Netflix Kills Qwikster 253
gclef writes "Netflix has apparently decided that spinning off their DVD business into a separate organization was a bad idea after all, and is killing off the 'Qwikster' concept. From the article: 'Less than a month ago, the Netflix said it would split the DVD rental business off on a new website, to be called Qwikster. Subscribers howled at the move, saying they saw Netflix as a destination for movies in general and didn’t want to manage two accounts. “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” CEO Reed Hastings said in the blog post.'"
Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
It's obvious that NetFlix doesn't understand its customers anymore (if it ever did.) What I used to take as excellent customer focused strategy now seems to have been completely accidental. Every customer facing change they've made over the past few years has made the NetFlix experience progressively worse. At this point, I've had enough of their confused thrashing, and will still be cancelling my subscription. I checked my records, I joined NetFlix in 2004, and used to have a 3 DVD plan, but inf recent years have dropped to 1 DVD, then no DVDs, and now, no NetFlix.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it's too little nor too late. This is two major decisions that they've turned around and admitted that they didn't appropriately measure their audience correctly-- BEFORE implementation. How many companies do you know that do that?
Their actions were affected by their audience... do we have expectations above and beyond that?
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Their actions were affected by their tumbling stock price and customer mass exodus.
Customers (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, they only lost 1 million out of an original 25 million. I would hardly call that a mass exodus. Unfortunately, investors panicked and their share price did plummet. Shame that we punish Netflix for a 6 dollar increase, and do nothing about the movie studios requiring significantly larger contracts that Netflix needs to find the cash for.
Re:Customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Qwikster was such a stupid name anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, they only lost 1 million out of an original 25 million. I would hardly call that a mass exodus. Unfortunately, investors panicked and their share price did plummet. Shame that we punish Netflix for a 6 dollar increase, and do nothing about the movie studios requiring significantly larger contracts that Netflix needs to find the cash for.
Boy, you can say THAT again. Sheesh.
Mod this guy up to an 11 !! He's got the quote of the day.
Re:Customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Shame that we punish Netflix for a 6 dollar increase, and do nothing about the movie studios requiring significantly larger contracts that Netflix needs to find the cash for
Most of us didn't punish Netflix for a 6 dollar increase. In fact, we know that the movie studios want Netflix dead so they can go back to their 3-day "rental" for $3 plan (ahem, iTunes.)
It's the fact that Netflix tried to push this price increase as a great thing for consumers that pissed us off. Complain about how the movie studios are putting the screws to us (and maybe mention some places we can write to to complain), and you'd have us firmly on your side. Bullshit us by posting "our lowest prices ever" and "great value" on your blog, and we'll react.
Re: (Score:2)
So what? That is a quick way to get your message to a company, and it worked.
Re: (Score:3)
Personally, I'm amazed the CEO still has a job after this dumbassery has reduced the stock price by half in only a couple of months.
I will repeat my assessment of Netflix. It's a company that had a good idea once, and hasn't had a good one since.
Why Netflix did it in the first place (Score:3)
I think that there are probably two really good reasons Netflix saw the breakup as a good idea and neither of those has changed.
1) Ending studio blackmail.
Right now studios have to sell netflix DVDs at a reasonable price since they are available over the counter. But the studios don't have to sell them streaming at a reasonable price. They can tell Netflix, give us a slice of your DVD income or we wont sell you the streams you need. If you physically split the bussinesses then the blackmail goes away s
Re: (Score:2)
Redbox might be a better business model, but their worse from an end-user perspective. Their selection, as of now, sucks. No classics, barely any foreign movies, and I actually have to truck out to a store to get and return movies. My mailbox is much closer, and a dropbox is closer than a store.
The DVD portion of the business model is going to carry Netflix for quite a while. They'll need the income that it provides if they wan to survive the streaming wars. It's a lot easier to build a scaling streaming cl
Re: (Score:3)
Their selection, as of now, sucks. No classics, barely any foreign movies
To you maybe, not to most, because the majority of people want to see new movies, not classics and most foreign movies are a niche market.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not true. The feedback from the customers is what hit the stock price and angered the stock holders. So yes it was due to customer feedback.
Re: (Score:2)
If only they were as responsive in the two other areas where they get negative feedback -- from me, at least:
* Lack of a (proprietary or not) functional linux client.
* Lack of clear progress towards making the DVD rental business moot by putting all of their movies up for streaming viewing.
The one I fully understand is a dicey proposi
Re:Waah waah (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most likely yes. The $30 million they are paying Dreamworks to stream Shrek would pay for a lot of postage (and DVDs).
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Waah waah (Score:4, Insightful)
The increase in cost affected my service, as it caused me to get less service. The continued changes to the web site affected my service, because it made it more and more difficult to search for and find content I was interested in (regardless of whether it was DVDs or streaming. I'm not buying DVDs or Blu-rays, because it's just not that important to me to see movies. It was certainly nice to be able to enjoy the occaisional movie at home, without having to fight crowds at the theaters, but my life doesn't revolve around TV and movies (at least not anymore) so I can easily say goodbye to NetFlix and just not replace it with another service.
If their model works for you, then by all means, keep subscribing. It doesn't work for me though, not anymore, so I'm voting with my wallet.
Re:my life doesn't revolve around TV and movies (Score:2)
It was certainly nice to be able to enjoy the occaisional movie at home, without having to fight crowds at the theaters, but my life doesn't revolve around TV and movies (at least not anymore) so I can easily say goodbye to NetFlix and just not replace it with another service.
If their model works for you, then by all means, keep subscribing. It doesn't work for me though, not anymore, so I'm voting with my wallet.
I was wondering if that's where you where going with this. I completely understand, and have done the same thing with my music dollars back when they started copy protecting cds. In fact, I may well go to a 2 dvd plan, as I doubt I've seen 16 movies in the last two months.
Re: (Score:2)
I have reduced my service.
I have created a RedBox account.
If the whole RedBox thing works out, I might cancel Netflix entirely.
Re:Waah waah (Score:4, Insightful)
Streaming + DVD was a good deal. DVD alone for $8/mo isn't, because Redbox is $1/disc (I rarely get 8 discs a month, and when I do, a lot is just filler that I either don't end up watching or only ended up in my queue because I felt a need to get my money's worth out of the service.) Streaming is a steaming pile for $8/mo, because the selection is so terrible.
When Netflix announced the change, I moved to Redbox. It's only a little less convenient, but there are three kiosks within walking distance and several more on the way to and from work. I already had Amazon Prime, which has a high degree of overlap with Netflix for streaming content. I am in the 4% (who left Netflix when they started charging more.)
Re: (Score:3)
I was a few weeks away from cancelling. The Qwikster thing spurred me to explore other options and question how and in what way I spend my entertainment dollars. Let's face it, once you begin to give a good hard look at entertainment spending it is easy to come to the conclusion that you don't need much of it. My Netflix instant and dvd queue is about 90% 3-star movies, things that I'd add but put off to watch other better things. But now I've watch all those other things. Yes, Netflix did add some new
Re: (Score:2)
>>At this point, I've had enough of their confused thrashing, and will still be cancelling my subscription.
So they listened to their customers, abandoning the fucktarded Netflix/Qwkster split idea (though Qwkster would have made for a great Scrabble triple word score once it became genericized), and... you're cancelling over that?
I'm actually debating cancelling my cable TV. I never watch it, and only bought it to entertain my wife for when I'm playing video games. But now she spends all night watchin
Re: (Score:3)
I'm already there. I could not justify $130 a month for 500 channels of mindless puree. And I'm still not sure how we got to paying for commercials. One thing maybe these fuckwits could take note of is that customers pay for TV to get away from the goddamn commerical interruptons. I am sticking with Netflix because I tried Hulu as an alternative, and the every-10-minutes commercial interruption (which was in no way "limited" at all) was enough of a nuisance that I decided I refuse to pay $8/mo for some
Re: (Score:2)
The way I feel right now they seem to do something every few months to try to get more money from me. I don't enjoy having to watch like a hawk for term changes. Don't like it when my bank does it, don't like it when Netflix does it. Paying for the year to get Amazon is attractive to me because I get to pay for the year with the full understanding that I know exactly what I get. Although not attractive enough to switch from Netflix, at this time...
Re: (Score:2)
I'm quite happy they changed it, I was planning on quitting Netflix when this was implemented. That said, this one action (which never even happened) immediately trashed all 7+ years of good will I had with them. In August, they were one of my favorite companies. Now I don't trust them.
Irony of all this? I didn't mind the price increase. It wasn't bad for me. I thought they $8 DVD + Streaming plan was very underpriced, so I wasn't surprised at that move.
Re: (Score:3)
It's obvious that NetFlix doesn't understand its customers anymore (if it ever did.) What I used to take as excellent customer focused strategy now seems to have been completely accidental. Every customer facing change they've made over the past few years has made the NetFlix experience progressively worse. At this point, I've had enough of their confused thrashing, and will still be cancelling my subscription. I checked my records, I joined NetFlix in 2004, and used to have a 3 DVD plan, but inf recent years have dropped to 1 DVD, then no DVDs, and now, no NetFlix.
Same here, the last announcement caused me to cancel that day and made me take another look at Blockbuster. After the price jump I had to drop down to 2 DVDs. With BB I'm back to 3 and get Blu-ray and games for no extra charge. Granted, Netflix has the most amazing search and recommendation system around, but I can't justify staying with them for that and frankly I don't trust them anymore. If that insane CEO leaves I *may* try them again, but as long as that idiot is leading things I am staying away.
"Quikster" split a dumb move to begin with (Score:3)
I've been using Netflix since they started, and much as I love them, even I was left scratching my head over that one. It was such a bonehead move that the only logic I can see behind it is if they were hoping to quietly sell "Quikster" off later without generating any negative press for Netflix (and their stock). Otherwise it just feels like an insult to their customers (an we had already faced a price hike this year already).
I just can't see how they *wouldn't* expect a negative reaction from customers when you tell them "Now you'll have to visit two different sites, with different queues, different passwords, etc." It was taking something simple and making it a much bigger pain in the ass, for no apparent reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think Amazon is going to step in and compete very competently in the streaming arena.
The lynchpin of this whole issue is that Netflix's streaming library completely blows. Nobody wants to switch over to that completely because they can't watch anything they really want to watch - hence the backlash about the DVD service and the price increases. People were okay with using streaming every now and again, since it was free, but when you are reduced to watching made-for-TV quality tripe instead of desirable,
Re: (Score:2)
Netflix can rent physical DVDs without cooperation from the studios, because of the first sale right.
They can't do this for streaming. Streaming requires negotiation with the companies, who can charge anything they want or refuse to provide streams at all.
That's why the streaming library blows, and that's why it's always going to blow.
Re: (Score:2)
Well heck, if you want desirable first run movies there is always pirate bay. I have downloaded 4 of those "desirable first run movies" and I gotta tell you I'd never have paid for them. I'm sorry I wasted the bandwidth to download them in the first place. They're off the hard drive now. In all reality there are so few movies worth paying for nowadays. CGI and stunts have replace dialogue and acting. I remember laughing at fart jokes, when I was in the fourth grade. That's the level humor is at in ho
Re: (Score:2)
...I forgot about that in my other response.
I scaled back my Netflix account. I got a RedBox account. I may cancel my Netflix DVD service if RedBox works out.
I am also looking into and watching Amazon Prime more. It works just as well on my Roku and even better under Linux.
Institutional ineptitude (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Quikster" split a dumb move to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this creates even bigger outcry than price increases, and people stop talking about price issues and start talking about how they're going to cancel entirely when this happens. Then it doesn't, and they don't, but no one's really talking about price increases anymore. Cheap and effective counter to bad PR is worse PR that goes away!
Unfortunately "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" has a corollary, "never attribute to brilliant cunning that which is adequately explained by stupidity," so I can't quite bring myself to believe this.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a pretty silly theory. Every time you piss off your customers you encourage them to look elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That explains the billing split earlier this summer. The branding split was so they could sell off the DVD service when they expected it to fail.
Re: (Score:2)
I just can't see how they *wouldn't* expect a negative reaction from customers when you tell them "Now you'll have to visit two different sites, with different queues, different passwords, etc."
Well, the reaction Netflix was hoping for was for their customers to drop Qwikster and just go 100% streaming. Bonus points if they made the Qwikster website buggy and terrible in hopes of dissuading people from using it. Then Qwikster goes out of business (on purpose) and the Netflix brand is still strong.
It's obvious Netflix wants to get out of the DVD-mailing business and go streaming-only.
Re:"Quikster" split a dumb move to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix subscribed to a management theory called "eating your own lunch." The idea is that any business, if you wait around long enough, will get mummified as you keep trying to protect the revenue generated by your ancient business model. The theory says that, as the big company keeps struggling to keep its moribund business alive, a younger, hungrier competitor with a slightly different business model will steal your lunch. So, the theory goes, you should eat your own lunch and embark on your own variant business models. That way, when the business world shifts, you'll still be in business.
The theory points to such past projects as the CD industry, Blockbuster, and others. The idea is that such industries failed because they were too wedded to their ideas to change.
The trouble is, Netflix went overboard. They had two different business models running perfectly smoothly side by side. There was no mummification, nothing preventing them from being innovative or seizing on the new streaming business. In fact, their DVD-by-mail business was helping them wield great power in the movie industry, and helping them to get deals for streaming content.
So if they were paying attention clearly, the only reason to kill off the DVD-by-mail business is if it was scaring off the customers, starving the company of funds, or somehow preventing innovation. None of those were true. I'm glad to see they came to their senses.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Quikster" split a dumb move to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
I just can't see how they *wouldn't* expect a negative reaction from customers when you tell them "Now you'll have to visit two different sites, with different queues, different passwords, etc." It was taking something simple and making it a much bigger pain in the ass, for no apparent reason.
I agree with whoever said it when it was first announced: It seems like they just didn't think it through. IIRC, there was even a quote by Netflix's president when they asked him about needing to manage separate queues, and he was like, "Oooh, right. Good point. I'll have to get back to you on that one."
My guess is that they were so wrapped up in large-scale business strategies, wanting to separate out DVD and streaming for accounting, legal, and/or marketing reasons, and somehow no one stopped to ask, "What will this mean, on a practical level, for our customers?"
Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm fairly positive that the whole split was due to negotiations with content rights holders and little else.
It's not Netflix's fault that you can't get a ton of good streaming content from them -- they'd love to be able to provide that, but the content rights holders do not want that to be provided (for any amount of money that would anyone would pay, not Netflix, not you nor I).
The old guard doesn't much care for nor understand streaming content. It makes them uncomfortable.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, okay, but that's not quite true. The content owners are trying to get a premium price from Netflix, and Netflix won't pay it. In this disagreement, I'm personally with Netflix: I think movies are vastly, vastly overpriced. But alas, the market apparently disagrees, because many people do pay the premium prices. Not me, but others do. You can hardly blame the movie producers for demanding the maximum possible price.
Sudden outbreak of common sense (Score:2)
The real news here is that this shows just how poorly conceived this idea was, and a real lack of planning and vision at the top. Not good. Netflix must really be feeling the heat from the studios -- not to mention competition -- to be flailing about like this.
Re: (Score:2)
That was more or less my thought on the matter. I've switched to Blockbuster for my movies, same price similar selection and games thrown in there as well.
I might go back to Netflix eventually, but only if the roll out that Blockbuster has hinted at for an all you can eat streaming plan comes through. I'm not switching to Dish Network just so that I can get unlimited streaming from them through.
Beyond that there's, Crackle, Hulu, Amazon and don't forget about the official streams that some channels now have
Re: (Score:2)
When you say Blockbuster, do you mean their actual stores? They are all gone around me unfortunately.
And the Soner kid with the twitter... (Score:2)
Credit where due (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What surprises me about this is it seems like they're not doing a good job of marketing.
When they decide to change the flip-top on a bottle of low-budget shampoo, most places do polls, focus groups, read consulting reports and so on before they ever make the change.
You would think that Netflix would be doing the same thing if they were considering such a change.
My instinct tells me that something's wrong there. Take your pick -- Reed Hastings thinks of himself as a prophet and rejects advice from marketing
Re: (Score:2)
And the price...? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Content (Score:2)
It's the content. Netflix realized they need cash to throw at the studios who are now demanding significantly more. Even tossing a %1,000 percent increase at Starz was not enough to keep their contract. Look at how much they inked a deal with Dreamworks. Why didn't the customer base get upset at the studios for not allowing their titles can stream to a larger audience? Slashdot tends to get upset quickly at the music studios, but do we collectively give the movie studios a free pass? Netflix was the best c
Re: (Score:2)
Did you LIKE the content prior to the price increase? Which was mediocre and shrinking (starz leaving). Which would you rather have? No neflix or a netflix at the current prices?
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't want them to lower the price back down. I want them to use that increased revenue to license more streaming content. In fact, if they could get to the point that I could pretty much assume that a movie will be available for streaming (and I won't have to get the DVD), and then generally get TV shows as they air (as Hulu, Amazon, and iTunes do), then I would be willing to pay... like maybe $50/month.
Maybe they could throw in a music library (à la Spotify) for that price?
Of course,
Link to actual Netflix blog post (Score:3, Informative)
Integration with Facebook? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry I can't find a link to the article at the moment. It was the first not-insanely-unreasonable argument I had heard for the division. (although perhaps still a bit unreasonable.)
Re: (Score:3)
Though honestly I really hope this is just an app you can use in facebook rather than having the facebook login go to netflix.
Re: (Score:2)
Assume the worst.
Big mistake (Score:2)
Their DVD and Instant businesses conflict with each other, as witnessed by the decline in availability of new DVDs and the web site rearrangements that make some sense for instant but make it much harder to find DVDs. Splitting them gave the two businesses a chance to thrive separately.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. There is still a huge chunk of the US population that lives in areas with slow or no broadband.
The DVD service is all we can and do use.
Also, (Score:5, Funny)
"We realised that Qwikster sounds like the sort of company that made spyware in the late 90s".
Re: (Score:2)
Or it could be one of those company's that sends you stupid videos and pictures of the situation's abs.
Tone deaf again (Score:3)
"It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult"
So he thinks there are people (who want both DVDs and streaming) for whom that wouldn't be the case?
This guy seriously needs somebody to keep him from attempting to communicate with the public.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously. Was it not clear before a million customers told him so? Really?
Now...show intelligent corporate governance, and (Score:3)
....fire the guy whose catastrophically stupid idea that was.
And probably his boss, for approving it.
Seriously, it was an abortion from the first moment. Conceiving it, communicating it, championing it, apologizing for it, then backing away from it - all a disaster.
OK, credit them one TEENSY bit for finally acknowledging that annoying their ENTIRE customer base, making using their service MORE difficult to use, and then resisting to almost the last man until finally capitulating was stupid. Um, congrats?
Actually he was good; as far as CEOs go (Score:2)
He admitted the mistake and turned it around after investing a great deal in his blunder. Most CEOs today do not give in so easily to reason, they will continue down the foolish path they set CONFIDENT they will be vindicated later (and still feel good after they leave with a huge bonus and their plans "not performing to expectations" and blame external forces like "bad economy" or something about the timing implying it was a great idea ahead or behind the current market climate.)
Pass the bong (Score:2)
Whatever they're smoking in the Netflix executive offices, they need to consider rehab before they run the company into the ground. Anyone with a firm grasp of the obvious knew that Qwikster idea was a loser and then their tone-deaf PR rep comes out and calls their prices increases a "couple of lattes" at a time when unemployment is running at over 9 percent. How does that idiot still have a job?
If the impression they're trying to convey is incompetent management, mission accomplished. The only stupid
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone with a firm grasp of the obvious knew that Qwikster idea was a loser and then their tone-deaf PR rep comes out and calls their prices increases a "couple of lattes" at a time when unemployment is running at over 9 percent. How does that idiot still have a job?
Maybe that was aimed at the 91% of workers who therefore do have a job. The economy could be better, sure, but this isn't exactly the Great Depression.
Re: (Score:2)
In point of fact, the employment situation is, in some ways, worse than the Great Depression. While there may not be 25% full time unemployment, if you count the under-employed, the rate is very close.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
There are no Best Buy or call center jobs. People would be grateful to have even that crap work.
What country do you live in?
Re: (Score:2)
Amazon, not Customers (Score:2)
That was Quick! (Score:2)
That was Quick!
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Re: (Score:2)
That was Qwik!
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
FTFY ;)
Just got the official email about this (Score:3)
Why would he say this?? It's off-topic to begin with (the email was about Qwikster), and he's setting himself up to be a hypocrite. What happens when it really is time for the inevitable price change? Has he never heard of inflation? Does he expect the industry to remain changeless? He must have one heck of a crystal ball.
Someone else needs to write Netflix's emails.
Re: (Score:2)
They had three price increases in two years. They'd better be done for a long time.
The third price increase was too much for me; they finally priced me out.
New Service (Score:2)
The will call the new captive service "hipster" and it will wear skinny jeans, appeal to the clueless masses.
Reasoning behind it... (Score:2)
Looks like it was simply an attempt to figure out the answer to the ultimate question:
"For which reason do people set their accounts up in the first place; for DVD rentals or for streaming?"
They know that you can choose to do both, but it would be beneficial to see which driver really motivates people to sign up with them. That would help them deal with the losses they have experienced by promoting the thing that people want the most. That isn't such a bad thing.
The end result is that they realize and ACC
Funny SNL Netflix sketch (Score:5, Informative)
This past episode of Saturday Night Live had a REALLY FUNNY sketch skewering Netflix and how fast they seem to be changing course and announcing new plans. It was unfortunately cut for time and didn't air, but is available on NBC's website:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/netflix-apology/1359563 [nbc.com]
It was the first thing I thought of when I read the Netflix email this morning. Very funny, apt and appropriate. Almost makes me respect SNL as being on the cutting edge again.
Dumpster (Score:5, Funny)
3 Pitches for Price Increase (Score:3)
"We raised your prices for rentals, but, we explained it". Damn, didn't fly... hmm. Ok, try this...
"We raised your prices for rentals, but, we called it another name and wrapped it in top management-ese explanations." Darn, still losing them!
"We raised your prices for rentals, and now we aren't going to change the name etc., because we listened to you" That should do it... Keep fingers crossed, this may just work...
Netflix needs to make one more change (Score:5, Insightful)
They should stop removing content from their streaming index. If they have to stop streaming something because a license expires, their index should change the "Play" button to "Can't Play Right Now", and pushing or hovering over the button should pop up a window saying who owns the content, how the license changed, and HOW TO CONTACT THE CONTENT OWNER to request Netflix licensing.
Right now, as far as the customers are concerned, Netflix is the one hitting them over the head with the 2x4, and Netflix needs to make it clear to the customers that they're holding the stick, but the content owners are pulling the strings.
Alternative to Redbox for older films? (Score:3)
As long as it can maintain machines and relevant titles, Redbox will end up eating their lunch anyhow.
Perhaps you define "relevant titles" differently than I, but in my experience, Redbox keeps a movie in stock for about a year before it's no longer in any machine nearby. What do you do if you want to watch a movie that isn't a new release anymore, or do you just abstain from older movies?
Re: (Score:2)
The year is 2011. And despite the year being 2011, fast Internet connections[1] have still not reached 100 percent of homes in the United States.
[1] Streaming even SDTV pretty much needs cable or DSL, not dial-up or satellite.
Re: (Score:2)
Holy crap. Did you say dialup?
Re: (Score:2)
Dialup is still the only alternative for a lot of people. For some who generally only want e-mail and the occasional web research it's actually okay. I love my 20mbps cable connection but really if it was gone I'd probably just go back to having a life.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I can't believe people use redbox. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The rate hike is not a big deal. I was doing the 2 DVD plan and I switched to the one DVD at a time + instant, which kept my rate the same. Having to manage two separate queues would have been way more of a problem than the price increase. Clearly Netflix had some sort of "group think" going on if they didn't realize that raising rates and simultaneously making the service worse wouldn't be a problem. But given this change, I think Netflix still provides good service... very fast turnaround on DVDs, exc
Re: (Score:3)
It was the idea of having to login to 2 different websites to find what I want to watch that really chaffed.
Re: (Score:2)
I might eventually come back, but with the competition heating up, I'm not really sure that it's in my interest to do so until I see what the competition makes of this. Blockbuster has met and beaten Netflix's offer for the DVD portion, and I'm sure that somebody is going to come up with a competitive option for the streaming. But, even if they don't, I can hook my laptop up to a TV and get all sorts of free programming without having to resort to piracy.
It's tough to compete with free, and I think Netflix
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)