Beware Of “Q’Jacking” In Online Rental Services

Subscribers of NetFlix (USA), LoveFilm (UK), BigFLIX (India) and other DVD-rental services would be familiar with queues. They browse titles on the service provider’s websites and add the ones they’re interested in into a queue, from which the service provider makes shipments, depending upon availability and other criteria related to the subscriber’s plan.

The same concept is followed by Librarywala.com, the first and only online book rental service I’ve ever come across. With a decent collection of books and a range of attractively priced plans, Librarywala promised good value for money and I signed up soon after it launched around a year ago.

My experience with Librarywala has been mixed.

On the positive side, it has lived up to the promise of offering a good assortment of books, including latest ones, so I’ve always been able to fill my queue with enough titles to last the following 3-4 months (btw, to quote a contrasting example, my LoveFilm queue was never more than a month deep – admittedly, in part, due to my more restricted taste in movies).

On the negative side, Librarywala has rarely met its committed delivery period of 24 hours. And, recently, my queue seems to be hijacked because

1. I started receiving books that I’m quite sure I never added to my queue.
2. Books that I hadn’t added to my queue and never delivered to me suddenly started appearing in the list of books to be picked up from me.

Looks like I’m the victim of “q’jacking” – if I may coin such a term.

The way the system works, the moment a book is shipped from Librarywala’s warehouse – but before it’s delivered to me – it disappears from my queue, so a review of the queue post my receipt of the book doesn’t prove anything. My emails to Librarywala pointing out these incidents of suspected “q’jacking” have their staff flummoxed. Their lack of response suggests that, even with access to richer information they’re bound to find in their internal audit trails and elsewhere, they haven’t been able to unearth something concrete one way or the other.

While I resolve my issues with Librarywala, let me hereby alert other subscribers to the clear and present danger of “q’jacking” in online rental services!