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."

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fozzyuw]

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.

[Sancho]

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:Does Blockbuster offer profiles?

[Garc]

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

Re:Cope

[Peter La Casse]

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:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Keyslapper]

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!

The inside view

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at Netflix. I can tell you that profiles are used by a vanishingly small percentage of the customer base (albeit I predict it will be a rather vocal percentage) and cause a painful "How does new feature X work with a profile?" diversion for just about every product management cycle. In the end, the cost:benefit ratio is just too high.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bigdavesmith]

I realize it's a small sample, but 100% of the 6 people I know who have netflix accounts use this feature, for a total of 13 profiles.

I know that once Netflix drops profiles, I'll be dropping netflix in favor of Blockbuster.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[cshabazian]

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]

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

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Keyslapper]

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.

[Keyslapper]

So true.

I'm in the same boat mostly, but our daughter uses the third queue. The thing I don't get is what the focus is. Are they pulling something out of their hats that really will seem better, or are they just reducing costs?

The thing is, if they were to look at it from a profit standpoint, they could actually do this in a much more intelligent way.

For instance: just charge $0.50 per additional queue per month. This way, they're getting tens of thousands of dollars (maybe more maybe less, but certainly enough) to put toward maintaining this feature, and nobody who just has one queue has to subsidize those with 2 or more. And those who do use profiles will be less likely to add them willy-nilly just because the guy next door wants one.

Personally, I'd happily pay an extra buck a month for the convenience of a couple extra queues. And I'm a cheapskate.

Cheers

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Quikah]

You can watch the rip without burning it to DVD.

Re:Not a good sign

[PLBogen]

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.

Re:Now I get it

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll soon have more 'programming space' than they know what to do with, as their users start canceling their service.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[sasdrtx]

Bullshit. The system is *already there*. It's been running for years. I can't figure out the real story on this, but fucking your customers to make life a little easier on your IT staff just doesn't fly in my universe.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bradt]

I'm not sure that it will make NetFlix change their mind, but an online petition has been started at http://www.savenetflixprofiles.com/ [savenetflixprofiles.com]