Dear Netflix,
I’ve read your apology letter and I’m honestly baffled. As one of the customers who dropped delivery when you jacked up the rates, I can assure you it wasn’t a miscommunication that precipitated my account cancellation.
Let me give you my perspective. My husband and I use Netflix in two very different ways. He and the children like to watch streaming, so it doesn’t really matter to them that there’s not a lot of brand new content there. They’re happy with the new stuff that comes through Starz, and the very very old stuff they can’t get elsewhere (he’s a big Charlie Chaplin fan.)
I, on the other hand, like to watch documentaries and new movies. But I have less time to watch television overall, so I tended to use the mail service option. A movie would arrive, and it could sit on my desk until I could get around to watching it. Sometimes a month or two would pass before I could get to my next movie.
That’s right. I regularly paid you to NOT watch a movie. I regularly paid you to not incur shipping costs. I paid you every month, I was literally giving you free money so I could store one of your DVDs on my desk until I could get to it.
So when you doubled your rates, it was easy for me to decide to drop delivery. We used streaming more, and I couldn’t justify paying 8 dollars a month or more to rent one movie. If you’d raised the rates by a few dollars, we would have absorbed that and kept going.
Now, we both know you just lost the Starz account. And we know you’re investing millions of dollars into an untried Netflix-only television series. What few new movies you have are going to disappear, and a large part of your assets are going to go to promote this television series of yours.
As a customer, you’re not going to get me back because I’m not going to spend 8, 10, 12 dollars a month to have a movie sit on my desk until I have time to get around to it. And as a customer, you’re going to end up losing my husband and kids, because they’re interested in very specific things- much of which Starz provided- and they don’t include new, untried television series.
Separating the aspects of Netflix into two companies is not going to fix this. Without Starz content, we can get the exact same streaming content Netflix offers as part of our Amazon Prime account- which we’re using anyway to get two day shipping and other benefits.
And if I want a new movie, I can go to Redbox and rent it for a dollar. What you’ve done by separating the companies is guaranteed that I won’t come back, all but assured me that customers like my husband will leave, and created absolutely no compelling reason to change our minds.
Two queues to manage, which means we may end up with overlapping content. Two entire websites, which means if we search for something on one website and we get no responses, then we have to go to a completely different website to check again?
That’s absurd. Just before the price hike, I searched for James McAvoy movies, because I enjoyed him in X-Men First Class. As Netflix functions now, it shows me every McAvoy movie I can watch immediately AND all the ones I could have shipped to me. It was easy to keep track of the ones I’d seen online, and easy to find what I wanted.
Your new plan makes it *harder* for customers to be completionists.
And it makes it harder for them to just watch entire series! Right now, you have several documentary series where some episodes are available only by shipping, and some episodes are available for streaming. Your new plan makes it impossible for people to watch an entire series, or to even know all the episodes are available, unless they want to maintain two accounts on two different websites.
It’s nice to hear a CEO say he’s sorry. But unfortunately, you’re sorry about the wrong thing. And if you continue down this path, I guarantee you that the 600,000 customers you’ve already lost are going to be the beginning, not the end, of your subscriber woes. You did not move too slowly; you did not fail to communicate. We understood completely that you considered streaming and delivery two entirely different companies.
You didn’t understand that we, as customers in one of the rockiest economic periods since the Depression, didn’t think they were both worth 20 dollars a month. You’re not going to convince us they’re worth 20 dollars a month by creating a new logo, a new website, and a more ungainly user experience, either.
But good luck trying. I’ll be watching from the sidelines.
Sincerely,
Saundra Mitchell
Oh dear…love a good snark-fest! I didn’t join Netflix, but seriously considered it right about the time they jacked up the price. I’m really only interested in specific movie types and prefer to watch streaming–but most of what I wanted was only available by mail. I don’t like to wait so when they hiked the price I opted to steer clear.
I do not regret that decision. I do not stay up late at night wishing I had signed up for their service. After what I’m seeing on Twitter today–it’s likely I’m not going to in the future either.
~kyla
I’ve had Netflix for 6 years and wasn’t bothered by the price hike. We use the streaming service more since we caught up with so much of the disc-only stuff over the past few years anyway. But this apology was baffling. At first I was thinking they would adjust the price increase b/c of all the lost business, or do something to appease those of us who’ve stuck with them. The apology instead led to a decision that will make it more difficult and less streamlined for customers. Soon, Qwickpickflix or whatever is going to be auctioned off completely to a sinking ship like Blockbuster. It does not work to say sorry and then, by the way, you’ll now need a separate website and login for your separate service which we separated for our own convenience and not yours.
The thing is, I knew Netflix was heading the way of streaming only because of reading up on it in the past year. It has not been handled well.
Many thanks for giving such a clear and firm voice to a point-of-view that coincides exactly with that of our family. Same split of folks who prefer to stream and go with DVD and for the same reasons. I’m going to go check Amazon Prime–sounds like the way to go!
I couldn’t agree more! Thanks for writing this; I thoroughly enjoyed it and completely relate. My family misses Netflix, but we aren’t willing to pay more for less user-friendly services.
I kind of love this.