Originally Posted By DDMAN26 Quite a fascinating read: <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-Netflix-Lost-800000-nytimes-2771345185.html?x=0" target="_blank">http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...html?x=0</a>
Originally Posted By alexbook My biggest Netflix complaint is that too many of the things I want to watch aren't available for streaming.
Originally Posted By PotNoodle <My biggest Netflix complaint is that too many of the things I want to watch aren't available for streaming.> I agree. I don't know how many times we've sat down to watch something and it's unavailable to stream. We have Amazon Prime as well and that doesn't really fill the gap, either. We usually end up getting a movie through On Demand. I think we need to get Roku, or something.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "My biggest Netflix complaint is that too many of the things I want to watch aren't available for streaming." Are you willing to pay more?
Originally Posted By alexbook I'd pay a couple bucks more a month, if it meant a slightly bigger selection. (I suppose I should look into Netflix's competitors' prices and selections, but I haven't gotten around to it.)
Originally Posted By ecdc While I think Netflix made some missteps (qwixster?) I think American consumers are the whiniest bunch of babies I have ever seen. I see their entitlement issues every single day. "I have to pay $16 a month to have every movie ever made in the entire world! Outrageous!" And then these same whiny people who want the best products for the cheapest possible prices, turn around and complain that their government doesn't do enough to stop shipping jobs overseas.
Originally Posted By ecdc So apparently I'm pretty grumpy this morning about work. I really don't mean to imply that anyone who has an issue with Netflix is just a giant whiner. But I do think Pricegate (is that a thing?) was way overdone, IMO. Just not a big deal, I'm happy to still be a Netflix customer. Last night my friend sent me a pic of herself dressed up as the Invisible Man. I thought, "I want to watch that now." Went to Netflix, fired it up on streaming...enjoyed. Pretty incredible, really.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones No, you are right. They are whiners. For $8 a month you can't expect to have every first-run film available the day it comes out for streaming.
Originally Posted By alexbook Call me a whiner if you want, but if they'd raised the price to $16 per month AND offered their whole catalog for streaming, I'd have paid it gladly. The problem is that they raised the price without giving any new value for the money.
Originally Posted By oc_dean I'd be quite happy if these Internet Video companies went bust .... Bring back rental stores like Block Buster! (They took the fun out of looking for obscure titles, which I generally prefer.)
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "Call me a whiner if you want, but if they'd raised the price to $16 per month AND offered their whole catalog for streaming, I'd have paid it gladly." People pay that much for premium cable channels and they are as good as or worse than Netflix streaming.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "The problem is that they raised the price without giving any new value for the money." Inflation eats away at the value of a dollar whether you like it or not. Costs can also go up to provide the same exact product. Peanut and hard drive costs are up and there is no additional value.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "The problem is that they raised the price without giving any new value for the money." They followed the Disney model for ticket prices.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 I just left because it wasn't really worth it for me. My streaming capabilities aren't the greatest yet. And when I would have a movie it would sit there for months at a time.
Originally Posted By JeffG >> "Call me a whiner if you want, but if they'd raised the price to $16 per month AND offered their whole catalog for streaming, I'd have paid it gladly." << I'm pretty sure that Netflix would absolutely love to offer a screaming subscription like that (as would Amazon, Apple, and others). The problem is that they are dependent on the deals that the content owners are willing to make and, for the most part, the big studios and TV networks aren't yet very willing to embrace that kind of business model. I think Netflix made some big mistakes recently, but they were mainly in the area of how they communicated their pricing changes rather than the changes themselves. The actual price changes were inevitable and unavoidable, given the hand that Netflix has been dealt. Basically, what happened is that the content providers have all been substantially increasing the amount that they are requiring Netflix to pay as their deals have come up for renewal. In light of that, Netflix simply couldn't keep their prices the same if they wanted to remain a profitable business. For the most part, the big studios don't really care if Netflix goes away completely (they aren't fond of their business model), so simply refusing to pay the larger licensing fees wasn't going to accomplish much either as the content providers were all pretty much willing to walk away. In the one case where Netflix did decide to walk away from paying higher fees (the renewal of the Starz deal), it is pretty widely agreed that Netflix was the loser. One of the biggest problems that Netflix faces is that a lot of the content that people want simply isn't available to them at all. The studios are still trying to preserve the big revenues that used to come from discs and, thus, have been unwilling to make any of their recent release titles available online at pricing that doesn't pretty closely match the past DVD sale and rental pricing. That is why you still see that kind of pricing on places like Amazon and iTunes. For TV content, Netflix would likely have to start including commercials (like Hulu does) if they wanted to offer most current programming. For movies, most of the studios also have exclusive deals with premium cable channels for a fairly extended window (1-2 years generally) starting a few months after the initial home video release. That is the reason why Netflix had to make a deal with Starz (which is soon expiring without renewal) instead of the studios in order to offer some fairly recent content. At least so far, those exclusives are being written to include streaming/download as well as cable/broadcast TV. The Netflix business model is seen as a threat to cable TV and, at least currently, most of the content owners tend to favor the older business. Keep in mind that Warner Bros and NBC/Universal have the same parent companies as the two biggest cable companies. As I said, I think the big error was in how Netflix communicated the situation to their customers. I think there are a few key things that they might have done differently that could have helped: 1. They needed to be upfront and clear about placing the blame for the price increases on the content providers. Getting the public mad at the studios and TV networks instead of Netflix would have been to their advantage. Their announcements of the price increases should have been blunt and direct in stating why they had to charge more. 2. With the limited library of the streaming service, many customers saw the discs-by-mail as the backup plan for new releases and other content unavailable by streaming. Netflix shouldn't have moved to decouple the services without offering an alternative. My thought is that they should have simultaneously introduced a streaming rental service, with some sort of an incentive (possibly 99 cent rentals?) for streaming service subscribers. Maybe that wouldn't have been possible for whatever reason, but they needed to offer something as an alternative for what their customers felt they were losing. 3. The "Quikster" fiasco was one of the biggest miscalculations that I've seen a company make in a long time. It is almost entirely inexplicable why they thought that was a remotely good idea. It will be interesting to see if Netflix survives or not as the movie/TV industry continues its slow, but inevitable, shift to online distribution. Whether it does or not, I suspect it is a company that will long be a major case study in business classes. -Jeff
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I think it's great that people push back when a company can't bother to take a moment to communicate clearly why a price increase is needed. I don't think most people begrudge a company making a profit, but when it's delivered in a ham-fisted, take it or leave it, you need US sort of way, a company deserves to have their hat handed to them. To me, that isn't whining at all. It's just a customer voting with their feet. And it isn't like Netflix is the only way to get movies. Hopefully, they've learned a hard lesson and can right the ship quickly and win back the many customers they drove off.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan On a related note, BofA is walking back from their plan to charge $5 a month for debit cards. They aren't doing it to be nice, they're doing it because thousands of accounts said "See ya!" and took their business elsewhere.
Originally Posted By mele <<And when I would have a movie it would sit there for months at a time. >> We had canceled our account months ago for this reason. I really don't miss it at all. We have OnDemand and a couple of premium channels, plus TONS of dvds (back when we thought we'd be trapped inside for days on end and need to watch movies 24/7, apparently.) We hardly ever buy movies or rent them. It's easier to stay home and rent them thru Comcast. Besides, Hockey is back; no time for movies.
