Qwitster: The Death of Netflix?
Sep. 20th, 2011 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aIn the news today was an "apology" from Netflix for their badly-managed price hike.
Mind you, I didn't care at all about their price hike. The wife and I were in the process of moving to a cheaper subscription package because we were using less DVDs because of streaming content ... so it made sense that Netflix was going to have to change the pricing of that model. They just managed it like Wizards-of-the-Coast/insert-your-favorite-big-company-bad-at-PR would: badly.
But in today's announcement, Netflix also announced that they were splitting their DVD and Streaming services totally into different companies. And this was something I do care about. As I told K., "Those idiots at Netflix don't understand that a lot of their value comes from the fact that they hold a ton of data for their customers: what we've seen, what we've rated, what we want to see." So, when this data is no longer connected for our Netflix and "Qwikster" accounts, I'm going to care a lot less (particularly if the data doesn't make it to one of the two web sites). Let alone the fact that going to two different web sites to manage what I as the customer see as the exact same thing (content!) is one of the stupidest things imaginable!
I told K. that it was all making me consider dropping the streaming, since their selection is so crap and it's going to lose many of its benefits. She said it'd made her think the same thing.
So, congrats Netflix: those customers that you didn't drive away with your badly bungled price increase are now thinking of leaving because of your even-worse bungled decision to separate the data that your company is built on into two parts. And that's why you're today's crappy company and the next company that we might (probably will, I suspect) be giving even less money to. And we'd been members since July '01. Good going.
Well, it's not like your web site has worked correctly since the "upgrade" earlier this year, which has left it so that we still can't search in subaccounts something like 3-6 months later (or queue instant content or ... a few more problems that slip my mind).
PS: Comcast sucks too. No particularly new reason. What is it with media distributors?
Mind you, I didn't care at all about their price hike. The wife and I were in the process of moving to a cheaper subscription package because we were using less DVDs because of streaming content ... so it made sense that Netflix was going to have to change the pricing of that model. They just managed it like Wizards-of-the-Coast/insert-your-favorite-big-company-bad-at-PR would: badly.
But in today's announcement, Netflix also announced that they were splitting their DVD and Streaming services totally into different companies. And this was something I do care about. As I told K., "Those idiots at Netflix don't understand that a lot of their value comes from the fact that they hold a ton of data for their customers: what we've seen, what we've rated, what we want to see." So, when this data is no longer connected for our Netflix and "Qwikster" accounts, I'm going to care a lot less (particularly if the data doesn't make it to one of the two web sites). Let alone the fact that going to two different web sites to manage what I as the customer see as the exact same thing (content!) is one of the stupidest things imaginable!
I told K. that it was all making me consider dropping the streaming, since their selection is so crap and it's going to lose many of its benefits. She said it'd made her think the same thing.
So, congrats Netflix: those customers that you didn't drive away with your badly bungled price increase are now thinking of leaving because of your even-worse bungled decision to separate the data that your company is built on into two parts. And that's why you're today's crappy company and the next company that we might (probably will, I suspect) be giving even less money to. And we'd been members since July '01. Good going.
Well, it's not like your web site has worked correctly since the "upgrade" earlier this year, which has left it so that we still can't search in subaccounts something like 3-6 months later (or queue instant content or ... a few more problems that slip my mind).
PS: Comcast sucks too. No particularly new reason. What is it with media distributors?
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 03:45 pm (UTC)Just thought I'd add to the Evil Media Distributor list: DirecTV. There really does seem to be a trend.