Netflix Pioneers Industry To Get Left in the Dust?

prostoalex writes "The New York Times profiles Netflix, the company that pioneered subscription-based DVD plans where a disc is sent via postal service and no late fee is charged. It describes the company from May 1998, when it originally launched the Web site as a DVD-by-mail rental service (with late fees). Interesting factoids: Netflix operates 30 centers around the country and 11% of San Francisco residents subscribe to the service. Turns out, the company is not really afraid of Blockbuster, Wal-mart and Amazon moving into their markets, but they do consider on-demand Internet-download services to be a threat to their business model."

Comments

Re:Netflix is a Dishonest Company

[Long-EZ]

I've been a Netflix subscriber for about a year. At first they were great. Three movies, one day to return them and a day to ship them. I could watch about five movies a week. Then, Netflix realized postage was eating them alive and announced they were going to increase their price from something like $20/mo to $22/mo. The same week, Amazon and Blockbuster both introduced their services for something like $18/mo. Netflix immediately retracted their cost increase and announced a price matching reduction, and THAT'S when they started the big slowdown that made sure that I received at most three movies a week, assuming no USPS holidays. The policy of "as many as you want as long as it isn't more than 3/week" is cheesy weasely. They should just be honest and charge a flat rate per movie, or offer a flat monthly rate for a service not to exceed X DVDs per month, and get back to shipping without an artificial delay. I don't expect them to lose money, but as customers, we should inundate them with emails, calls and letters demanding they deal honestly and treat us with some common decency instead of lying. I know that's what marketing people do, but we shouldn't let them get away with it.

Around the same time they started emailing to ask me when I received a DVD. I always told them a day later than the actual day I received the DVD to try to beat their scheduled delay BS, but I don't think it worked.

Still, three movies a week is not too bad. Any more and my productivity would suffer. It's about $1.70 per DVD. My local library charges $1 per day, but they don't have many titles and I have to go there to get them. Netflix is a MUCH better deal. I like the convenience of internet browsing, wide selection, deep stocking (seldom a wait if I want a title), and delivery and pickup at my mailbox.

It takes me 30-60 minutes to get a movie at Blockbuster, and I average a movie a minute browsing online at Netflix. I don't know why it's so much more efficient, but it is. That's the real value of Netflix. There are over 100 movies in my queue and it's on autopilot. Whenever I want something special, clicky clicky, top of the queue, here it comes.

I can see why they'd consider online movie distribution a competing technology, and why they'll probably try to be first into that market as well. It's the only way I can see it being more convenient than their current DVD service. Of course downloaded movies will be horribly encumbered with Digital RESTRICTIONS Management. I have a couple of friends who are building significant DVD collections by ripping Netflix movies.