Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature

Donald Burr of Borg writes "One of my favorite features of Netflix, the video-rental-by-mail service, is 'profiles.' Profiles lets you create 'sub-accounts' for your friends/family, so that they can share in the video rental love. Each profile gets his/her own Netflix queue that he/she can manage with their own login/password. You can divide up how many movies get sent to you vs. the other profiles under your account. E.g. if you have a 6-out-at-once plan, you can choose to get 3 movies at a time, and have 3 other profiles each receive 1 movie. Unfortunately, the fun stops September 1, at which point Netflix is, for unknown reasons, going to terminate this feature. Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.' Improvement indeed."

Yes, I received the same notice.

[jggimi (1279324)]

I do not understand what cost savings Netflix would achieve by this reduction in service.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[something_wicked_thi (918168)]

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[TheGratefulNet (143330)]

there's an up-side to this.

lately, I've been THROTTLED (big-time). I just upgraded from a 3 at once plan to almost double that. and for the first few weeks, things came in the mail on schedule and on time.

lately, though, things are being sent from far away centers; when I return discs directly to the PO, only some are showing up the next day at NF (I live in the silicon valley area and its ALWAYS a 1day hop from local to local!).

there are many tricks NF is playing, but the short of it is: if you are a heavy renter, you get penalized.

solution: go away and come back. at least that's what I have read. cancel for a month then re-join. you get a new slate and they stop throttling you (for a while, at least).

lather rinse repeat.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[TheGratefulNet (143330)]

I realize that there was a legal settlement a few yrs ago with NF.

but they have NOT changed their ways, not in any significant way. read their TOS - they have the slipperiest weasel words possible.

they STILL do ALL the things they were accused of. they have not changed one bit, other than their WORDING on their site.

its deeply built into their business model, I guess. but its still WRONG to say 'unlimited' when its clearly not at all unlimited.

I live 20 minutes drive from their los gatos main center. I drop my dvd's in the mail AT THE POST OFFICE early in the AM. I am 99.9% certain that each one does get from sunnyvale to san jose in a day. there is just no way in hell it can take more than that; so why do discs not show up as 'received' until about 2 days later?

and even then, some of them 'downgrade' to shipping tomorrow over the course of the day. I check NF at 7am and I see that 2 have been received and are said to be shipping today. but later in the day, mysteriously they change to shipping tomorrow. yet my queue has over 300 entries!

they are still throttling. and they are lying thru their teeth about it every time they deny it.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[malchus842 (741252)]

Well, this feature is what makes Netflix make sense for us. I divide up our plan into two queues - one for me, one for the wife & kids. They get what they want, I get what I want (I have less time to watch, so sometimes I have a movie at home for a week or more) and we don't get in each other's way.

Fundamentally, without this feature, Netflix becomes a pain in the butt to manage for us. Right now, I can be sure that when I send a movie back, I get one of my movies. The same goes for the others.

I'm going to cancel on Aug 31 (and have told them so) if they don't keep this feature.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. Recommendations. I love horror, my wife loves musicals. "Because you liked Saw II, we recommend Chicago". Sheesh, what a bunch of fucktards.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bilbravo (763359)]

I would mod you up if I could, I agree wholeheartedly. Not only does it make things more complicated to maintain for 2 people (I can't imagine 3-4) the recommendations are also going to be screwed up (even more so) now.
Sure, it isn't difficult to maintain one queue for multiple people, but it's inconvenient. The entire purpose of Netflix is CONVENIENCE! I don't have to go to a store, I can put movies in a list and drop them in my office's mailbox after I'm done watching. Thus the allure. Now they took away a very convenient feature.
Redbox on the way home is sounding a bit more tempting now, goodbye Netflix.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[lena_10326 (1100441)]

If that's the reason, why not just say "we need to charge for this now". Existing users get grandfathered in, new users must pay an extra small fee.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bigdavesmith (928732)]

I wouldn't even mind paying more. The real problem with this, at least for me, is that they're basically lying to me as a customer. If I got a notice in my email that said "Hey, look, we're either going to have to charge you $3 more a month for this feature, or get rid of it because we're not making enough money." I'd be way cooler with it. Telling me they're improving my experience by ruining it is just plain treating me like an idiot, and I can get that kind of treatment just by driving down to blockbuster, which is where I'll be going September 1st if they seriously do this.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Actually, from a pure consumer standpoint, this change makes no difference. Netflix already has a pricing model such that, the CHEAPEST plan is 3 DVD / time. If you move from 3 to 4 out at a time, you actually pay more and from 4 to any other number, the price is the same (per DVD at a time).

If you had 6 at a time and choose to go to 3 at a time with 2 accounts, you'll actually save money (mere pennies, though). Since it was a separate login/password for each profile, there's no difference between having a separate account, expect for the "master user" having full view access. For those who allow their children to rent, they will still just use one account and they'll have to spend more time on their end managing their queue and that's an unfortunate hassle.

But I think you're right. I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models. They're probably finding legacy code such that the programmers are like "we want to do this but the way profiles currently work, it's preventing us from doing it without a complete programming change to the profiles system".

Instead of sinking a large cost into fixing profile code, they're probably just going to scrap it all together so they can implement whatever new and shiny features or improve database speeds or whatever.

I thought the feature was awesome, but from a "money" standpoint, I don't see how Netflix is doing this to "screw customers" out of more money, as their current payment plans emphasis 3/time movies over any other. Unless there's some research that says that 3/time people keep their movies longer than 6/time people or something.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Cope

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models.

My boss' response to that kind of reasoning? backed up by the marketing department, CEO, and customers? "Cope."

Massively degrading the user's experience is not excused by programmer's convenience.

Re:Cope

[Peter La Casse (3992)]

First you'll have to prove that it's a "massive" degrading of the users experiance. I'd argue it isn't.

Proof isn't necessary; if a user says that it's less convenient for them, it is reasonable to believe them.

The profiles feature is what makes Netflix usable for my family. We have very different movie preferences, and this change promises to throw out all of the movie ratings except for those associated with the main profile. I'm not a heavy user, and I have 70+ movies in my queue, which will all be deleted (along with hundreds of my movie ratings) on September 1st. Netflix's advice is to print out the queue and manually add those movies to the main account's queue. Unfortunately, different family members watch movies at different rates, so without a lot of manual queue management (logging in every time we return a video) things will quickly get out of sync. Without profiles, there won't be much point in continuing the service for me, which is fine; it's just video, not something important.

Netflix claims that only 1% of their users use this feature. Apparently they think that risking 1% of their business is worth the benefits of reducing software overhead, which tells me that their software must really suck.

Re:Cope

[bughunter (10093)]

First you'll have to prove that it's a "massive" degrading of the users experiance.

A manager's next response: "Pardon Me?? You have the burden of proof here, not marketing. If you continue to demonstrate such arrogance, you'll be out of work."

I'm an engineering manager, and agree with the grandparent. We're not in business for the convenience of the engineers. If you can provide a marketing analysis to support your argument, I'll listen. If you can produce a cost/benefit analysis to support your position, I'll listen. If you can produce an ethical/moral/legal justification, I'll listen. If you're whinging because "it's not convenient," all you will do is piss me off.

This seems like a rather poor move, marketing wise. I'm annoyed that I have to move my wife's 200+ movie list over to my main profile, which is never used. But if its simply for the "convenience" of the engineers, I'll be royally pissed.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

The CHEAPEST plan is 2 DVDs a month. =P

Wrong, the cheapest plan is 1 DVD with 2 per month. The cheapest per DVD plan is 3/time.

• 1 at-a-time (2 a month) for $4.99 ($2.50 / movie flat rate)
• 1 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $8.99 ($9/movie/time)
• 2 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $13.99 $7/movie/time
• 3 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $16.99 ($5.67/movie/time)
• 4 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $23.99 ($6/movie/time)
• 5 and up are all $6/movie/time

The 3/time plan use to be $6/movie, but they dropped the price of that plan by $1/movie as a move to bring Blockbuster Online members back as Blockbuster raised their rates (twice) and by some plans, a massive amount (like 66%).

Tossing out the limited number rental, lowest tier plan, the best deal for any Netflix user is 3/time, assuming you pick a plan that allows you to watch the same number of films a week as you plan allows per time. Meaning, 1 movie a time means you'll watch 1 movie a week, 3 movies at a time and you'll watch 3 movies a week. Which I think it probably about what Netflix expects you to watch and will throttle people to this degree.

The difference is very negligible. That would amount to a cost of $1.41 a movie for 3/time and $1.50 per movie for anything above that. (Assuming the watching habits I described) To round out the numbers, it's $1.75 per movie at 2/time and $2.25 per movie at 1/time (based on a standard 28 day / 4-week month which obviously isn't an exact monthly schedule given most months have more than 28 days)

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Gewalt (1200451)]

I dunno, I'm more inclined to believe they were hit with some kind of patent lawsuit, and just folded. Netflix operates on razor thin margins, so if there was a good chance they would lose the patent suit, it could potentially obliterate that margin.

That's not to say I would put the slimeball tactic outside of the realm of possibilities, but that just seems less likely.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Immerial (1093103)]

Yeah, I'd assume that's the main reason -- they want to force people to sign up for additional accounts.

Well, if you gonna do that... you should at least make it easy for people transfer their profile data to a new account. To, you know... encourage people to do it.

NetFlix you are doing it wrong!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[ta bu shi da yu (687699)]

Hey - just improving the service you know!

I love it when a firm says something this vague and contradictory when they basically realise that a thing that got people to use them is costing them too much money. I mean, if they really meant they were improving their service, then I'm fairly certain they'd say why.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[niktemadur (793971)]

Whenever the bank, phone company or any other large corporation sends me a form letter that begins along the lines of "In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer...", immediately I recoil, 'cause I know I'm just about to be hit with some sort of diminished service.

Take the airliners a decade and a half ago. "In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer, we will eliminate the olive from the salad in our in-flight meal", all because some smart ass junior exec figured out that the airliner could save up to twenty thousand dollars a year, from a budget of billions, by eliminating the olives. Slippery slope from there, pretty soon the whole salad was gone, and all we were left with was boiled peas, know what I mean?

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[j00r0m4nc3r (959816)]

Boiled peas?? Luxury! When I was young we got boiled SAND on airplanes. And we were thankful!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[zippthorne (748122)]

Psah. We had to bring our own sand. Hot. And bags were strictly banned from flights, so you carried your sand in your hands.

And that's the way we likes'd it.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[CottonThePirate (769463)]

That's more like now. When I was young I got a hot meal on a flight, even one that was 2 hours long, in economy class!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Hognoxious (631665)]

"In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer...", immediately I recoil, 'cause I know I'm just about to be hit with some sort of diminished service.

Come on, that's a sweeping generalisation.

They might just be going to charge you more.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[E IS mC(Square) (721736)]

Exactly. I have over 1000 movies rated under my own profile which is secondary to the main profile of my wife. Now if they do this, not only will we lose ability to maintain separate queues (which is very important, because our tastes are not completely overlapping), I will lose all the ratings which was essential to get new suggestions. New suggestions were one of the main resources for me to find new movies according to my taste.

I am a big fan of Netflix for all the good reasons, but this decision is almost a deal-breaker to me. Give me a fucking chance to get my history and data back.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[zoward (188110)]

Well, if you gonna do that... you should at least make it easy for people transfer their profile data to a new account. To, you know... encourage people to do it.

That would be openly acknowledging that the real reason they're making this change is to force you to have two accounts. They'd rather be able to claim they're doing it to "improve the Netflix website for all their customers", even if the reason makes no sense.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Sancho (17056)]

That's pretty disappointing.

We share a two-disc plan with two profiles. We switched away from Blockbuster Online in part because of the profiles that Netflix offers. Without that, we're at least dropping down to a 1 disc plan, and we may drop the service altogether.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Keyslapper (852034)]

I'm in full agreement here. I never tried BB Online, partly because I was in full backlash mode over their handling of late charges. Later, when they "eliminated" late charges, I was completely disgusted with the fact they actually just renamed them to "restocking fee". If I kept a movie for more than 10 days, they charged my account for the full value (or what they thought the movie was worth) and refunded it, less a restocking fee when I returned it.

So, I'm taking it BB Online doesn't have profiles? I actually went online last night to see if I could find out for sure, but didn't find anything definitive.

BTW, I also wrote a letter to Netflix letting them know how much I enjoyed their service, and the fact that profiles were the key ingredient in my decision to join NF. I also made it clear that without profiles, there was a very good chance I would no longer see much value in their service. My wife likes mystery, romance and Jane Austen, I like MI5, The 4400, Battlestar, Will Smith, Sci-Fi and psychological thrillers. Our daughter gets kids disks and will keep them for a week or two.

We don't always cycle at the same pace, so profiles make it possible for us to enjoy it more.

At the very least, I'll be dropping my service, but in all likelihood, I'll be dropping it. And probably not in favor of BB. I'm just up the road from a Hollywood Video, so who knows ...

Cheers.

Netflix, You're doing it wrong!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[cshabazian (686311)]

I also emailed them with my dissatisfaction with this choice. A good email campaign (no flames, just "I'm disappointed and will vote with my dollars type of email) can help.
Here are the addresses I sent to:
Leslie Kilgore - VP Marketing : [e-mail]
Reed Hastings - President: [e-mail]
[e-mail]

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[cshabazian (686311)]

oops, forgot the updated/correct email for Reed:
[e-mail]

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Keyslapper (852034)]

Well, for those unsure how to begin, please feel free to take this (under the free as in air license) and modify it to fit your taste:

Dear Netflix Team,

I am writing to acknowledge an email I received regarding recent changes in Netflix service. Specifically, the fact that profiles will soon be eliminated from Netflix services.

I would like to express my dissatisfaction at this decision. As a software developer, I realize that maintaining special services are often more costly than they would appear to those enjoying them, and I don't presume to know the efforts behind the excellent service my family and I have been receiving from Netflix thus far.

However, I would like it to be known that the profile feature was the single most important deciding factor in my decision to become a Netflix customer. The ability for different members of my family to control the flow and content of their own queues is invaluable. The loss of this feature will very likely affect my decision to remain with Netflix. It is my sincere hope that this decision might be re-evaluated.

Best regards,

Etc.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fnord666 (889225)]

Any discomfort will soon be forgotten, and they may even be able to shed themselves of the dead-beat "customers" that cost them more than they make.

I doubt that the customers using this feature are the ones they would like to eliminate from their customer base. I suspect that most of customers using this feature do so (like I do) in order to segregate out my selections and returns from my children's choices. They have a tendency to hang on to movies for a while before they watch them, or they watch them several times before sending them back. I didn't really care about it since it was their queue, not mine. Now it is everyone's queue and I will be sending things back in a shorter period of time. In addition, several of my friends have signed up for netflix for their households once I described this feature to them.

This "downgrade" in service has reminded me to take another look at the market and see what other companies like Blockbuster are doing. If they are offering this service, I will probably send my Roku back and switch services.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[something_wicked_thi (918168)]

God, I hate people like you.

People who say things like, "Well, obviously, company $x is a business, so they can do whatever they want" or "Your boss pays you money to work, so you have to do whatever he says" are invariably idiots.

NetFlix offered this feature. Some people bought the service in part because of this feature. Now it's being taken away. No discounts or temporary account upgrades or anything. Not even a way to migrate the old profiles to a new account. That's pretty sleazy.

As for "dead-beat customers that cost them more than they make", that does not make someone a dead beat. That makes them thrifty.

It is expected that both sides will act rationally. Customers will make the most out of their money, and NetFlix will cut features that cost them money. Calling their customers deadbeats is idiotic. But NetFlix is not handling this very well at all. They are taking something away without offering a thing. Customers are going to be pissed, and they've got a right to be.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[harrkev (623093)]

True, but managing your own queue takes time. Right now, I have my queue, my wife has hers, and we have a shared queue for things that we like to watch together. Not having separate queues will take a bit of juggling. I get one DVD at a time, and it may take me a week or two to watch it. My wife goes through three a week. It will be a pain to keep everything balanced.

The separate queues is, to me, their chief advantage over Blockbuster. I don't really watch Netflix downloadable movies (and hate being forced into using Windows and IE even if I did), so that is no advantage there. Once the queues go away, I will re-examine which service I want to use. If Blockbuster wins on price, they will get my money instead. If Blockbuster takes advantage of this opporrunity and adds separate queues to their service, they score a slam-dunk and I will switch without a second thought or a bit of regret (I hope somebody from Blockbuster reads this). Being able to exchange one or two movies a month in the store is also very convenient, and a big plus in the Blockbuster column.

1) Make customers angry and shoot self in foot.
2) ???
3) Profit.

Not a good sign

[Monoman (8745)]

Based on the information coming out on this it doesn't look good. Did they research how much this would piss off the current customers? It is coming off like they don't care. Perhaps the profile feature is causing bigger problems behind the scenes. If it is the later then they should find better programmers to work around the problem(s).

Re:Not a good sign

[by Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure Netflix CEO Reed Hastings knew this would go over badly.

He exercised 2,500 options and then sold off 10,000 shares just last week.

See: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/13/ap5115170.html

Re:Not a good sign

[PLBogen (452989)]

I called NetFlix and they informed me that it was a technical issue. The programmer's new upcoming features apparently are buggy when interacting with accounts with multiple profiles and instead of fixing the bugs, the programmers decided to axes profiles.

I'm not sure how it improves things...

[Inari (19318)]

My family uses it and its only been a positive. I'm betting a bean counter marketing type suggested that it might force me to get separate accounts if I couldnt use the separate queues.

Re:I'm not sure how it improves things...

[ArieKremen (733795)]

We are using this feature to manage two queues: one for our kids and one for the adults. It has been a great feature. Before it was introduced we have to continually micromanage the queue, hold on to disks to 'work' the systems (postal and Netflix), and suffered the occasional disappointments.

The profiles allowed us more flexibility and better service. I think that Netflix is trying to increase revenue without increasing their monthly fees. Downgrading our plan and subscribing to another minimal would cost us at least $2.00/month. It is definitely a hidden cost increase.

Has anyone here had experience with the Blockbuster service? Does it support queues and how is their selection?

Bad Move

[bullet618 (1036750)]

I think they're trying to get people to pay for more than one account. I don't know what features they could be adding that would warrant dropping sub accounts. I have a funny feeling this is going to backfire and they'll lose more people than they gain.

Someone will greasemonkey it.

[FirstNoel (113932)]

I'd give it a week and some skilled firefox hacker will create some addon to put it back in from the user side.

Sean D.

The so-called reason

[g051051 (71145)]

According to their customer support, this was a feature only used by 1% of subscribers, but was a significant drain on resources, increased maintenance difficulties, and slowed down adding new features. I don't particularly buy most of that, but if the 1% thing is true, then I can see how they'd make that choice. If more of that 1% convert to full subscriptions rather than cancel, it'll be a win for them.

Re:The so-called reason

[faloi (738831)]

I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies. Most of the movies she likes, I don't like. Rather than add movies and bump stuff she wants to see off the queue, I could maintain my own queue. The onus was on Netflix to keep up with it. Going forward, it's going to be on us. And the fall-back movies if the one of the ones at the top of or queue can't get shipped is going to be a craps shoot. Maybe she'll get a movie she enjoys, maybe all the ones that come won't interest her at all.

The only thing I didn't like about the separate queues was that only the primary account holder could browse the instant movies. My wife never used the feature, and I avoided rating movies I watched for fear it would distort the movies picked as ones she'd like to see. Which brings up another point...how can multiple family members track movies they like nowadays and have accurate recommended features? "This one's a special case...apparently she like romantic comedies and really bad horror movies!"

Duh

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

Of course the suggestion system doesn't work for you: trying to generate suggestions from a hodgepodge of two different peoples' tastes doesn't work.

"It's easy" vs. "It just works"

[dazedNconfuzed (154242)]

Why is the iPod successful? It just works.

Netflix Profiles "just works". I have my queue of 150+ movies, and without further effort the movies I want show up in the order I want, one at a time; ditto for my wife, who being home more than I am gets two a at a time. NO EFFORT.

Now you, and Netflix, pull the "quit whining, it's EASY to get the same thing, just go reshuffle the mutual queue..." without realizing that now that we've _made_ our lists (over 300 movies total), now we have to go _update_ that list every day. That doesn't "just work", that takes constant fiddling when we've got plenty of other things to do.

On top of that, our wildly different tastes (sappy chick flix vs. sci-fi noir & grusome action) means that the "suggestions" tool is useless. One of us gets on to review suggestions, and half the stuff suggested will be undesirable (never mind any bizzare half-breed "because you liked '27 Dresses' and 'Akira'...").

Profiles worked. It's extremely useful to some customers. Fix the code; don't wreck the customer experience.

First time for everything

[Anita Coney (648748)]

I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years. This is the first time they've ever taken a step backwards. And their complete lack justification is very strange.

For your convenience ...

[richg74 (650636)]

Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.'

Touching. I'm reminded of a sign I once saw on the door of a bank branch, some years ago while I was living in Boston:

For your convenience, this branch will be closed Monday, mm/dd/yy, a legal holiday.

For my convenience. Heartwarming, isn't it, how these folks are always looking out for us.

Lovefilm

[Stephen (20676)]

That's strange because Lovefilm, the dominant DVD-by-mail company in the UK, has only recently introduced this feature.

Now I get it

[by Anonymous Coward]

I just called Netflix customer service to ask for clarification on how this helps improve the web site. The rep responded that they needed to free up programming space for better features, and that it's really a tiny, tiny percentage of people that use profiles to separate queues. (Slashdot and Gizmodo, the two sites I checked for reactions to this, are apparently chock full of tiny, tiny percentages.)

When I told her that I'm a programmer and I don't understand what it means to free up programming space, she was quiet for a moment and then said, "This is really a decision that they've already made, so it's not like they're going to change their minds."

I'm all for freeing up programming space. Statistics show that programming space will be all used up in the next 10 years if we don't start conserving it.

Re:Now I get it

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

Netflix, 2008 -- "One profile should be enough for anyone"

The ONLY reason I would have switched to Netflix

[hansamurai (907719)]

Profiles is the only reason I would have switched from Blockbuster to Netflix. Blockbuster was great for my wife and I because we could return movies to the store and get more movies for free (my wife watches a lot of stuff on the days she has off). But we're moving away from any nearby Blockbuster stores this week so I was seriously considering switching to Netflix. I would love it if my wife and I each had our own queue. Then we wouldn't get 10 romantic comedies in a row or 10 action movies. Ah well.

Re:Does Blockbuster offer profiles?

[Garc (133564)]

They do not. The profile is the reason my family switched back to netflix after leaving them for Blockbuster.