owns the film) than contacting Vudu Customer Care Support in getting this fixed.

[Toddwrtr]

Since this is a Paramount release, has anyone tried persistently contacting the studio? That is what I needed to do to get "Tropic Thunder: Director's Cut" fixed, since Vudu kept dragging their feet.

support @ paramountdigitalcopy (dot) com

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Never forget....

Way to go VUDU for never making this right. What a truly pathetic display of apathy and a disgusting rescindence of HD rights that were acquired honestly via MD2D, and then ripped away with nary a peep from any mods to explain the situation. No reply was ever made to a support ticket regarding the situation either.

Way to undermine customer confidence that digital libraries are safe and secure. Stripping rights away that were acquired legally should never happen, but that is exactly what happened here.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

It's funny how no one at Vudu, either here or via my submitted support ticket, is chiming in with an explanation regarding this problem. Doing so would alleviate fears, clarify the situation, and explain how / when it will be resolved. I'm going to keep bumping this, as something needs to be done to make things right to those of us who seem to have had our HDX rights taken away (For those affected, HDX rights are no longer showing in our purchase histories and we cannot view the film in ANY quality despite SD still being available on your end.). It's been over a month since your support representative took my information and evidence regarding the lost rights that many here seem to have experienced with this film. I have heard absolutely nothing back in response in that time. What is the current status of the situation? I don't understand how and why it is taking so long to resolve things. You can't just stay silent and expect that customers will forget this problem ever existed with the passage of time. It's not gonna happen.

[Toddwrtr]

Thank you for your continued efforts on this. I am in the same situation as you and after my initial chat and emails with VUDU I stopped hearing from them... I have all but given up hope that this movie will be restored to my library. They have not even offered to refund the amount I paid, small as it is. Something is terribly wrong with what they term customer service because it seems their model is deflect, blame, and ignore. Kudos to you for fighting another day!

Vudu certainly is not the company it once was under Walmart.

[kurinko]

FYI,

I started a support ticket with VUDU today after talking to a CS rep on the phone for half an hour about this. I still had the MD2D receipt from January 7th in my email, so I screenshot that and sent it. I also sent a screenshot of my purchase history, where it shows on January 7th that I MD2D a movie for $2.15, but there is a big greyed-out rectangle where the movie image should be AND the movie title no longer shows up. The only information that appears next to that transaction is 1/07/2023, Purchased, and $2.15.

If that's not evidence that VUDU no longer has any idea that we purchased HD rights to this film, I don't know what is. For Pete's sake, the name AND picture of the movie don't even appear in the record that traces the purchase of the film. I would call it a massive longshot that anyone affected by this still has rights to the movie in VUDU's system or that VUDU is going to reinstall them without a support ticket moving forward. This is ridiculous.

Thank you for your continued efforts on this. I am in the same situation as you and after my initial chat and emails with VUDU I stopped hearing from them... I have all but given up hope that this movie will be restored to my library. They have not even offered to refund the amount I paid, small as it is. Something is terribly wrong with what they term customer service because it seems their model is deflect, blame, and ignore. Kudos to you for fighting another day!

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

FYI,

I started a support ticket with VUDU today after talking to a CS rep on the phone for half an hour about this. I still had the MD2D receipt from January 7th in my email, so I screenshot that and sent it. I also sent a screenshot of my purchase history, where it shows on January 7th that I MD2D a movie for $2.15, but there is a big greyed-out rectangle where the movie image should be AND the movie title no longer shows up. The only information that appears next to that transaction is 1/07/2023, Purchased, and $2.15.

If that's not evidence that VUDU no longer has any idea that we purchased HD rights to this film, I don't know what is. For Pete's sake, the name AND picture of the movie don't even appear in the record that traces the purchase of the film. I would call it a massive longshot that anyone affected by this still has rights to the movie in VUDU's system or that VUDU is going to reinstall them without a support ticket moving forward. This is ridiculous.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Any chance that someone at VUDU support could chime in with an update???? Again, I D2D this in January 2023 and obtained HDX rights. Instead of having the quality downgraded in my account so that I could AT LEAST view the film in the SD quality that you currently have, I now no longer have the ability to view the film at all. No statement about purchasing rights even appears on the film's VUDU page, which makes it APPEAR as if rights have been taken away. Whether they actually have or not is inconsequential. When VUDU removes the film ownership rights notification from a movie's page that creates a perception that rights HAVE been taken away, even if that's not the case. It's not a smart move. It serves to make customers think that rights have been taken away, and undermines consumer confidence in purchasing films from VUDU. Creating a fear that customer purchases can be suddenly taken away (even if that's not the case) is a lame-brain move. You should NEVER remove a customer's film rights notification sentence from a film's page after they've made a purchase.

The fact that you've not even commented about this situation here in over a month says a lot as well. You create this situation by removing our ability to watch the film at all, by removing all traces of our purchasing rights from the film's VUDU page, and then stay mum about it for weeks on end. Don't tell me you value your customers, because companies that actually do don't pull this schtick. That's three mishandlings of one situation. Kudos to you...

[Toddwrtr]

This should have been handled already. It's insane how long it takes them to get a seemingly small issue like this resolved. Another example is The Blob issue, in which the the 1950's version played the 1988 version in HDX. It took several months for them to finally get the HDX rights from Criterion and switch the film over to the correct version.

I somehow doubt anyone on VUDU's end is beating down doors to get this straightened out. I always wonder if a single email is sent to the studio that then goes ignored, thus making these issues fester for an ungodly amount of time. If an email doesn't fix something for me, I call the company up to resolve the issue instead. Vudu should be doing the same. The studio should want to get this fixed, and I can't understand why they'd be holding back HDX rights. This is yet another ridiculously drawn out studio situation that has no business taking so long to be resolved.

Unfortunately, when it comes to PVOD streaming, it seems that no one wants to take ownership of any issues that a consumer may bring up. All too frequently, when I contact a retailer like Vudu to report an issue, the knee-jerk response is "That is what the studio sent to us, and unfortunately there is nothing else we can do." When contacting the studio, their knee-jerk response is typically "We have no control over how our content is presented by a retailer."

To make matters worse, I have been trying to get Vudu to retrieve both "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "Tropic Thunder: Director's Cut" from their respective studios with the correct aspect ratios. Vudu has both films in a cropped 1.78:1 when they should be in a letterboxed 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The response I received today from Vudu customer service blamed my device for this issue:

"Please note that the aspect ratio of a movie can only be fixed or adjusted on your device (tv/ computer/phone). From our side, we are unable to assist with that."

That was a few hours ago, and I am trying to come up with a polite response, but failing miserably.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

Any update on this issue? It's been 1 month since this thread was started, and still this movie does not show up in my library, neither in SD or HDX, which is what I purchased. If VUDU is not able to fix this issue for whatever reason, what is the possibility of a refund or credit?

This should have been handled already. It's insane how long it takes them to get a seemingly small issue like this resolved. Another example is The Blob issue, in which the the 1950's version played the 1988 version in HDX. It took several months for them to finally get the HDX rights from Criterion and switch the film over to the correct version.

I somehow doubt anyone on VUDU's end is beating down doors to get this straightened out. I always wonder if a single email is sent to the studio that then goes ignored, thus making these issues fester for an ungodly amount of time. If an email doesn't fix something for me, I call the company up to resolve the issue instead. Vudu should be doing the same. The studio should want to get this fixed, and I can't understand why they'd be holding back HDX rights. This is yet another ridiculously drawn out studio situation that has no business taking so long to be resolved.

[kurinko]

Any update on this issue? It's been 1 month since this thread was started, and still this movie does not show up in my library, neither in SD or HDX, which is what I purchased. If VUDU is not able to fix this issue for whatever reason, what is the possibility of a refund or credit?

[FelipeF]

That's great news, but it still doesn't explain why those of us that D2D'd this back in January in HDX quality are now showing in our accounts that we no longer have the ability to view the movie - even in the currently available SD quality. That's not a good sign, and people understandably are concerned about the status of their previously purchased viewing rights.

I truly hope that we don't end up having to fight like a dog (A.K.A. hassle repeatedly with customer service) to get our purchasing rights reinstated in the future if and when the HD encode has been obtained.

This issue requires additional clarity about why it seems as if you've deleted evidence of customers' prior purchase of this movie from their accounts, which is the situation directly facing myself and many others here. We also deserve to know whether those purchasing rights will return once the HD encode has (hopefully) been acquired. It should be common courtesy (and common sense) to let customers know about these kinds of things when a purchased film has been downgraded or removed from their accounts.

We do not delete any "evidence" of any customers prior purchases made on their accounts. Everything is kept on record, including all deletions and refunds. Now there might have been an error in listing an HDX encode when we only have SD. This might be the case for this movie so there might not be an HDX stream available for us. We are waiting on hearing back from the studio on the HDX availability.

[lou_493@yahoo.com]

We are already working on this title and are reaching out to the studio if we can acquire the HDX encode.

That's great news, but it still doesn't explain why those of us that D2D'd this back in January in HDX quality are now showing in our accounts that we no longer have the ability to view the movie - even in the currently available SD quality. That's not a good sign, and people understandably are concerned about the status of their previously purchased viewing rights.

I truly hope that we don't end up having to fight like a dog (A.K.A. hassle repeatedly with customer service) to get our purchasing rights reinstated in the future if and when the HD encode has been obtained.

This issue requires additional clarity about why it seems as if you've deleted evidence of customers' prior purchase of this movie from their accounts, which is the situation directly facing myself and many others here. We also deserve to know whether those purchasing rights will return once the HD encode has (hopefully) been acquired. It should be common courtesy (and common sense) to let customers know about these kinds of things when a purchased film has been downgraded or removed from their accounts.

[FelipeF]

We are already working on this title and are reaching out to the studio if we can acquire the HDX encode.