Netflix Changes Its Mind, Will Keep Profiles Feature 267
xChange writes "I too was disappointed at Netflix's decision to remove the Profiles feature, and let them know via email and telephone. I was surprised to find the following email in my inbox today: 'You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.' I thought that it sounded too good to be true, and went to their blog to confirm, finding this entry. Netflix decided to listen to its customers, and keep a feature that many of us find essential for our use of their service. I am surprised, and very pleased."
Coke II (Score:5, Interesting)
I.E., Netflix was never going to cancel profiles. Instead, they pretend they are going to do so, which brings attention to the fact that they offer profiles, unlike one of their competitors.
Just like Coca-Cola introduced the "New Coke" in the 80s simply to draw attention to their brand, meanwhile planning all along to reintroduce "Coke Classic"... which eventually became the only Coke available. (Though I'm still not sure if the switch from cane sugar to corn syrup had anything to do with it.)
Well, what can I say, Netflix... it appears to have worked. As a Blockbuster Online subscriber, I'm thinking of changing to Netflix because of profiles, which I wasn't aware of. It turns out the advantage of Blockbuster (being able to pick up rentals/drop them off at B&M stores) hasn't been heplful to me, so maybe I'll switch over.
Good jorb on the marketing ploy.
To fast for my own good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Isn't it a little sad ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In general yes, but I'm not too surprised that Netflix is one of them. They are one of the few companies that haven't pissed me off to the point of looking for alternatives. I've always been happy with their customer service.
Netflix is a great company (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time I've ever had a problem with Netflix, namely receiving broken disks or having disks stolen/lost in the mail, they've always sent me new disks right away, without any fuss.
Once when they continued to charge me after I'd canceled (poor student, blah blah), I was forced to email their billing support. Amazingly, my email was answered within about an hour by a *real person*. No form emails, no PR bullshit, just a terse plain-text email. This blew my mind. Not only were they polite, but they refunded my money the same day.
That said, this doesn't surprise me at all. Netflix has always been a pleasure to do business with.
(I don't work for them or anything. Hell, I'm not even a customer anymore. They're just one of the few companies that I don't mind giving my money to.)
Re:Kudos to Netflix (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Isn't it a little sad ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hear hear! Netflix are one of the only big businesses I've ever dealt with that treats their customers like humans.
I was absolutely shocked last year, when Netflix sent me a tiny postcard informing me that they were cutting my bill by $1/month.
These days, it's a pretty standard practice to lock customers in to multi-year contracts, and not pass on any price-cuts to existing customers. Kudos to Netflix for doing the honest thing. I also move around a lot, and they don't seem to have a problem with updating my address every few months to keep track of me, or suspending my account if I leave the country for an extended period.
Similarly, they're astonishingly trustworthy of their customers when it comes to lost or missing DVDs. If a DVD doesn't show up, or you get a bad disc (a rare occurrence, but not completely impossible), simply fill out a web form, and a new one will be on its way immediately. There's no inquisition, and no accusations of theft. They apologize and fix the problem right away.
Re:Kudos to Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
No they didn't. They tried to remove profiles because it was making upgrades to the frontend more difficult and only 3% of their users actually used the feature.
So by removing a feature that fairly few people used, they could speed up development. That's how it benefits us, and they told us this up front.
Re:Coke II (Score:4, Interesting)
The urban legend was the "conspiracy" part. Coca-cola was just merely incompetent. The facts are that they switched formulas, then they switched back to the "original" formula, except that cane sugar was dropped for high fructose corn syrup.
Despite what Ms. Mikkelson says about blind taste-testing, there were still many people who could tell the difference and didn't like New Coke. I could always tell the fast-food joints that had New Coke over Coke Classic. I'd order a "coke" and in an unmarked container would be the beverage. Because I was in a drive-thru, I wouldn't know ahead of time or see the name on the tap. New Coke had a definite weird aftertaste.
Pepsi is another that claims people can't taste the difference between Coca-cola and Pepsi. But, I was able to taste the difference when I was at one of their "taste-test booths", with a cold, too.
The problem with these taste-test results is that I think there are a lot of people who can't taste the difference between X and a cow's backside. Can I prove that? No. But I know that at least for me (and a few of my friends), it wouldn't be an issue.
And yes, I can taste the difference between cane sugar and HFCS, too.
Re:Coke II (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Kudos to Netflix (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I understand why the decision was so bad. They obviously did it so that people who watch movies separately would have to buy separate subscriptions. Aside from the fact that they weren't honest about why they were doing it (a repeat of their behavior when they were throttling heavy users, and pretending they weren't), that actually seems pretty equitable.
Say 4 people are sharing a 4-at-a-time account using 4 queues. (I hear this is pretty common in dorms.) Then they basically are getting the same service as 4 people with 1-at-a-time accounts, but for $6 each instead of $9 each. That extra $3 is not exactly a budget breaker, and yet the $9 total seems a pretty reasonable fee to rent 4 or 5 movies a month. Considering that the postage alone probably costs nearly $5.
It makes sense to give people with a single queue a discount per movie, because you either have a one-person household, or a household that watches all their movies together. So a household with a 4-at-a-time membership is probably not watching 4 times as many movies.
Not that it's a big moral issue either way. Netflix seems to be making money (though obviously not as much as they'd like) and people are getting entertained pretty cheaply (though obvious every $ counts, perhaps too much!).
Anyway, cue the flames.
Re:Kudos to Netflix (Score:3, Interesting)
"What? Are you just going to mass migrate all of IBM from Windows? HAH! We'd like to see you try. We'll talk to you again in a week, after you realize it's financial suicide."
Uh, that isn't really out of the question. IBM has an internal IBM-ified Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution that any employee who wants to use that instead of Windows is welcome to.
This has evolved over the years and when I last worked for IBM, I used it on my company-issued laptop for the last year I was there. All the IBM-required tools, like Lotus Notes and Sametime, work perfectly well. Office is handled with OpenOffice (integrated into Notes w/ version 8).
Of any of the companies out there with a large deployment of Windows, IBM is the best postured to switch to Linux. Given IBM's contributions to the open source community and their respect of open standards, I wouldn't put it past them.
Disclaimer: I am not an employee of or affiliated with IBM. I worked there a year ago. They might have migrated everyone to OS2 at this point, I don't know.
Re:I think it's funny (Score:4, Interesting)
This is easily the most annoying thing about phone support.
First the automated system asks you to enter your account number, telephone number, or what have you. Then you get to sit on hold while they scare up a human.
Then you get to the human. What's the first thing they ask? "What is your account number?" My god, I could just kill them!
But it doesn't stop there! First-level support is useless, so you get past them and they transfer you along to someone more useful. Once you arrive, what's the first thing you hear? You guessed it! "What is your account number?"
Doesn't this repetition cost these companies valuable time and thus money? Is it really that hard to make a support system that will hold on to my information as my call is transferred through your organization?
Re:alright (Score:3, Interesting)
DVDs: ~$15-20. BD: ~$25-30. Yes, that's a significant expense.
Netflix has over 55 million discs in its warehouse(s), though how many are BD is not clear. They certainly do not pay more than retail for discs, though the extent of their discount and any independent licensing agreements they've reached with studios are obviously trade secrets.
Re:Coke II (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it -- and I may be off base here -- when leaded gasoline was phased out, fuel refineries had to stop using cheap lead as a substitute for expensive octane.
"Pure" gasoline, before additives, is a hodgepodge of various no- and low-branch alkanes that averages around 6 to 7 carbon atoms per molecule. But linear heptane burns a bit too fast for the liking of a lot of engines, and hydrocarbons with even slight branching burn much faster than that. Enter "octane", which burns slower than "pure" gasoline and autoignites at a higher temperature, thus preventing premature detonation, or "knocking". ("Octane" is in quotes because, in the context of gasoline, "octane" is a function of the burn speed, not the number of carbon atoms. "Octane" doesn't strictly mean 8-carbon linear alkane, as it can also include heavier molecules with a small amount of branching.)
Raising the "octane rating" requires a more involved refining process, because the alkanes in the gasoline-diesel-kerosene spectrum all have very similar boiling points and are hard enough to distill cleanly when making "pure" gasoline. 8-carbon molecules are toeing the line, and heavier ones push pretty solidly into diesel territory. As an educated guess, refining high-octane gasoline probably cuts into diesel yields and reduces overall profits. It probably also requires a more expensive hydrocarbon cracking process, because branches are even less desirable in high-octane gasoline than they are in "pure" gasoline, and a lot of catalytic cracking processes are quite happy to spew out branched hydrocarbons.
Presumably, the reason "regular unleaded" gasoline is more expensive than "regular leaded" is the same reason that high-octane grades of gasoline are called "premium", and priced accordingly.
Re:Coke II (Score:3, Interesting)
Lead was added because older engines benefitted from the lead coating. It had to do with high compression ratios and unhardened blocks. I found an article that seems to support my conclusion that lead was simply added, and not some necessary component for refining oil.
There's even more to the story. Some other posts have pointed out that the lead wasn't really necessary for passenger cars, so why was it so common? Guess who owned the patents for tetraethyl lead, and got a royalty for every gallon sold? General Motors and Standard Oil. So the people best in a position to force leaded gas into every gas station also had a financial incentive to do so...
Re:Kudos to Netflix (Score:3, Interesting)
I do have a choice, and that's why I started riding a motorcycle. I only use a car now in order to get groceries, and only then when I need A LOT of groceries.
Does it mean I end up driving in crazy rain (like Seattle is known for)? Yeah, it does, but I bought good gear. If you want to talk about beating the pants off of a hybrid, my 600cc motorcycle cost me $2.8k, and gets about 47mpg at 80mph (I don't even think hybrids can DO 80mph). At that rate, paying off the extra $19k that the hybrid costs? Wow, that would never happen... and $19k can buy you some REALLY REALLY good gear. In the winter a lot of people asked me "aren't you cold?" and my response is, "no, although if I stop moving, I get REALLY hot."
Of course, I also have a 250cc that gets 60mpg, and I bought for just $2k... but I don't tend to drive it to work (even though I probably should, gas just isn't THAT expensive yet.)
I was talking to my ex-boyfriend saying, "you know, I started riding a bike because gas was killing me... it's just getting harder and harder for me to stop." Also, I mentioned to him that my car is a bit of my "red-headed step child" of a vehicle. It hasn't been touched in about two weeks or so...