Netflix Suckage

So Netflix came back crawling on its hands and knees to its customers a few weeks ago, promising not to inconvenience all of them by splitting their queues in two. The severe ignorance which they show about their products is very troubling, but at least it's something. However, it wasn't enough to make me stop thinking about finding a new streaming media provider, since I'd already looked down the path and gotten pretty interested in Amazon Prime, which had a much more limited selection, but probably enough, for cheaper than Netflix streaming, and with free 2-day shipping from Amazon.

Since that first announcement, Netflix has been stepping up announcements of new streaming TV shows, which is my main interest. After adding CW, AMC, and a bit more, they might have won me back.

But unfortunately we continue to have problems with Netflix's core services too. Their subaccounts (where Kimberly and I can have our own queues) have continued to barely work since their "upgrade" of their system earlier this year. And today I confronted another very annoying problem.

I've been watching through all the Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who serials, but unfortunately several weren't in print as DVDs when I started the project. That's slowly getting better and this year both Time & The Rani and Paradise Towers--the first two McCoy episodes--came out on DVD, the first in June, the second in August. But wait ... 2-4 months later, Netflix still says the DVD release date is unknown.

After patiently waiting for a while, I finally got annoyed and sent an email to Netflix's customer service line today, asking them to please order these in-print DVDs (something I should never have to do, but something that I've had to do previously for something else).

The result:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

     netflix@email.netflix.com

A beautiful metaphor for Netflix's customer service over the last year.