When Thomas buys films on DVD or Blu-Ray, they often come with an Ultraviolet digital download code that viewers can use on a variety of digital platforms. He keeps them on a Flixster account, which lets him stream movies wherever he happens to be. He’s about to delete this account. Why? It’s a great service, and something he doesn’t have to pay extra for, but they granted him a free movie that he hates seeing in his account.

He won’t elaborate on what movie that is, exactly, so in place of the mystery film, picture something that you personally find distasteful based on your own beliefs or prejudices.

In this ‘digital’ age where we are encouraged to use cloud-sources to live our lives, I was initially impressed with the digital movie industry. Many movies that I buy have a UV digital copy, the majority are redeemed at Flixster where you can keep a digital copy and access it from any device on the computer. The nice part about this service is that if I am in my home office and do not want to bring piles of DVDs in to watch something while I work, I could go to the site and stream it instead.

All that is fine, but as I logged in the other day on my ipad to put up a movie, they announced a free gift! They are going to automatically add a movie to my collection! The problem is, the movie that they chose, which I will not name, is actually very offensive to me. There is no way to reject this movie, and no way to delete this movie. So if I log into the system, I am always looking at this offensive title.

I will add these few items:
1.) While the movie does have a rating that matches most of the movies in my collection, it has thematic elements that I restrict for minors in my care.

2.) There is no other movie in my collection of the same genre, so I am not certain why they would want to add that particular title.

So my response was to send an email where I argue the points about these services I would like to consider:

You recently added [Redacted] to my account.

Please remove it. I am very particular about the movies in my account and I do not, under any circumstances, want you to “gift” me movies without my direct consent.

If you would like to give out promotional movies, please 1.) make it in such a way that I can reject the movie and never see it offered again, or 2.) offer selections to choose from.

I am deeply offended by that movie and I require it to be taken out of my account I immediately.

Thank you

I received a less than helpful response:

There’s no way to remove or delete a movie from your collection at this time, but you can set parental controls when you log in at http://uvvu.com. Click on Our Account and select the member from the list that you want to add parental controls to. You will see an option that says Parental Controls underneath the profile picture and can adjust the settings on that page.

Although this response might be sufficient to be able to protect minors in my account, it does not prevent me from being offended all the same.

So if they can just decide to ‘add’ movies to an account, why is there no way to approve this? Why can I not reject or delete a movie? Seems a little odd.

So now, I will likely have to simply delete the account, but doing so will actually cost me the money of the digital content that I already have in there since it is a service that I sort of like.

Please, Flixster, delete that offensive crap from my account, and I will continue to use your services.

We tried to contact Flixster about this policy, but the e-mail address they have listed for media outlets actually bounced. There’s no mailbox set up for it.

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