Columbia House DVD Club

The Best Deal on DVDs Anywhere

For the DVD aficionado looking for a legitimate way to save money building a nice big DVD collection, I highly recommend joining the Columbia House DVD Club. I've been a member of both the Columbia House Music Club and the Columbia House DVD Club throughout the past few years and they're both great deals. If you know what you're doing when joining the Columbia House DVD Club, you can walk away paying an average of $11 per DVD. Let me show you.

Step 1: Pick your introductory DVDs.

The standard deal lets you take five DVDs for $0.49 each, plus $1.99 each for shipping and processing. Let's say you're joining online and you've put War of the Worlds, Batman Begins, Crash, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and Oldboy in your shopping cart. Don't check out just yet. You should take up the offer to choose a sixth DVD for $14.95, as it grants you free shipping on your order and reduces your membership obligation by one DVD. So you put the special edition of Rebel Without a Cause in the cart as your sixth DVD. You should also take up the "special sale" that lets up pick up a seventh introductory DVD for $9.95, as doing so will ultimately lower your final price-per-DVD average by a dime. Not much, but still. So you drop one of your old favorites, Bringing Up Baby, into the shopping cart. And, then, with your seven intro DVDs, you proceed to the checkout.

That's step one: seven DVDs for a total of $27.35.

The introductory package is sent on a 10-day trial basis, so if you're not satisfied you can send it back (at Columbia House's expense) for a full refund.

Step 2: Purchase your fulfillment DVDs.

Now you have to buy four more DVDs from Columbia House within the next two years at $19.95 or more plus shipping and processing. You should try to pick fulfillment DVDs priced at no more than $21.95 (and they must be at least $19.95 to count towards your commitment). And since Columbia House has gone crazy slashing prices recently, you can pre-order new releases for only $19.95 and many DVDs that retail for about $30 can be had for $21.95. Not bad.

Once your account is approved, you'll get access to the Columbia House DVD Club members-only website, which offers a far greater selection of DVDs (over 10,000) than you have when signing up. Go ahead and pick four DVDs priced at $21.95 for your fulfillments, such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Constant Gardener, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and Serenity. Since the regular shipping and processing rate is $2.99 for the first DVD and $1.99 for each additional DVD, it's best to get your four fulfillment DVDs all at once (even better if Columbia House is having one of their generous "free shipping if you buy three or more" deals). Put your four fulfillment DVDs in the cart and proceed to the checkout.

That's step two: four DVDs for a total of $96.76. And you're done.

Final Score: 11 DVDs for a total of $124.10, or $11.28 per DVD.

You've fulfilled your membership obligation.

Yes, that's 11 DVDs for a grand total of $124.10, or $11.28 per DVD.

Not bad, especially considering that you would pay roughly $195.18 -- or $17.74 per DVD -- for the same lot at Amazon.com. And you could have gotten an even sweeter deal if you'd picked four fulfillment DVDs at $19.95 each, instead of $21.95, where your total would have been $116.10, or $10.55 per DVD.

Once you fulfill your membership obligation, you can cancel your membership, rejoin, and do it all over again. Columbia House has no policy against doing so. You can even have more than one account open at once, but I've never done that. I just rejoin rather than opening more than one account. I like to keep it simple.

The Columbia House DVD Club doesn't have as exhaustive a selection as Amazon.com, since they don't carry any Criterion Collection DVDs or movies from many independent distributors, but Columbia House does carry most DVDs from the major studios (from the classics to all the new releases). A lot of great stuff. And I just had to inform DVD collectors about the money that could be saved by joining the Columbia House DVD Club -- and knowing what you have to do to get the best deal. The Columbia House DVD Club may be the best deal on DVDs anywhere.

If you find this article helpful, you can show your support and appreciation by joining the Columbia House DVD Club through the links or ads on this page. In any case, I wish all of you the best in building your DVD collections.

Join the Columbia House DVD Club.

Article published 04.21.2003; updated 02.16.2006.

Read our article about the Columbia House Music Club.