Neil F.

I would be more forgiving of the awful service Crackle provides if this was a start up company, new to entertainment or streaming video, but this is Sony Entertainment. They have both the ability and financial chops to hire a team which knows how to write Android apps. Many, including myself, have contacted Crackle on more than one occasion about the defects in their app. The best they can tell me is "we can't offer a solution at this time" or "you'll have to wait for the update". The app, after several "commercial breaks", almost always goes to the beginning of the movie or show and starts over again. Trying to navigate with the slide bar doesn't work. Sometimes, the video and audio get completely out of synch. Definitely don't try watching "Groundhog Day" with this app, as you could end up in a loop where you never finish the movie. In one case, a 120 minute movie I tried to watch repeated so many segments, after about 3 hours, I gave up and never did see how it ended.

And let's speak about the ads. More often than not, the same 15-30 second ad will run 3-4 times in a row during the same break, and then it will be repeated for each ad break, meaning you will see the same ad 40-60 times during a full length movie. It's either torture or brainwashing, or both, and I can guarantee the sponsor I will NEVER buy their product or go to their movie after that.

It's a darn good thing Crackle is a free service (not that I consider the time waster it is "free"), because as it currently stands (and its been like this for months) it is certainly pretty much worthless.

I had hopes for this website when it first appeared. They offered a promo of $25 as a new member, plus another $25 if I wrote several reviews. Then PayPal offered another $25 off a purchase. You'd think with $75 off a $100 purchase, I'd be able to find SOMETHING that was worth buying, but every time I checked, either the prices were ridiculously higher than elsewhere, or the sale items were "out of stock". In fact pretty much everything that was reasonably priced was "out of stock". If the item ever showed up as back in stock, the price was magically much higher than it was advertised for when it was: out of stock". Just today I looked at their arts and crafts supplies section. They showed 50 items for $1 each, in some cases multiple units for $1 total. Not one of these items was "in stock" and no surprise, these were items which sell for considerably more than $1. One example was some epoxy cement which sells locally for $7 a tube. Their website had 6 sets of tubes for $1.00!

While looking around the site today, I decided to log into my account. The $25 credit I had received for all my reviews was gone. After reading the reviews here, I deleted all my reviews, cancelled my account and my subscription. While I ended up never ordering anything (and glad I didn't) after being enticed to this website too many times by false promises, and ads which played games with the truth, I'm glad to know the trouble I would have had, should I have ordered from them, even at a 75% discount.

I did read their policy page, which is very enlightening. They basically give themselves permission to take your credits away without notice on their whim, to cancel any order, and basically to twist their policies any way that is to their advantage. I don't think I have ever read a more one sided policy statement from a retailer. My suggestion is save yourself a lot of potential headaches, and keep away. There are many on line retailers which actually want to keep their customers.