BigPond Movies

BigPond, (originally called 'Fetch Me Movies'), is the biggest online DVD rental company in Australia. Their catalogue of 40,000+ titles is more than a dozen times more than the average rental store and is currently the highest of any online DVD rental company in Australia.

BigPond's website is easy to navigate, offering browsing by genre, actor, director, and language. BigPond also includes recommendations, and listings by award winners, all time top 50, critic recommendations, and even provides film trailers. Our only real design criticism is that their search engine isn't as advanced as some of the other sites.

We like the idea of BigPond's 'returned option' which allows you to tell them that you've returned a DVD so they can send you the next one - a major plus if you live some distance from their nearest distributor. Or, at least that's the theory - we've received reports that it sometimes seems to make little difference.

In the past year BigPond has added lots of additional content, like trailers, critics reviews, and an assortment of favorite lists. In fact, they have something anyone can create, a PopList. These are created by BigPond Movies members on anything and everything, from the general ("My All Time Favourite Movies") to special interest ("Buffy's Greatest Slayings"), and the downright strange ("Films with Green in the Title"). They're a great way for people to explore different films and interests they might not otherwise be exposed to.

The size of BigPond's High Definition Blu-ray disc inventory is difficult to discern, as they list the defunct HD-DVD format in the same category, but we estimate they stock around 900+ Blu-Ray titles; very slightly more than Quickflix. BigPond has also launched a download service, the first Australian DVD company to do so.

Of course with the advantages of a big company some drawbacks--BigPond just can't match the customer care that some of the smaller companies pride themselves on. The vast majority of the time this won't be an issue, but if you do have a problem or a disc gets lost in the post, expect them to be slow to respond to customer emails--we've scored them lower on Service for this.

 

Prices: BigPond changed its pricing plans in April 2008, streamlining the choices and making the cheaper across the board. They start at $9.95/month for 2 discs at-a-time (with a limit of only 2 per month--working out to $4.98 per disc) and allowing cancellation at any time. Then there is a $12.95, 2 out, 3 max per month tariff (averaging out to $4.31 per disc), the very popular $19.95 plan, 3 discs out at once, for a total of 8 rentals in the month (averaging only $2.49 per disc--the best value deal in Australia), and finally, 4 out for $29.95, to with a maximum of 12 discs per month (also working out to $2.49 per disc). If you sign up for a 12-month contract, your monthly maximums on the plans above go from 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 8 to 10, and 12 to 14 respectively.

These are excellent value plans which will satisfy most users, but the limits on the plans will be too low for heavy, high volume users. If you plan to watch more than about a dozen films a month, then we suggest you try an unlimited service.

Featured BigPond Customer Review

George from Melbourne, 24 May, 2008

I have been with Bigpond for more than 3 years and the turnaround on the DVD's has been excellent. I am on the old 3 disk at a time plan (not available any more) and sometimes I go through 30 DVD's in a month.

Value: Design: Service:

 

Most Recent BigPond Customer Reviews

Meimz from Canberra, 13 July, 2010

I've trialed both Quickflix and Bigpond at the same period, and was quite disappointed by the physical quality of DVDs that I received from Bigpond. They were various problems with them that my DVD player couldn't read them. I did not have such problems with Quickflix' DVDs. Unlucky? Maybe. But based on this, I'm going with Quickflix.

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Frey from Broome WA, 13 April, 2010

having blu ray titles along side normal dvd titles makes choosing easier. Especially seing there are not always the same in both formats. Living in a remote area with snail mail and liking to watch alot of movies an unlimited service would be good and more than 4 movies out at a time would be helpful

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Cee, 24 March, 2010

I have been with bigpond for 1 year, some weeks we are lucky to only see 2-3 dvds, maximum 4 at any one time, the postage is slow, the dvds poor quality and we hardly see the movies that are on the top of the que.

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Cameron from Adelaide, 5 February, 2010

I have been with Bigpond Movies for several years but have recently had cause to be very disappointed. While the service represents excellent value as a Bigpond internet customer there has since day one been a high volume (approx 1 in 3) of scratched DVD's and more than 1 in 10 are unacceptably damaged. Delivery of DVD's has also slowed from almost guaranteed next day initially to 2-4 days in recent times. The website is acceptable in terms of information but is very slow and the list/queue of DVD's is occasionally unreliable. I have had titles disappear and shift position in the queue at random. The queue itself is apparently a guide only. I very rarely receive the highest ranked "available now" DVD. There are many DVD titles of the genre I prefer, generally indie movies and non-blockbuster Hollywood movies, for which there is almost permanent status of "Short wait" meaning it takes an eternity to get my preferred titles. Customer service is very annoying. Mistakes in despatch are not rare and customer service responses are often unhelpful requiring repeat emails and phone calls to remedy. I have been a satisfied, though not happy, customer for quite some time but recent experience has me looking for alternatives.

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Vicki from Newcastle, 22 January, 2010

I am a big DVD fan so I have been with Quickflix and now with BigPond. BigPond is better value, but Quickflix was far better customer service. I have had a problem with BigPond for about 5 months where they were not sending me from the top of my Q so I never really knew what I was getting each week. They just didn't seem to know what the problem was - and certainly not how to fix it. At this stage I am seriously considering going back to Quickflix.

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See all BigPond Customer Reviews

1 disc, 2 total: $9.95
2 discs/ 3 max: $12.95
3 discs/8 max: $19.95
4 discs/12 max: $29.95

Free Trial: 1 month, 3 discs at a time

Titles: 40,000+
Game Rentals: no
Blu-Ray HD: 900+ (estimate, as they lump HD-DVD in this category)
Adult Films: no
Phone Contact: yes

Based in: unspecified, multiple centers

Service: All Australia

Contact:
1 800 502 502
BigPond Movies
Locked Bag 9000
Preston VIC 3072