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Trouble for Tivo and NetFlix Partnership?
lucabrasi999 writes "Well, things may not not be as good for the potential joining up of Netflix and Tivo as once thought. Herb Greenberg, of CBS Marketwatch has a commentary which hints that this deal may not be as great as it once appeared. Why? In short, distribution rights. It appears that Netflix may not legally distribute all of the movies in it's library via Tivo. As a side note, Netflix may also be feeling some economic pressure. It now forces all cancellations occur by phone, making it more difficult to cancel because of a long hold time."
1) Blockbuster is in the market. Same 3 movies at a time, same postage paid, ~$3 less a month plus coupons for two free movie rentals a month. BB has a larger library plus their instore stock.
2) WalMart has also gotten into the game. Also cheaper than Netflix, I expect them to be the 'low cost' option by cutting their prices below BlockBusters.
3) Netflix recently changed their price (increased it) while making postage free. The result is the join-and-forget customers who are a the best type of customer for them will now be prompted to cancel, leaving them with the habitual heavy renters who make the free postage an expensive decision.
4) The clock is ticking against their entire business model as digital media delivery speeds accelerate.
A positive sign is that they recognize #4 and were making an attempt to bridge the gap with Tivo. Unfortunately, it can probably be done better by TW and other cable providers.
Still, I wish them the best of luck.
Long hold times at profitable companies are balancing their books on your free labor. Customer service is a collaboration between customers and the service providers. It's impossible to predict exactly the number of callers in a given hour of business, so avoiding any holding by callers means having extra answerers available. Since most problems are handled within a script by otherwise untrained answerers, a surplus of answerers is a simple expense at an outsourced call center, standing by with multiple companies' scripts at the ready. When callers don't immediately get an answerer, that's revenue not spent on the call center. Without the call center expense, that's profit. The time we wait on hold is zero productivity labor time spent by the customer that is counted as profit by the nonanswering company.
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make install -not war
As a Netflix subscriber, I have a "Cancel Your Membership" button on my account page...
As a netflix subscriber who can no longer afford the $23/mo for the service I have just cancelled my netflix account successfully in the My Account page.
That said, it did offer a $3/mo discount on the next 6 months if I chose not to cancel instead. Might be worth it for people who can afford netflix.
Do you Gentoo!?
how NetFlix was going to be allowed to basically do P2P distribution of movies... even if it was completely secure and paid for. The Publishing houses (Disney, Paramount, Choam, Fox) go to great lengths to control their content viability. Especially Disney which cycles content in and out of the market to keep demand as high as possible. A download library like Netflix would take alot of that power to create market-hype out of the hands of the publishers.
(Though I still think it's a cool idea and properly setup could work around those concerns...)
...on purpose.
If you ever get an email asking how long it took for you to get a specific movie, *never* under any circumstances tell them you received it early. They will stall shipment of future movies to make sure you're not getting more than they think you should get per month. They've been getting worse and worse about this.
-Randy
If they're billing my credit card, and I want to cancel, and they make me jump through unreasonable hoops, I just won't. My credit card company will happily take my call and my instructions that any charges from Netflix are fraudulent because I have notified them in writing or using any means I choose that I am no longer a subscriber to their service. Then if Netflix wants to make a big deal about it, I'll bet they'll take the call from my credit card company.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
How to cancel, quick:
Tell the first person you speak to that you are cancelling your service immediately, and that you have informed your credit card company to refuse all future charges. It's up to them whether they want to update their systems with the cancellation now, or spend 3 months trying to contact you in hopes that it was some kind of mistake, while you continue to use the service.
Actually, Greencine already allows users to download movies to their computers. They certainly don't have the rights to most of their movies - mostly to certain indie and porn films. Considering how studios dragged their feet with licensing movies to DVD, I can't believe they'd be willing to license out a new medium to a single company.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
. .
No, seriously.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Tried Wal-Mart's dvd rental and Netflix at the same time. Wal-Mart's selection wasn't even half of Netflix, and the turn around time was long. Usually 2 day ship times each way. Netflix is much faster shipping.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
But I have noticed netflix is starting to slowdown in response time. My turnaround time with them is generally 1-2 days - sometimes it's just a few hours (get it in the mail, rip it to my hd, stuff it back in the post office box). For a while there I could get three new movies every week quite reliably, but now they've started playing games: I'm sure the movies don't take any longer to come and go, but instead of three days each way it's becoming four and five and even six days from the time I send in my movies until I see the next "arriving soon" notices in my email. At this rate I'm going from "about 12 movies a month" for $23 to maybe 9 and possibly as few as six. Given that I mostly rent foreign and old scifi releases (the 99 cent stuff at most stores) this is not a very good deal.
I hate the long drive and the selection isn't nearly as good at the "local" (40 miles) movie gallery, but I can rent five movies there for five days for only about six bucks - and two disc sets don't count as two discs, but one rental. That's half the netflix rate just for the inconvenience of stopping off at the rental place twice a week.
I hope to see wal-mart fire up the competition soon. Competition is a good thing :)
You cite Herb Greenberg as a source as if he was a reliable source!
l e19.htm
Herb is nothing more than a mouthpiece for various short selling hedge funds. He typically knows nothing about the companies he writes about, but follows the scripts provided by his hedge fund masters.
Look at this link which was created when Herb worked for his previous employer, TheStreet.com:
http://www.webspawner.com/users/rockerswine/
Note the connections mentioned in the above article between TheStreet.com and various hedge funds.
One or more of these hedge funds are probably short one or both NetFlix and Tivo, which means they have sold them short, which means they expect their stock prices to fall. It should be emphasized that short sellers make money only if the prices of stocks sold short fall.
Articles like this are intended to help the stock price collapse along. Herb is either a willing co-conspirator or a hapless dupe, nothing more! The overall goal is stock market manipulation!!!
It may well be that there are faults with the business plans of either NetFlix or Tivo or both, but this is not what Herb is about. Herb will trash any company, even if its business plan is flawless and it is growing spectacularly. All it takes is a call from his hedge fund "buddies"!
The moral is, take any words out of the mouth of Herb with a giant grain of salt!
P.S.
More background on some of the hedge funds that may be involved here:
http://www.nysscpa.org/home/2003/0103/4week/artic