Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Media The Almighty Buck Entertainment News

Netflix Deflects Rage Over Price Increase 722

oxide7 writes "Netflix provoked an unprecedented outpouring of backlash across the Internet as the company unveiled plans to raise prices on its movie-rental services. The company said it would raise the Internet-plus-DVDs-in-the-mail plan from $9.99 per month to $15.98 per month late Tuesday sparking protests and rage across the subscriber base. Netflix brushed off the criticism however. 'We knew there would be some people who would be upset,' company spokesman Steve Swasey said. 'To most people, it's a latte or two,' he added."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Netflix Deflects Rage Over Price Increase

Comments Filter:
  • by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:43PM (#36765782)
    Canceled as soon as they sent email with their new pricing scheme. Simply not worth that much money, especially with competition from Amazon and Google in the works.
    • by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:50PM (#36765908) Homepage Journal

      Let them drink Latte...

      My god! The stunning arrogance of the McMansion aristocracy.

      • by deains ( 1726012 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:08PM (#36766348)
        Happy Bastille Day everyone.
      • by Kamiza Ikioi ( 893310 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:29PM (#36766768)

        You're damn right! Latte? Latte? Arrogant little shit, people (like me) are pinching pennies cancelling even basic cable in the tight economy already trying to keep a "normal" life going with a $10 spot to Netflix. I can go to Redbox, Steve Swasey, you little asshole and get almost 3 DVDs a week! Netflix was mostly to keep my CHILD entertained with kids shows, but fuck it, it's just a latte to you, right?

        Sorry for the cursing, but that mother... needs to read The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk and get some goddamn manners! This is a less for how NOT to conduct business when everyone has a direct line to 500 friends on Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc! What a retard! I hope the fact that he is spokesman for Netflix will make future employers go, "Ah, so I guess I don't have to ask why you're now looking for new employment. Well, we don't find you qualified for spokesman, but we do have janitorial."

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by tverbeek ( 457094 )

          Netflix is showing signs of not-quite-competence all over the place. Not-so-bright UI design on the new web site, bad usability testing on the new design, and inept PR spin "all our testers liked it, what's wrong with you?" in response to the complaints. Now there's this huge price hike that they're trying to spin as "lowest prices ever" (as if we wouldn't notice that only applies to much less service), and this "let them stop drinking latte" nonsense. If I'm ever in a position again to review job applic

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Danse ( 1026 )

            If I'm ever in a position again to review job applicants, and I see a significant stint at Netflix on someone's job history, I'm going to have assume that they didn't know how to do their job, either.

            Just what we need, yet another retarded manager. If you can't be bothered to evaluate the person rather than jumping to conclusions based on extremely tenuous circumstantial evidence, your company would be stupid to have you reviewing any applicant.

      • by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:50PM (#36767186)
        Whatever. Just eat one fewer of those tiny spoonfuls of caviar or drink one less glass of Dom. Or if you don't want to skimp there, light your Cuban cigars with $1 bills instead of $5 bills now. You can cover the difference with the change left in your swim trunks after swimming in your money bin. Why are we complaining about such a small price increase?
      • A couple latte's cost from you, $40 more to fill the tank every week, an increase in the cost of food because they are using corn to make fuel, the price of education rising dramatically...after a while you miss a car payment or a house payment because you don't have the cash or you are forced to put this stuff on credit which costs even more in the long run. Then what? And what's the increase in value for the extra cost?

        At least a latte has some nutritional value and coffee had a reported medicinal value

      • by jojoba_oil ( 1071932 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @03:45PM (#36768090)

        My god! The stunning arrogance of the McMansion aristocracy.

        I don't know if it's arrogance or just plain ignorance. They figure that since they drink a latte every morning, everybody does... "Right? Right guys?"

        Remember the /. story about how 'most people love our new website redesign'?

        If I was a Netflix customer, I'd drop them. If I was a Netflix shareholder, I'd drop them -- not because of the price increase, but because of the sweeping generalizations that seem completely untrue "most people this" and "most people that". There's a serious case of out-of-touch-with-consumers there. Maybe someone who runs a marketing/consumer-research firm has a jackpot just waiting for them...

    • by rwven ( 663186 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:50PM (#36765912)

      The fact is that shipping through the mail is just really expensive compared to streaming. Netflix needed to make this decision sooner or later, and I don't blame them for doing it. They've been talking about how expensive the mailings are for a long time now.

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:57PM (#36766110)
        So expensive that they were able to build a huge company on it but now, suddenly, it's not profitable. Wake up and smell the cash grab.
        • by OldeTimeGeek ( 725417 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:06PM (#36766314)
          The cash grab is coming from the content providers. Netflix has become a major player so they want a bigger share of the pie [cnn.com].
          • by sneakyimp ( 1161443 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:26PM (#36766708)

            Mod parent up. This is definitely about the content providers wanting more money. The reason the Sony movies were removed is because they had hit a contractual cap and Netflix was unable to offer them anymore until a renegotiation followed. At the renegotiation, the content providers are all too aware of the soaring Netflix profits and stock price and are demanding more money. My actor friend in Hollywood (an armchair industry analyst) has been moaning for months about how the studios let Netflix get away with the content too cheaply.

            I'll be canceling my account too for a variety of reasons:
            1) The streaming selection has been awful lately. Like really awful.
            2) The site redesign really sucks. You have to hover over a movie to see the rating.
            3) The recommendations for me are ghastly. Maybe it's because my girlfriend has been watching too many movies.
            4) I've received scratched DVDs and had streaming movies drop repeatedly (despite my 10Mbps connection). I have yet to receive any compensation or even an apology for these service failures.
            5) No video rental on demand? WTF??
            6) Yes, the price increase.

          • by ThanatosMinor ( 1046978 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @03:41PM (#36768046)
            Wait, so competition increases prices for the consumer? Sometimes I wonder what the Invisible Hand is doing while I'm watching the other one take my money.
        • by alostpacket ( 1972110 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:07PM (#36766330) Homepage

          Part of me wonders how much of the cash grab is coming from the content providers/movie studios though. Now that they see netflix is the path to the customer they decided to try and play a bit more hardball. That's just my speculation though, impossible to say for sure.

        • From what I've read, NF is going to get pounded by renegotiated contracts with the studios next year. So this move appears to be preparation for "paying the piper". I don't think it was a cash grab.
          • by Maestro4k ( 707634 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:37PM (#36766934) Journal

            From what I've read, NF is going to get pounded by renegotiated contracts with the studios next year. So this move appears to be preparation for "paying the piper". I don't think it was a cash grab.

            Netflix is still handling this atrociously from a PR standpoint. If it's due to the studios demanding more money (reports are it'll be considerably more, not a small amount more) then they need to tell their customers that. "Sorry, but licensing costs are going up as we have to renegotiate streaming deals with the various studios so this price increase has been forced on us from outside." Then consumers will direct their anger more at the studios, instead of Netflix. Saying something idiotic about the price increase being "a latte or two" is more or less guaranteed to make the PR situation WORSE. Much, much worse.

        • by bkr1_2k ( 237627 )

          You're aware the USPS shipping costs have increased about 25 percent in the time Netflix has been in business, aren't you? That makes a huge difference in profits, especially when you're trying to expand your market.

        • Economy of scale often takes into place. As Netflix grows bigger Mailing becomes less profitable to a point where it cost more to ship a DVD where it use to be their bread and butter.

          A typical Manager can directly manage 8 people effectively. So every 8 people hired they need a new manager. every 8 managers there needs to be a new upper manager and we continue.... We can assume that each management level will get paid more then the one that is under them. So as the business grows you get more bureaucrat

        • by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:47PM (#36767138)

          Wake up and smell the cash grab.

          Heh yeah, back in my day big successful companies were philanthropic.

    • by neurocutie ( 677249 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:51PM (#36765942)
      "Simply not worth that much money, especially with competition from Amazon and Google in the works." But the writing is on the wall that the content providers are going to be driving up the prices on ALL such online streaming services. Netflix just happens to be the first and biggest. As articles have said, Netflix USED BE just a "left overs" service, at least from the view point of the content providers (studios, etc). That is, the studios thought that MOST people bought DVDs and saw movies in theaters and Netflix was just there to "mop up" the small fraction of the market that didn't pay through the other channels. But now the studios see that Netflix is rapidly become a MAJOR if not THE predominant channel for customers to view content. So as revenues drop fro DVD sales, the studio EXPECT Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, Google, etc to raise prices to make up for the shortfall elsewhere. Point is, short of piracy, don't count on finding low cost channels for content from the studios to last forever.
      • by TopSpin ( 753 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:57PM (#36767340) Journal

        don't count on finding low cost channels for content from the studios to last forever

        Don't count of the value of the studio's assets to remain high forever. When cable appeared the legacy networks found themselves competing with new content that emerged exclusively on the new medium. Today the old networks are just slots in the basic cable lineup.

        Streaming is a true a la carte platform, far more liberal than cable/satellite. Anyone can knock together a Roku channel, contract with a CDN and deliver broadcast quality content to the world. No cable company need be dealt with. No big content gate-keeper gets a cut. That is an irresistible temptation to entrepreneurs.

        Eventually new and popular content will emerge that is exclusive to streaming. Competitors for staple cable channels will appear. Note that you can get live Al Jazeera on a Roku, but not CNN et al. The old cable staples will never truly make the transition. They'll have to be bought by those who do.

        Streaming is absolutely fucking excellent. The ultimate potential of streaming is way better than anything the traditional cable/satellite model offers, and it simply doesn't need Sony/Time Warner/Disney to succeed. As the big content owners of the world realize that consumers are happy with what has independently emerged on streaming media they'll have to compete with it. That is when the prices will be rationalized and the big content libraries get commoditized.

        In the immediate future the big content owners will play their games and try to squeeze the new medium for all it's worth. All they're really doing is creating opportunities for competitors. Streaming dominance with endemic competition is an inevitability. It will be the premier platform inside of ten years and all else will be legacy prizes lined up for the auction block.

      • That is, the studios thought that MOST people bought DVDs and saw movies in theaters and Netflix was just there to "mop up" the small fraction of the market that didn't pay through the other channels.

        That was true for me for a long time, but they stopped that themselves when they came out with Blu-Ray at much higher prices. I didn't want to buy Blu-Rays for twice as much, but I also didn't want to buy DVDs when there was a Blu-Ray, so I turned my NetFlix account back on.

    • by loteck ( 533317 )
      Same here. No rage or emotion involved, just don't think its worth it, so I immediately cancelled. I wonder how many there are like us?
      • There must have been a little emotion because the change doesn't happen until September 1st.
      • by localman57 ( 1340533 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:04PM (#36766254)
        At some point it probably doesn't matter that much. Netflix is likely to keep enough people to be able to keep the lights on. And the price they pay for content will likely be proportional to their number of users, as will their bandwitdh costs, so their single biggest costs will scale up or down with their user base, keeping the margin per user relatively flat. If they can increase their margin by 200% at a cost of 30% of their users, that's a win.

        Personally, I think it's a smart move. Netflix has had by far the greatest success monitizing the content delivery business (excluding the wire-to-your-house providers like comcast or AT&T). Google and Hulu still have to figure out the business plan (Youtube is popular as shit, but hard to make money on). This gives netflix a chance now to try and raise margins, in order to try and gain enough capital clout to fight with their likely ultimate rivals for exclusive content, Comcast, AT&T, etc.

        The need to shoot for the moon now and try to get to the point where they can square off against the 800 pound gorillas, or they'll end up like Tivo.
    • That simple.

      You're going to stop being a customer all over the place.

       

    • I have Netflix but I hardly ever used it, so when the notice came out I switched to their 4.99 plan. Its slightly less than I use now, but meh.

    • yep, cancellation on the way.

      Netflix is raising prices and reducing access. Since when did they think this would be a good idea?

    • by wcrowe ( 94389 )

      Same here. They're fooling themselves if they think that only a few customers are upset about the outrageous 60% price increase. Only a small percentage will actually say anything. There are a lot of us who know that our complaints will be ignored.
       

    • by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

      For me, it's a math problem. I moved a year ago, and we decided to drop cable TV. Instead, we subscribed to Netflix, and regularly use Amazon Instant Video and PlayStation Network.

      Look at it this way: Looking at the cost of cable TV (at our old house, but it's about the same here) it was about $80 per month.

      But without cable TV, we're watching (mostly) the same shows from Amazon and PSN for $2 per episode. We watch movies and catch up on series (that we didn't watch the first time around) using Netflix. Str

  • And Swasey said, "Let them drink lattes..."
  • Cyberterrorist hackers are pilfering "a latte or two"...wait...that doesn't sound scary enough.

  • Step 1: Almost double the price. Step 2: ?? Step 3: Bankruptcy!
    • by rwven ( 663186 )

      Netflix is trying to put the DVD side with a price to adequately cover its costs (which are substantial), and trying to push as many users as it can to the streaming side. I've been expecting this for a long time, and I think it was a good decision.

      • Are you suggesting that Netflix has been losing money on DVDs? Cuz if so how did they make it before streaming was even offered? I think you give them way to much credit. If anything word is that lots of their streaming contracts are ending soon, and guess what? Big media wants a bigger slice of the pie. Supporting what is essentially a doubling of price for many users is giving warm fuzzies to an entity that only has maximizing profits, while minimizing services as much as possible.
      • Netflix is trying to put the DVD side with a price to adequately cover its costs (which are substantial), and trying to push as many users as it can to the streaming side. I've been expecting this for a long time, and I think it was a good decision.

        While I knew they were going to emphasize streaming over DVD, I wish they had treaded more carefully. They won't admit it, but their PR department is (or should be) in damage control mode.

    • I'm confused to where this double the price comes from. My old plan was 3 DVDs a month (with blu ray) and streaming was $23. The equivalent new plan would be $28, which seems to me to be a 21% increase. Now did they give me anything different, nope. In fact as we always seem to have a DVD sitting around for a month, I dropped the 3 DVDs to 2 DVDs and am going back to $23/month. When they first bought in streaming it was 1 hour for every dollar you spent on a plan, I was on the $18 plan and got 18 hours of
  • by Reverand Dave ( 1959652 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:46PM (#36765832)
    and I don't have to sit through a lot of idiotic commercials.
  • Latte Defense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gr33nJ3ll0 ( 1367543 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:46PM (#36765846)
    Why are so many things justified with the already unjustifiable cost of a Latte? Just as two wrongs don't make a right, two prices that are too high, don't make the second any cheaper.
    • Because in my little corner of the planet (Victoria BC) there is a 10 person deep line up for a latte at every single one of the hundreds of espresso shops every morning. That's why.

      Justified or not people buy lattes.

    • Exactly, I've found that if i cancel my healthcare I can afford cable and netflix, and still get a daily latte.

  • by Superken7 ( 893292 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:46PM (#36765852) Journal

    Most people are probably not really angry because of the money increase, as there are few good rivals (not for long, I hope), but because nothing of value was added to the service to justify the increase.

    I bet most people would be happy if the price increase would have arrived with a 100% streaming coverage so people can stop relying on DVDs, or maybe some new cool feature.
    Instead, the UI has been somewhat degraded for some, and now the service is almost twice the price. It's not just "some people", I'm sure _most_ people are not happy with the "update".

    • by wpi97 ( 901954 )
      A price increase does not have to be justified by value added at all. It only has to be justified by enough demand to keep the company profitable. This is very simple really. If enough people cancel their subscription as a result of this, Netfilx will either fold, or lower its prices. On the other hand, if enough subscribers eat the increase, so much the better for Netflix.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:57PM (#36766094)

      I bet most people would be happy if the price increase would have arrived with a 100% streaming coverage so people can stop relying on DVDs, or maybe some new cool feature.

      If you want 100% streaming coverage, $7.99 is way too cheap. Most people are simply being irrational here. The cost of doing business is going up for Netflix, so the cost to pay for the service is going up with it. Netflix gave us all way too good a deal for way too long which has caused most consumers to turn into spoiled little brats.

      • by gorzek ( 647352 ) <gorzek.gmail@com> on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:03PM (#36766238) Homepage Journal

        Yeah, $8 a month for unlimited streaming is a fucking steal. Assuming you watch only an hour a night, you are paying all of 26 cents an hour for your entertainment, a better deal than just about anything else out there.

        • by hazem ( 472289 )

          Yeah, $8 a month for unlimited streaming is a fucking steal.

          Indeed. I've been streaming for a year with Netflix and keep thinking, "I can't believe this is only $8/month."

          I'm not bothered by the increase in price, since for me it would be worth a higher price. I am, however, bothered by the change in the UI. My computer is not a TV and I expect to be able to do more with my computer (since i have more input options than just a remote control). I also don't like not being able to see the titles and rati

      • Just Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pavon ( 30274 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:57PM (#36767328)

        $7.99 is way too cheap.

        To me that is the most bizarre aspect of this price change. If what you want is just streaming or just DVD, the new plan is very inexpensive. AFAIK, it is the lowest price that Netflix has ever offered. But if you primarily use one and occasionally supplement it with the other, having to pay double the price isn't worth it. So the natural reaction of everyone I know personally, and the vast majority of posts I have seen on the internet is to drop one of the two. It is like Netflix is begging us to give them less money, and presenting it an a manner that is pissing everyone off.

        What is even more mind-boggling, is that this ability to supplement one with the other is the one of the biggest advantages that Netflix has over it's competitors, and they just completely threw it out the window.

        I understand that the price for streaming would have to increase over time as Netflix renegotiates deals, and the selection increases. I never expected it to be included as a freebee with the DVD service forever, just during it's teething years. But I can't believe that the average person who signs up for both DVD and streaming would use both just as much as the average person who only signs up for one or the other.

        If they really believed that the majority of people would keep both plans at the higher price, then their market research people need to be fired.

    • by Idbar ( 1034346 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:38PM (#36766960)
      I said this somewhere else, but I think is worth mention here.

      I'm a netflix subscriber, and I sincerely don't care paying more for their services. What I think motivated the rage, was rolling out a price increase as a "feature". Instead of just saying they will be increasing the prices ("The $10 plan will be now $16, BUT you have the option of going only streaming or only DVDs for half the price"), they went "Hey! Great news, we are splitting the plans so everyone is happy! Your plan will no longer exist and you'll have to pay extra! BTW, Everyone must switch over in September".

      If there's one thing you don't want to do you your customers is making them look like idiots, and tell them to pay more with ultimatums. That was sort of 3 strikes on their single blog post.
  • This isn't about the use of disposable income. It's about having a huge increase in cost with absolutely nothing in return. Now, if they'd said that they'd finally ripped their DVD collection to streaming, or even somewhere near it, I'd listen. Or perhaps they're finally going to get more recent titles in line with Blockbuster or Redbox. But they're not.

    This is a pure, unadulterated money grab. So I'm grabbing mine back before they get the chance. Canceled my service yesterday. And per http://www.hac [hackingnetflix.com]

    • so a third of a poll says they are going to cancel. lets take that at face value. Double price.. third leave.. well looks like it is still worth doubling the price! Of course when push comes to shove, I am betting 1/2 of the people who say they are going to cancel, won't cancel.
    • by Nemyst ( 1383049 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:57PM (#36766118) Homepage

      If 2/3rds of the user base stays with a 50% price increase, then they've increased revenue while decreasing expenses (less bandwidth usage).

      Question is whether it'll stay at just a third leaving.

      • If 2/3rds of the user base stays with a 50% price increase, then they've increased revenue while decreasing expenses (less bandwidth usage).

        Question is whether it'll stay at just a third leaving.

        At the same time they lose market share, which hurts their long-term prospects. It makes it harder for them to grow revenue and easier for their competitors (iTunes, Amazon, Hulu) to grow strong.

        Most investors would see a 1/3rd paying user-base leaving in this span of months as very bad. Revenue isn't necessarily going up; there are lot of households who will stay but go from 2 DVDs to 1.

  • A couple bucks more is exactly the wrong way for them to be looking at this. It is a 60% price increase (A little less for me on a 2 BluRay plan) but they need to be offering real improvements to service in exchange for this level of price increase, they need to be promising faster new releases on disc and better streaming options too not just now we want 60% more (they could get away with 25% more, but this is excessive.) I'll be dropping to the 1DVD (no more BluRays for a while) w/ streaming plan in res

  • As a Canadian, the only deal available to me is $7.99 for streaming only. I looked over the catalog and decided there was enough there to be worth $7.99/month.

    So what's not worth $7.99 to Americans, the DVDs or the streaming? Given that your streaming library is more extensive, I assume it's the DVDs. Cancel that and enjoy the streaming.

    I plan to stream a few episodes of a series I'm watching over 3G from my hospital bed later today.

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      So what's not worth $7.99 to Americans, the DVDs or the streaming?

      The streaming. I'm not a Netflix subscriber yet, but I imagine that once a subscriber has finished watching movies that his friends have recommended, he ends up with a lot of movies that aren't available on streaming. How should one watch those movies?

  • I'd be super happy with the streaming only if they have more than a few titles available for streaming. I'd bet there would be a whole lot less rage if they said:

    1) we are splitting the plans and raising the rates on the combination. But:
    2) we are vastly increasing your streaming offerings so many of you will save money by streaming only.

    The streaming offerings are crazy at times. For example they will have three of four disks of a series available for streaming, but they 4th is by mail only. WTF?!

    I've

  • So I'm one of those netflix subscribers that jumped ship. I felt the price increase was more than the service was worth. Netflix picked a very bad time to increase prices, and in particular picked a very very poor way to do it. They could have hiked prices slowly over time, and it would have likely not been enough to really re-evaluate the value I get from them. To raise prices 27% at once was too much to swallow. And worst of all was their assumption that I should automatically be subcribed to their n
  • FTFS:

    The company said it would Netflix raise the Internet-plus-DVDs-in-the-mail plan

    What, exactly, does it meant to "Netflix raise" the price of something?

    • What, exactly, does it meant to "Netflix raise" the price of something?

      It means to increase it by such a large percentage that you need dental work when your jaw hits the floor.

  • What bothers me most is that this is the second time in a year rates have gone up. My current $8.99 plan will soon be $15! I know this is mostly the studios putting the heat on Netflix, but it's still bullshit to not offer any discount for bundling DVD and streaming as the current "deal" provides. I always liked Netflix because I felt that like Steam, even though they have DRM, they provide a service (instant streaming) that helps balance the equation. Now I can't help but re-think my position as a paying c
  • And we have the right to cancel our service if we don't like it. That is how a free society works. I don't like it any more than the next person; I probably will cancel streaming since I rarely use it and it doesn't support my OS of choice (Linux), and I might well switch if I knew of a better value for the things I watch, but I don't, and the higher-priced Netflix is still the best option for me for now. If Amazon and Google come out with some truly competitive offering, at that point Netflix had better
    • Agreed, though I'm going to cancel my DVD and keep streaming. I only get (got) a DVD maybe three or four times a year, and while the math may not back me up, it was worth it to be able to get one whenever I wanted. Now not so much. I'll drop that service, keep streaming, and if I need something not on "Instant," I'll rent it on Amazon's streaming service.

      I'm willing to bet that a significant number of people will drop the service that they use less often (mail or streaming).

  • I cancelled netflix last winter after the prices went up 50% in a year...

  • Even if 10% of their customers leave because of this increase they will make it back and then some with a 60% price increase. A competitor might get the suits nervous enough to decide that this was a bad idea $16 isn't exactly an ass raping either.
  • Netflix is not interested in mailing you DVDs for $2 a month. From their point of view, if you have streaming for $8, the correct price for adding mailing is $8. You may think of it as paying $8 for mailing and expect that you should be able to get streaming for an extra $2, but Netflix doesn't think of it that way. If you want them to maintain warehouses full of DVDs and mailers and pay for postage, they want you to pay for all that. Their price is $8.

    I gave up mailed DVDs months ago when the price wen

  • by TRACK-YOUR-POSITION ( 553878 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @01:59PM (#36766152)
    ...it's the non-uniformity of it. If you currently have a streaming-only plan, there's no price increase. If you only watch DVDs and never stream, you could even save yourself $2. But if you do both, you could be paying 60% more. It doesn't really make sense to pay double the price, because the DVDs and streams are competing uses of the customer's time--if I stream a movie this evening, I'm probably not going to also watch a DVD. Ultimately the service isn't that expensive and if they just want to charge more then it's no big deal. But the new scheme seems designed to punish people who only primarily use one half of the service but occasionally use the other. If you most just stream movies but occasionally there's a DVD not available for streaming that you really want to see (and isn't at RedBox), or if you mostly just watch DVDs but someone visits your house and you'd suddenly like to watch a movie without waiting a couple days for it to arrive, then you have to pay a lot of money (relatively) just to dip a toe into the other half of the pool.
  • When it takes 3-4 days to turn around a DVD, $8 for a DVD-only plan simply isn't worth it. The few extra bucks I was spending a month before, then sure.

    I guess Netflix would rather not have the money I was paying for that part of the service I rarely used.
  • by digitalderbs ( 718388 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:02PM (#36766210)
    What irks me about the price increase has nothing to do with the price of lattes or the fact that we're not necessarily getting anything more in return. It's the anti-competitive behavior. I suspect that the margins on their current pricing were set to be small enough to snuff out Blockbuster. Now, without real competition (incl Amazon's service), they can reap the fruits of their 'sacrifices.'
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by xtracto ( 837672 )

      Yeah, I bet you did no bitch when they introduced more movies, or the ability to stream films without increasing the price uh?

      "Why did you add more features without charging me more??!!!!11111"

      I would pay the 10 Euro without hesitating if a service like netflix (and not the joke that is LoveFIlm) was avialble here in Europe.

  • But what I might cancel over is the horrible new website...
    I mean, the sorting is gone, they lost at least a thousand ratings I'd marked, and apparently no longer have any suggestions for things I should watch for Drama... except for things I specifically have marked as "Not Interested". ...

  • ... suck it.
    Signed,
    Your corporate overlords
    • by royallthefourth ( 1564389 ) <royallthefourth@gmail.com> on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:19PM (#36766564)

      Oh grow up, it's just garbage entertainment. When you're really abused is when your food prices start going up, or the bank charges a mysterious fee, or you suddenly can't find work. Or, for that matter, when your wages stagnate while the cost of living continues to increase over the course of decades.
      That's when the real overlords laugh the hardest, knowing that your children will consider it a privilege to serve them their own siblings' flesh after you're gone. Netflix is just a sideshow.

  • I know there has been a lot of outrage over Dexter disappearing from instant queue. However, that was the decision made by Showtime, not Netflix. Showtime is going to start streaming Dexter and Californication exclusively via their new streaming service, Showtime Anytime.

    I also wonder how much of this price increase will go towards extending their streaming library. I would suspect streaming licenses is more expensive than DVD rental licenses and content producers are increasing what they charge Netflix.

    I a

  • by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Thursday July 14, 2011 @02:11PM (#36766420) Homepage

    Their public relations people clearly have the public relations skills of engineers.

    Hardware engineers.

  • As a percentage of the old price, the new price is outrageous. This is like charging $0.75 instead of $0.15 for text messages and then defending it by saying that "to most people, it's like getting extra cheese on their burger".

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Ambrose Bierce

Working...