Updated June 10, 2004.

Note: Any ZIP title links below will not work if you are currently logged in to your ZIP account - you will have to "Log Out" first. This is because the URL for showing a specific DVD's page for nonmembers does not work when you are logged into your ZIP account.

SEARCH RESULTS SUGGESTIONS

TYPOS

  1. Some titles have two or more discs that are not available to rent separately, and they show up in the Queue as a single entry ("Two Towers", "X2:X-Men United"). I had thought this was because they are a single movie, and that ZIP was being nicer than most companies in not making you put the separate titles in the queue, but after checking it seems that both of these have the movie on Disc 1 and just bonus features on Disc 2. Does this mean that ZIP will be sending the two discs together? If so, will it count it as one rental, or two, and if not, why can't you rent the individual discs separately? Then there is the opposite case of movies that do indeed spill out over two discs ("Once Upon A Time In America", the Superbit version of "Das Boot"), and would seem even better candidates for the one-queue treatment. However, these get the individual disc rental option. [March 10: ZIP does not currently send out double-disc mailers. Apparently they originally didn't inventory a number of bonus discs, thinking "there wouldn't be much demand" (!?!). "That quickly changed" (I'll bet!). Most titles do have the individual discs listed. Apparently for my examples above, only the main movie ships, and the bonus disc is not available until they add them to the inventory system] [As of April 1, they've fixed the "X2" example, but not the "Two Towers"]
  2. FAQ #21 reads "You are able to select an entire series or multi-disc set by clicking just one button. We don't always send you all the DVDs at once, but we will always send them in the correct order. For example, if you have chosen a four-DVD set, we may send you the first two DVDs from that set, and then when you return those two, we'll send you the next two". There is no indication of this in the Queue - using the "Rent All" button just seems to add the individual discs to the queue, and I can see no visible difference from adding them separately. In either case, I can move Disc 2 anywhere I like in the Queue, even above Disc 1, or delete it, and presumably they would ship that way. [I was told that after some initial problems things were set so later discs would never ship before earlier ones if both were in the queue, even if they were sorted that way. I don't know what the situation is now with the new Queue mechanisms]

MAJOR BUGS

  1. If you are logged in to your ZIP account, your session seems to time-out after a certain period. The first time you call up your queue after this, it comes back saying it is completely empty. Refreshing the page shows your proper queue again. I'm assuming the session on the ZIP server times out, and when you reconnect to it it hasn't yet logged you back in when it is building the queue page, so it doesn't have access to your account information. On the next access you are logged in, and things work fine again (until the next time-out). Seeing an empty queue certainly is startling the first time it happens! As of April 5, the "Titles I Currently Have Out" section now seems to display in the timeout situation , but not the "My ZipList", "Pending" or "History" sections. [it looks like this is fixed with the major Queue revisions of April 15]
  2. As of the evening of March 8, the user login screen seem to go to a "Processing Login" screen, which then takes you into you account after a few seconds. This seems to work with Internet Explorer on Windows, but all other browsers I tried usually seem to just sit there refreshing the "Processing Login" screen every few seconds (Mozilla on Windows, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox and iCab on Mac). The login does seem to have worked in some cases, as I can sometimes press the "My Queue" button and get in. The problem seems to be a bit of wonky Javascript code on the timer or redirect which happens to work on IE, but I haven't looked into the details.[This seems to be fixed now]
  3. The "Availability" status in the Queue can apparently be "short wait" if the title is on order and not actually possessed by ZIP yet. I have seen this come up on some of my Queue titles, but as soon as I refresh the Queue it immediately disappears again. I'm assuming there is a bug with this feature. Also, the phrasing seems designed to be misleading, since "Now" does not mean that they have a copy ready to ship out to someone, but merely that they own that title, and so also covers the case of "all copies are rented out and we will have to wait for one to come back, and even then there may be people in line ahead of you". "Short wait" would seem to really mean "we don't own this yet - it is on order and we are waiting for it to arrive". One would hope that all titles in the database are at least on order, but it may be that they wait for customers to put them in a Queue in some cases, and for all I know may not order it even then. [indicator phrases now seem to be appearing consistently and not disappearing as of March 8, although my concerns about how it is used still stand]
  4. In the detailed movie information, it looks like some of the data is always the same (wrong) information. Screen Formats is always "Widescreen Anamorphic 2.35:1", Subtitles is always "English, French, Spanish, Closed Captioned ", and Language and Sound is always "English: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1" [fixed as of March 8 - I think I can take credit for this one ;)] [so much for that - broken again on March 9][working again March 10 - ZIP thinks it may have been a fix that wasn't properly put in place on all their servers].
  5. I can't seem to delete a "Pending" title from my Queue - in my case it is "House of Sand and Fog", to be released 3/30/04. I've tried with both Mac and Windows browers. [apparently fixed as of March 3]