Lately I've been watching the second season of Game of Thrones via the celestial archive on the medium of blu-ray.
As some of you will probably be aware, newer versions of the technology have embraced the idea of binge watching or box-setting television and instead of simply listing the episodes which are physically watchable on the disc, offer everything for selection, then asking the viewer to put the relevant other disc in if the chosen episode isn't available from the blu-ray in the machine.
Which is fine if you actually own the whole box. Here's the anomaly. The by-post option.
The other, other night I watched episodes five and six of Thrones, from disc three, put the blu-ray back in the envelope and posted it back to Lovefilm.
The other night I put the next disc in, selected episode seven press play and was then advised to swap for disc three. The one which I'd just posted back to Lovefilm.
Here's what happened: the label on Lovefilm's website and envelope suggested that disc three contained episodes five and six and the silver id barcode label on the actual disc obscured the episode numbers and because the menu system lists all the episodes and I wasn't expecting episode seven to be there at the push of a button, I didn't.
I phoned Lovefilm. Seriously, if you ever have a problem with Lovefilm, phone Lovefilm. The number at time of writing is 0844 482 0123 (Mon to Fri 8am – 10pm, Sat/Sun 9am – 8pm). The verbal customer service is one the best I've come across (bar the occasion moments when there system is running slow and we sit waiting for it to open) and is in stark contrast to their email service which rarely seems to answer the question correctly.
After explaining the above to a gentleman who was a big fan of Thrones ("Season Three starts at the end of the month..."), he agreed to resend the third disc as a special extra dispatch. It's in the post. I'll hopefully receive it tomorrow.
All of which could have been avoided if film & tv companies didn't now make the process of watching some episodes of something so hopelessly complicated (why is the arrangement of episodes, 2-2-3-1-2?) so that when the person putting the information in the database at Lovefilm (is there a person or is the information sent by the film & tv companies?) doesn't make the usually correct assumption of how the episodes will be arranged (2-2-2-2-2).
Updated 12/03/2013 The disc has arrived so here's a photograph by way of illustration. On reflection, the comma instead of ampersand after the number 5 on the disc art might indicate an extra episode, but I paid more attention to the Lovefilm label:
Now I'm off to watch the thing. Finally.
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