Netflix Throttling Heavy Renters

dankinit writes "Netflix has begun using a 'fairness algorithm' that slows shipments of movies to heavy users to protect profits, according to an MSNBC article. Netflix revised its terms of use in January 2005 to read, 'In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service'. Since revising this policy last year, more and more users are realizing 'heavy renters are more likely to encounter shipping delays and less likely to immediately be sent their top choices' according to the article."

Comments

ironic

[User 956]

That's ironic.. because just today, they sent me this email:

Since you're former member of Netflix, we thought you'd like to know that Netflix now offers a greater selection of plans that start at just $9.99 a month. Come back and enjoy the improvements we've made, including our new Friends and Profiles features. With over 55,000 movies and delivery in about 1 business day, Netflix is better than ever.

I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.

Re:ironic

[Hogwash McFly]

I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.

Actually, this is nothing new, despite the summary for this story leading with Netflix has begun using a 'fairness algorithm'. The article I link to dates back to April 2003 and such 'punishments' were apparent back then.

I am signed up with ScreenSelect, a British version of Netflix, and it can be quite obvious that they throttle heavy users. For instance, I'm on the most expensive three-disk plan for £15 a month and if I were to send all of the movies back on a Monday, I will only receive two disks back on Wednesday. Looking at the selection page of the website, it will describe the third film as 'awaiting allocation' and the trailing DVD will usually arrive on Thursday, using the above timeline as an example.

Having said that, I keep my account with ScreenSelect because I can still average 10-12 films a month and if you look at what I am paying it is good value when compared to walk-in rental like BlockBuster. Furthermore, the selection is huge, the website is excellent in all aspects and they are generally quite good in getting your high priority titles out to you first (although I hardly ever rent new releases so make of that what you will).

Re:ironic

[m50d]

Surely prioritising people who don't rent as many movies is an improvement - I'd certainly see it as such.

Re:ironic

[timeOday]

Surely prioritising people who don't rent as many movies is an improvement

From the article, it's not clear to me whether they're A) prioritizing requests so customers with fewer requests are more likely to get them or B) simply delaying the requests of active users, even if they have the movie, in order to save shipping.

To my mind, A) seems OK while B) seems like false advertising. Of course only Netflix knows for sure.

Re:ironic

[Daniel Dvorkin]

All of what you say is true, but none of it has anything to do with the fact that by claiming their service is unlimited, Netflix is lying. Do you not understand that? If a company would go out of business by doing what it claims to do, then it shouldn't be making those claims; it's really that simple.

Your "welfare state" crack makes it pretty easy to guess your politics, so I'll add this: it's bizarre, but not at all surprising, that those who will defend just about any corporate atrocity in the name of "maximizing value for the shareholders" are the first to jump on customers and/or workers of those corporations when they try to maximize value for themselves. It's a two-way street, folks. If corporations are going to act like amoral predators, why shouldn't Average Joes act the same way in dealing with them?

Re:ironic

[pla]

The guy who's interviewed in the article says he used to recieve 22 movies a month and no longer does. Holy shit, don't these people have no life of any kind?

I watch VERY little TV, and can still EASILY watch up to twenty movies a month (even more in the winter) without lacking "a life"...

During spring through late fall, Saturday and Sundays I'll go out fairly early for a nice hike, usually come home 6-8 hours later. Make dinner, watch a movie or two. Two on Friday after work, two on Saturday, one on Sunday, that adds up to twenty without wasting my life away in front of the TV.



Thirdly, did they really expect 'unlimited' to mean unlimited?

If you buy a 32" TV only to take it home and find it has a 20" screen in an 8.5" bezel, would you feel just a little cheated there? (And although that may sounds extreme, TVs and monitors NEVER actually measure their advertised value for that exact reason, often falling up to a full inch smaller).

So yeah, it bothers me that Netflix translates "unlimited" as "as many as we want you to have". Their cheesy little mantra of "no reasonable person would really think they could get 8,000 movies a month" just doesn't cut it... NO ONE would have complained if they "only" received 45 movies per month, which would equal the 2-day turnaround imposed by the physical realities of sending it by mail. Even a mere 30 per month, at a 3-day turnaround, I doubt would have resulted in so much grumbling. But I haven't even hit 20 in over a year.



Fourth, do you think there's someone else offering a sweeter deal? Good luck trying to find it.

And that, my friend, describes the ONLY reason I still have a netflix subscription. Even throttled down to 12-15 per month, it still costs a quarter what renting from a physical Blockbuster does; and no one can beat Netflix for the size of their catalog.

That doesn't make me a happy customer, however, and eventually, some company WILL come along and offer the same thing without lying about what "unlimited" means. And when that happens, Netflix will learn how the local crack dealer feels when the Mexican mob moves in.

Re:ironic

[grogdamighty]

They are trying to make the service as responsive as possible for new and low-volume users. Once you are a tried-and-true Netflix user who requests a considerable number of DVDs, they put in artificial obstacles to prevent you from renting more than is profitable (the article says each DVD costs the 78 cents postage).

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw Screenselect... I signed up for their free offer and they ended up charging me for the month. It took me nearly 3/4 of a hour on the phone painstakingly running them through their sign up and making it quite clear that I wasn't going to let it go at "We don't give refunds, but you can have another month" and was simply going to keep badgering the manager until they stopped quoting rules and started listening to me and checking out my story. Eventually, they gave in and I got my refund. Twats.

Re:ironic

[eclectic4]

Bullshit, and I can't believe you were modded up.

"I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made."

No, it was everything they said, just as you quoted, "enjoy the improvements we've made, including our new Friends and Profiles features. With over 55,000 movies and delivery in about 1 business day, Netflix is better than ever."

How people can think that providing a better service than anyone else out there is screwing you is beyond belief. I suggest you stop using Netflix, and drive to your local BlockBuster store (hopefully you live near one, I do not), and pay your $4 for a possibly edited movie from their selection of crappiness running into the low thousands (most Blockbuster stores hold about 4500 DVD's, including copies). Yeah, that'll show em!!

You people are seriously confused... if you watch 12 movies a month, then NetFlix was a godsend to you. How is this not recognized?

Re:ironic

[HDBNGR]

I put "Two for the Money" at the top of my list 2 WEEKS! before its release... It is still listed as "Long Wait" status for my account... So, I have a slight "throttle", but now I can't get the movie I want... I have blasted them for other things like a mislabled disk (I asked for XYZ, and got ABC in the XYZ envelop) that took over 7 days for the turn around of their error... They have given me a 25% discount on the monthly fees for the next two months... I wonder if I will get any DVDs in that time :) Netflix also advertises as #1 in customer satisfaction... I don't think so... Let ME fill out that survey!

Re:ironic

[BigJake4589]

I cancelled my Netflix account, because I had been throttled down to one every 4 days. They would show that a movie had been shipped but, it would never arrive. Originally I was able to watch 3 movies a week. I did not rip the movie or copy in anyway. They still gave me the shaft.

Re:ironic

[SetupWeasel]

Sadly, this is now how 75% of all companies act. (I made that number up, but it is a lot.)

Re:ironic

[jp10558]

See, this is what bothers me. They have several tiers of service already based on how many discs you can get at a time, and certain ones limit how many per month.

Why not either extend the limit to x per month on all the plans (annoying to heavy renters though) or just raise the price of the plan to where even if the person watched each movie they got the day they got it and turned it around, Netflix still makes a profit?

Or, even better, do both, but have the ones with monthly limits be cheaper (like now, but allow some more expensive plans with 15 movies a month rather than say 4).

I hate all these "hidden costs" now adays. Just put the real price up front, and charge what you have to to provide the service, don't put in hidden or vague delays, limits, caps whatever.

Re:ironic

[dougmc]

From the article, it's not clear to me whether they're A) prioritizing requests so customers with fewer requests are more likely to get them or B) simply delaying the requests of active users, even if they have the movie, in order to save shipping.

There's two effects going on 1) light users have much better chances of getting movies that are in high demand quickly -- heavy users generally have to wait until the movie is no longer in heavy demand before getting a new movie (unless they manage to get it on the day it comes out -- probably a weakness in their algorithm) and 2) heavy users will often have shipments of replacement movies delayed by a day or two, even though the movie is available now.

Netflix has been admitting that #1 happens for a while (presumably since Jan 2005, I guess) but has been actively denying that #2 happens, at least until very recently. We've been discussing this sort of thing on the Netflix Operations discussion list for quite some time now, and this is the first time that I've heard Netflix admit that #2 happens.

There are other ways that throttling could be done -- Netflix could deny that they've received certain movies right away, and instead check them in tomorrow or the next day. They could also deliberately ship a movie to somebody from across the country rather than from their same city, even though the movie is available in the same city, which would delay the receipt of the movie by a few days. People have accused Netflix of deliberately doing both of these things on the list above, and they seem to happen more often than one would expect, but not often enough to really show that Netflix has been doing it intentionally. It may be that Netflix has experimented with these methods of throttling, or that it was just a few accidents that were blown out of porportion. I don't know.

But the throttling that Netflix is now admitting to -- we've known they've been doing this for a long time, and they've been denying at least part of the it for a long time.

Of course only Netflix knows for sure.

Well, what is `false advertising' is not for Netflix to decide -- it's for a court of law. But the users of Netflix have definately been able to determine at least much of what Netflix has been doing, for a long time. I'm glad to see that Netflix is finally admitting it.

Re:ironic

[innate]

I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.

Not at all. They are screwing over kleptos who rip a lot of movies. You know the ones -- they want a collection of "every" CD and DVD ever made and are working their way through the entire inventory of Netflix. These people think that quantity (a large collection of mostly junk; because you never know when you might want to watch Weekend At Bernies 2) is better than a small, high-quality collection built by a connoisseur.

Re:ironic

[slashkitty]

Like rain on your wedding day? No, it's not freaking "ironic" it's coincidental. (Don't you want Futurama enough to learn the proper meaning?) Honestly, I think I see "ironic" used more incorrectly than correctly!

Re:ironic

[jp10558]

What I don't understand is why I (in a country where false advertising is supposedly illegial) as a customer should have to interpret what the company says. I mean, why can they not just say what they mean?

I mean, how far will I get if I sign up for netflix at $30 a month, but then pay them $5 a month, and claim - who really thought I meant $30 *american* dollars? LOLZ, the idiots!

That's how I feel about what many companies are doing. I'd much prefer they lay out what they actually can offer, and let me choose, than overpromise and underdeliver all the time. That should flat out be illegial.

The worst thing is the use of Unlimited. Look, in certain instances, one can use colloqualisms like "this car flies down the road", and most people can understand that you mean it drives fast, not that you're going to take off into the air.

Unlimited isn't a colloqualism for limited. Black is not white.

I'm tired of having to try and guess what the companies really mean. I think we need to toughen up our advertising laws, or enforce the false advertising ones more. IE, if you say unlimited, and introduce intentional limits - bam, legal problems.

Re:ironic

[Bodysurf]

"Thirdly, did they really expect 'unlimited' to mean unlimited?"

Yeah, how dare someone expect 'unlimited' to really mean 'unlimited.

Pretty stupid of them. I, of course, always expected 'unlimited' to mean 'limited'.

: rolls eyes :

Re:ironic

[Hogwash McFly]

Yeah, I too signed up for the one month free trial while at university and, naturally, being lazy students meant that we decided to just keep the subscription for a few more months and pay for it. Cancelling was straightforward and they begged me to sign up again, offering extra freebies and such.

Now, if I had bothered to cancel the free trial instead of letting it tick over into a paid subscription I could have easily had a bad service experience similar to yours and then sworn off ScreenSelect. As it happens, I found it to be worth my time and good value for money and thus far I'm satisfied enough to keep paying my 15 clams a month back at my home address.

Funny how it goes like that.

Re:ironic

[arose]

The guy who's interviewed in the article says he used to recieve 22 movies a month and no longer does. Holy shit, don't these people have no life of any kind?

That's less then a movie per day.

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

They could also deliberately ship a movie to somebody from across the country rather than from their same city, even though the movie is available in the same city, which would delay the receipt of the movie by a few days.

Do you really think this makes sense? You need to put some more thought into your conspiracies, dude.

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been throttled back by NetFlix. When I recieve a DVD in the mail, I rip it to my hard drive and drop it in the mail at my earliest convenience, usually the same or next day. When I feel like watching that title, I do so from the hard drive using the apple DVD player's open VIDEO_TS folder option. Then I delete that directory and save myself the 4-8 GB of disk space it took up. I have never copied a movie onto another disk, let alone shared the data with anyone else. I don't considered myself a pirate, though I think that the ripping process with MacTheRipper is illegal. In my mind I am simply using the service in the most efficient way I can. Just because I feel like watching Adventures in Babysitting when it hits the top of my queue, I am not necessarily still in that mood when it comes in the mail. My method gives me the flexibility of watching the flick whenever I want without the guilt of seeing the disk collect dust for weeks.

I understand NetFlix's motivation, but feel that they could have more up front with me about it. Their stance makes the assumption that their most active customers are pirating. I understand delaying shipment to save on postage cost, but the 40-year Old Virgin has been at the top of my queue since it was released -- maybe 4 weeks ago? The only reason to withhold popular titles from the most active users is a suspicion of piracy. That's the part that bothers me. Now I am considering signing up with my wife's name or something just to get on their good side again. I would rather not have to.

Re:ironic

[fuzznutz]

I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.

No. It's not an improvement. They have been doing it for years. I quit Netflix a couple of years ago when I noticed it happening to me. I didn't even know there was a term for it when I cancelled my account

We would get three movies on Friday, watch them over the weekend and I would drop them off at the post office Monday morning. I began to notice that if I dropped off three movies at the same time, they would "arrive" over three separate days. Things got slower and slower till I figured out I could rent cheaper at the local Family Video. Incidentally the video store is three doors away from the post office. ;-)

Re:ironic

[dougmc]

Do you really think this makes sense?

Yes. It makes perfect sense.

Suppose you have a Netflix user who returns every movie he gets from Netflix the very next day -- he's a heavy user. Suppose this user lives in a city where Netflix also has a distribution center, so mail only takes one day back and forth. And suppose that Netflix wants to slow him down and reduce the number of movies he gets, because he's costing them money (being a heavy user.) One possible way to do this, one that's somewhat subtle if not done too often, is to send some of his movies from the center across the country, even though they're also available at the local center. That way, a movie will take 3-4 days to reach him rather than just one day. Each time a movie takes 4 days to reach him rather than one, that's one less movie he can rent that month.

You need to put some more thought into your conspiracies, dude.

You need to read more carefully, dude. I didn't say Netflix did this, only that they've been accused of it. (I personally think that if they have done it (and this is an if), they've not done it very often, at least not to me.)

But whether they've done it or not -- it still makes sense. Netflix does occasionally send movies from across the country -- this is a well known fact, and one that they've always admitted. If you want some obscure movie and Netflix only has two copies of it, it makes perfect sense that they may have to send it from Kalamazoo rather than your local city. But to actually prove that they do this intentionally when they don't have to, that would be tricky -- it would require that 1) they do it often, or 2) you have lots of data from lots of people, both heavy and light users, to analyze, or 3) have access to Netflix's inventory information. And as far as I know, nobody has shown that Netflix has done this, at least not in any very convincing manner.

Re:ironic

[paeanblack]

NO ONE would have complained if they "only" received 45 movies per month

Hmm...45 movies * $0.20 postage * 2 directions...

Did you really expect some company to spend $18 in postage when you send them $14.99? That puts Netflix out of business, and you are back being stuck with Blockbuster as your only option.

Is that what you really want?

Re:ironic

[kurzweilfreak]

You still have that other option of not watching movies at all, having Netflix not get your money, and voting with your wallet. Doesn't seem you're willing to make that sacrifice though.

Re:ironic

[kimvette]

I'm a conservative and I disagree with you. If Netflix does not mean unlimited, they should not express or imply an unlimited service.

This also goes for ISPs, car rentals offering "unlimited mileage," and so forth. Unlimited by definition means without limit. By placing ANY limit, be it official, unofficial, real, or artificial, you have made the service unlimited and are fraudulent in your advertising.

Re:ironic

[kimvette]

(And although that may sounds extreme, TVs and monitors NEVER actually measure their advertised value for that exact reason, often falling up to a full inch smaller).

Actually, that holds true for CRT monitors, but not LCD or plasma. In general, the advertised dimension of an LCD or Plasma screen is the actual visible portion of the screen. At least, it has for the monitors I've sold. As far as televisions are concerned, I don't know whether or not manufacturers include the frame for the LCD or Plasma panel in their dimensions, but I doubt they do. If I owned a thin-panel TV (other than a portable 1.7" LCD TV that is actually 1.7") I'd check, but I don't. Can someone out there with a thin-panel TV verify please? I'm genuinely interested as I'm going to be buying very soon and am going to be ordering from one of my distributors rather than buying from a brick-and-mortar store. :)

Re:ironic

[grogdamighty]

I completely agree. But it's just not likely to happen in the same country where all gas prices are listed as X.XX9 - as if by taking 1/10 of a cent off we're actually saving money.

Re:ironic

[pla]

Did you really expect some company to spend $18 in postage when you send them $14.99?

If someone wants to play a sucker's game, I won't refuse their money (or services, in this case).

However... I simply expected them not to lie. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Up to 15 movies per month, 3-at-a-time, for $17.99" does NOT mean the same as "unlimited movies per month, 3-at-a-time, for $17.99".

See the difference?

Had they simply advertised the former rather than the latter, we would never have had this discussion, and I would remain a happy customer (rather than grudgingly accepting they still have the best game in town).


Is that what you really want?

If they need to raise their rates to stay in business, I don't have a problem with that. If they need to increase the stratification of their service plans to stay in business, I don't have a problem with that. If they need to charge a per-disc fee, or make me pay return postage, or outright cap all accounts at X movies per month, I don't even have a problem with those.

I don't have a problem with any arrangement they offer as long as, when I fork over my $17.99 per month, I know EXACTLY what I have paid for. If that means paying too much for too little, I may chose to cancel my account. But I would do so without holding it against them, just as a personal financial decision.



As an aside, I don't actually use Blockbuster as my basis of comparison for what I consider acceptible from Netflix... I use Movie Gallery's $1 for 1-day Wednesdays as my "good deal" threshhold. Netflix has actually crept a bit above that (I actually pay more like $1.15 per movie via Netflix, on average), but their far superior selection makes up for the difference. Not to mention, if I time my Netflix returns correctly, I can get a new batch on Thursday or Friday and have them for the weekend, while Wednesday always happens on Wednesday.

Re:ironic

[prockcore]

by claiming their service is unlimited, Netflix is lying

But they're not. The article is just flat out wrong. They use a fairness algorithm to handle *high-demand* movies. It makes sense.. they can't send a movie that just came out on tuesday to every single subscriber. They don't have enough copies.

I'm a fairly heavy user, and am not a new user. I balance out the high-demand new movies with low-demand older movies. I have about 10 movies in my queue that are available "now". I also have about 5 movies that are "very long wait".

The people who see a delay are only adding brand new movies to their queue.

Re:ironic

[Bad D.N.A.]

that's ironic

Re:ironic

[laray88]

I return NF DVD's very quickly. So now they can be re-inventoried and available for others. Why should I be penalized by being categorized as a heavy renter? NF can now enjoy lower operating cost by not having to purchase or lease a larger quantity of the same movie that is requested by other customers. Granted, a slight increase in postage cost to NF, but far lower than the cost of the DVD, even at their vendor purchase rates. (I assume)

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Any time some company comes out with a fixed fee offer on something, there are always a group of litigous obsessive-compulsive type people who leap to try and take it to the extreme, run into some wall, and then call up an attorney. If they were charging $4 per rental, do you think these people would rent 20+ movies month after month, basically rescheduling their daily activities and lives based on how many movies arrived today so they can watch them all and mail them first thing tommorrow morning? Get a life.

And calling this a 'corporate atrocity' is pathetic, its not like freaking Union Carbide in Bhopal.

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

"The people who see a delay are only adding brand new movies to their queue."

Wrong - I've been with them 4 months, don't have any 'high demand' movies on my queue, and my rate has went from 3 or 4 day turnaround to 7 movies, total for a whole month, last month, without changing my viewing habits.

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were charging $4 per rental, do you think these people would rent 20+ movies month after month, basically rescheduling their daily activities and lives based on how many movies arrived today so they can watch them all and mail them first thing tommorrow morning?

No, they probably wouldn't. Which is why they choose the service that had a flat fee for unlimited movies. It's not a 'corporate atrocity', it's deceptive advertising.

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

wtfpwndbbq

Re:ironic

[BgJonson79]

Because companies are legally required to maximize shareholder value and people are not?

Re:ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

I will go to my grave never understanding the way some people will defend corporations to their dying breath like they were some kind of substitute family or something while simultaneously viewing consumers as evil parasites.

I guess these are the same people that root for Goliath or something.

Re:ironic

[bromo33333]

The people being "throttled back" are the folks that rent out all the movies Netflix will send them, the subscriber copies them, and send them right back.

I have the service, and generally do not have trouble with big delays, but then again, I don't burn copies of their movies and generally won't get a chance to watch the movies until the weekend.

Whether their new service is fair or not, I think depends upon the actual algorithm used.

Re:ironic

[BravoZuluM]

I noticed the delays when I was using Netflix. The more I ordered, the longer it took for them to send me my next DVD. I dropped them for that reason. No amount of "special" emails is going to draw me back to them.

Re:ironic

[Castar]

That doesn't make me a happy customer, however, and eventually, some company WILL come along and offer the same thing without lying about what "unlimited" means. And when that happens, Netflix will learn how the local crack dealer feels when the Mexican mob moves in.

Depending on where you live, you might want to check out Greencine. It's based in San Francisco, so it takes a while for discs to get to the east coast, but they don't do any sort of throttling that I'm aware of. They also have a much more community-focused approach than Netflix, and concentrate on indie and foreign films (although they have everything). They also offer video-on-demand for some of their catalog, although you have to pay a per-movie fee. Slashdotters might also be intrigued to hear that their Bluecine service offers adult movies for rental.

subject

[Universal Indicator]

I always wondered when they were going to start doing this. Luckily, they're not the only game in town. Though I would probably feel dirty renting movies through them.

Re:subject

[Professor_UNIX]

Luckily, they're not the only game in town. Though I would probably feel dirty renting movies through them.

On the scale of evil companies, from 1 to 10, Netflix is a 2 and Blockbuster is an 11. Face it, they're just trying to slow down the DVD pirates and I don't see anything incredibly wrong with that. It does look damn suspicious for a guy to turn around 3-5 movies a day and honestly claim he's NOT pirating them and just shipping them back as soon as his DVD ripper is done grabbing the movie. I'm sure there's a small percentage of legitimate people out there that really do nothing else all day but watch movies from sun up to sun down and they don't have cable or satellite, but they're few and far between. If you look at more legitimate users they most likely see patterns like people holding onto DVDs for several weeks at a time until they find a chance to watch them whereas the DVD pirates are turning around 10-15 discs a week (or more).

Re:subject

[brennz]

This is such a crock of shit.

Lots of people do not have cable/satellite and prefer to watch DVDs only. Some of them for religious reasons, other economic, and others still to escape the low quality programming.

I have noticed that when I turn around Netflix DVDs the fastest, the new DVDs tend to take longer.

I'm going to look over NF's competitors now, to see if they have any deals going. F'ing NF.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people do not have cable/satellite and prefer to watch DVDs only. Some of them for religious reasons, other economic, and others still to escape the low quality programming.

So you're saying that all these people are legitimately watching 4-6 hours of DVDs per night? I doubt it.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the blockbuster terms of usage you'll see a similar policy.

Re:subject

[stevejsmith]

Lots of people do not have cable/satellite and prefer to watch DVDs only. Some of them for religious reasons...

Ha...ha...ha. Religious reasons? What is the religion, again, that outlaws the direct broadcasting of television to consumers via wires or via satellite waves, however allows postal shipment of discs containing similar content? Wait, nevermind, I think I found the Torah verse.

Re:subject

[mikael]

It does look damn suspicious for a guy to turn around 3-5 movies a day and honestly claim he's NOT pirating them and just shipping them back as soon as his DVD ripper is done grabbing the movie. I'm sure there's a small percentage of legitimate people out there that really do nothing else all day but watch movies from sun up to sun down and they don't have cable or satellite, but they're few and far between.

In both the US and Canada, I've met bus drivers (mainly in their 50's) who would work long hours all week, and then rent a stackload of videos so they could spend the entire weekend indoor watching films from dawn to dusk without going outside - driving in traffic for five days was enough of the outside world for them.

Re:subject

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Maybe it's just to avoid all that crap and advertising on TV, and those people are actually picky about what movies they rent?

I find most religions quite ridiculous, but I can understand that some people might make different choices in life than me.

Re:subject

[Trip Ericson]

Unfortunately, this is not the only reason people could return videos so quickly. Both of my parents are retired (my dad is ill and my mom takes care of him) and so when a DVD from Netflix comes, they often watch it the same day and ship it off the next day. I hope Netflix does not start throttling them back because of it.

Re:subject

[Rashan]

er... I'm a netflix user who falls into their 9 discs a month range. I don't have cable, and we don't get network reception very well, so DVD's are about our only "tv"... so ya, it's really pretty easy to watch a DVD a day. We average 3 a week, which puts us at 12 a month, so... guess I'm a heavy user. But I've never ripped a DVD and probably wouldn't know how to go about doing it anyways... I've also noticed a slowdown in the past year, so I guess I'm being throttled with the rest... :-/ Might have to rethink how much of a deal we're really getting.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass, they dont get cable service because cable pumps all kinds of sh1te into their house (in their opinion).

Your posting priviledges have been removed temporarily.

Re:subject

[cyber-vandal]

I am a member of the BarbieMustDie Sect and object most strenuously to having my Justice League Unlimited viewing interrupted by ads for the Magic of Pegasus. If I hear that cheesy song one more time I may have to blow up a Toys R Us.

Re:subject

[stinky wizzleteats]

Face it, they're just trying to slow down the DVD pirates and I don't see anything incredibly wrong with that.

Um, no, I don't face it at all. I find your accusation appalling. I don't use Netflix myself, but I know several people who do so heavily, and they don't make copies of the movies. When did tossing around unprovable allegations like that become standard fare when thinking about justice in our society?

Re:subject

[DRJlaw]

Face it, they're just trying to slow down the DVD pirates and I don't see anything incredibly wrong with that. It does look damn suspicious for a guy to turn around 3-5 movies a day and honestly claim he's NOT pirating them and just shipping them back as soon as his DVD ripper is done grabbing the movie. I'm sure there's a small percentage of legitimate people out there that really do nothing else all day but watch movies from sun up to sun down and they don't have cable or satellite, but they're few and far between.

I must have missed the day where the contracts professor taught that a contract ment one thing for a "good" customer and another thing for a "bad" customer even though both customers were honoring the terms of the contract.

Netflix advertises:

With Netflix you can rent as many DVDs as you want from the comfort of your home and have them delivered to your door in about 1 business day! There are no late fees and no due dates, and shipping is free both ways. Plans start at $9.99 plus any applicable tax. With our most popular plan, 3 at-a-time (Unlimited), you can rent as many DVDs as you want for just $17.99 a month plus any applicable tax. You keep a revolving library of up to 3 DVDs at a time and can exchange them for new available DVDs as often as you like. There are no additional charges.

cite

So long as they continue to advertise these terms and act upon other terms, whether it's in the contract or not, they are subject to suits for false advertising and unfair competition. The existing class action suit (which has not been tried or settled yet) only affects people who were Netflix customers on or before Jan 15, 2005. If you don't like the way that Netflix is conducting business, and you're not covered by the existing class, feel free to sue them again.

Re:subject

[Ant2]

>>...whereas the DVD pirates are turning around 10-15 discs a week (or more)...

I prefer the term "time-shifted rentals."

Re:subject

[ben there...]

This stuff about Netflix has been known for a long time by their actual customers. I first read about it when I was comparing Blockbuster and Netflix and read this site. (I went with Netflix)

Blockbuster didn't have the same selection as Netflix and the free in-store rentals don't appeal to me, living 30 mins from the nearest Blockbuster. And Blockbuster is slower to deliver your rentals in general, not just when throttling.

Re:subject

[mpathetiq]

On the nights when I receive my shipment from Netflix, yes... I watch all of them in one night. It's more like 6-8 hours for me. If the movie is good enough, or I think my roommate would be interested, I keep it around another day or two, but otherwise, the DVDs get dropped in the mail the next day on my way to work.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

"So you're saying that all these people are legitimately watching 4-6 hours of DVDs per night? I doubt it."

No. I'm saying that why am I renting their DVDs is not their bussiness.

At all.

If they promise A, then I want A, not B. It is just that simple.

Re:subject

[dubiousmike]

It takes less time to watch a movie than rip it.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at more legitimate users they most likely see patterns like people holding onto DVDs for several weeks at a time until they find a chance to watch them whereas the DVD pirates are turning around 10-15 discs a week (or more).

Your math is off. Their threshold is 9 DVDs/month. At that rate I can only get 2 per week or less... hardly a massive amount of movies. They are trying to get people who are merely heavy users, not just pirates.

Re:subject

[kimvette]

What about families with young children, who might be renting every disney. dreamworks, and Art Cloaky animation under the sun? It's not unrealistic for young kids to want to play 4-6 DVDs per day

Copyright infringement is not the only explanation for high-volume video rental customers.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

I BUY more DVDs than that per month. If I were to subscribe to Netflix you'd better believe I'd be turning around DVDs very quickly; if I don't have the time to watch them at home I'd play them at the office the next day while I'm working.

Re:subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people assume everyone is living alone and doesn't have a family? Split the subscription between the wife/husband/kids/relatives on multiple TVs/players and you'll easily get through the DVDs.

Fairness to who?

[Afecks]

Their profits or their customers?

Re:Fairness to who?

[b00stA]

Their profits or their customers?

What does this have to do with profits?
People that rent less movies tend to receive the movies they want earlier. Everybody still pays the same amount of money each month.

Re:Fairness to who?

[IdleTime]

Huh?
The more movies you rotate each month, the smaller the profit gets. At some point there is a break even point where they start losing money on you.

So, their advertising is false, they screw up their customers. Sounds good to me! USA - where companies are free to screw you and get away with it!

Re:Fairness to who?

[Afecks]

If you would have RTFA you would know that people that rent more movies, cost them more in postage, handling, packaging and licensing. Which in turn means less profits for them. They receive the same amount of money from each type of subscription, irregardless of how many movies the subscriber rents but people who rent less make them more profits. So they are rewarding people that make them more money by giving them better service. Instead of being honest with their customers they hook them with an offer of "unlimited" rentals and give them better service during their free trial period than long time heavy renters receive.

Re:Fairness to who?

[ds_job]

It's like those job adverts who mention "competitive" rates of pay. Competitive meaning better for the employer (less money) or competitive meaning better for the employee (more money).

But back to the article, it really shouldn't matter as all you need to do is keep a large number of DVDs on your list and make them diverse (not all within 2 month of release. Get some classics in there to mix it up.) The only problem I have with this is that they seem to be saying that they will only ship a certain amount of discs each day / week / month which would really annoy me. I'm unemployed at the moment and it is completely practical for me to receive three DVDs in the morning, watch them, in the day and send them back in the evenings post.
If you say that the shipping is Monday evening post from warehouse, Tuesday morning arrive at my door, Tuesday evening back into the post again after being watched, Wednesday morning arrive back at the warehouse, Wednesday evening post a new set from the warehouse etc. I could easily get a three or four day turn around on a group of discs.
FTA it shows a graphic which says that you will get throttled if you have more than nine rentals per month. I could get flagged within a fortnight and I am not just copying the discs for my own library. I'm actually watching the discs. It seems rather shortsighted if you ask me.

Re:Fairness to who?

[umbra_dweller]

It doesn't alter INCOME, sure, but it does alter PROFITS, I would imagine. In I pay you $20 a month and rent one DVD in that month, you have $20 minus $0.78* postage plus handling for one DVD. If I rent 20 DVD's in that month, then you still have $20 but are responsible for the $15.60 postage and handling of 20 DVD's. If you send out my movies slower and I only end up recieving 15 DVD's in the same period that I used to recieve 20, you saved yourself $3.90 per 20 DVD-a-month renter.

*The article mentions $0.78 for each envelope.

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[Universal Indicator]

Damn, a few more words and you would have had a decent limerick going...

Voluntary and well-understood

[Toby The Economist]

As long as a contract is well understood by both parties and voluntarilty entered into, it's fine.

NF have discovered they can't operate an entirely flat-rate service and have modified their behaviour accordingly.

One could argue that customers originally signed up to a contract which has been unilaterially modified; but I would expect the T&C to allow them in that circumstance to terminate their contract without prejudice.

NF can offer a certain service for a certain cost. Either you like it or you don't. No one forces you to buy. If they change what they offer (for better or for worse, although one wouldn't anticipate customers terminating contracts after a service improvement) then you can leave the contract.

It would only be ethically wrong if they could change their contract and you could *not* leave.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[loraksus]

So, mensa master, your stunningly brilliant conclusion is that a company engaging in bait and switch tactics (which, is what this is, if you offer unlimited, you simply cannot "throttle") on an grand scale is completely fine, as long as the customer can terminate their contract without repercussions.
I know this post is a bit acerbic, but your argument is complete and utter apologist horseshit.

Are people making too big a deal out of this? Probably, but if a company advertises something - they should actually do it or change their advertising. And no, there shouldn't be secret limits or anything like that.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[kfg]

As long as a contract is well understood by both parties and voluntarilty entered into, it's fine.

I don't suppose you RTFA and discovered that they denied it for months after they'd been doing it and only changed the terms of service after a lawsuit was actually filed, which they offered $2.5 million to settle?

KFG

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[wfberg]

As long as a contract is well understood by both parties and voluntarilty entered into, it's fine.

For existing customers, it's a simple bait-and-switch tactic. Offer one thing, deliver the other.

For new customers (or those who are actually informed of the choice and consciously agree with it) the new contract is basically, well, not understood. A contract is a promise to do something in return for something else. The something else is clear; you have to pay netflix money. And in return? Well, they won't say you will get anything. Not guaranteed.

Of course, people were already getting delays, so what's changed isn't what you're getting. But it's the fact netflix doesn't say they want to even make the effort anymore. They promise... nothing.

That's not a contract. That's a lottery.

Seeing as they're called "netflix" and not "loan-a-dvd lottery co." I'd say they're trying to pull a fast one.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It is amusing to me that there is such an uproar and that it is COMPLETELY analogous to the folks who get worked up that their p2p downloads are throttled by a fairness algorithm on their dirt cheap "unlimited" broadband connection. As someone who doesn't expect a free lunch, and who realizes something that sounds too good to be true probably is, I am happy when resource managers use fairness algorithms instead of allowing the greedy cheats to downgrade my service. I have no problem with the neighbors sucking up free bandwidth (or excess movies), but I see no reason their greedy demands should ever lock me out of getting a few good packets (or movies) when I request them.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[cyranose]

I agree, but the bait-and-switch is worse than that. They can modify the TOS all they want, but it's pure false advertising to say "unlimited" and then have an algorithm with the purpose of "limiting" the number of movies I can watch in some non-deterministic way (i.e., based on what they claim other people are doing). Just put a clear cap on it. I can live with that.

Hell, it would still beat BlockBuster if they said "unlimited (up X per month)" and/or added a shipping surcharge per disk for anything over X/month.

Just be honest, NetFlix. Don't bury it in the TOS.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[Toby The Economist]

> > As long as a contract is well understood by both parties and voluntarilty entered into, it's fine.

> I don't suppose you RTFA and discovered that they denied it for months after they'd been doing it and
> only changed the terms of service after a lawsuit was actually filed, which they offered $2.5 million to
> settle?

Obviously not.

Such behaviour is in violation of the free market; it is entirely unethical.

The change to their service is fine. Their deception of their customers is not.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[turbidostato]

"As long as a contract is well understood by both parties and voluntarilty entered into, it's fine.

NF have discovered they can't operate an entirely flat-rate service and have modified their behaviour accordingly."

But the question here is that most probably the corporation knew that from the very beginning and has maliciously made false promises to their clients. That's fraud.

I can almost imagine the corporate meeting:

-Hey! we can promise "ALL THE MOVIES YOU CAN SEE"
-But we can't promise that: we don't take benefit on each movie, but a flat rate; the most films we send, the less we gain, and beyond certain point (pretty excel graph here) we loose money!
-C'mon... most of the "hardcore" pirates already have wideband connection to Internet, with emule and whatnot: we can go with it

[six months later]

-See? we are loosing money, as I told you. We must change our advertisements rigth now. Maybe we can tell "up to X films a month" or maybe we can have different plans so the more you get, the more you pay...
-And loose the marketing advantage of an "all you can eat" motto? You must be crazy! No: what we will do is maintain our policy and unilaterally break our contract with those that take the most of us... on a not so obvious way, of course.
-But, but... that's fraud!
-(Homer Simpson-like accent)Only if they get us, old chap, only if they get us...

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[Toby The Economist]

> So, mensa master, your stunningly brilliant conclusion is that a company engaging in bait and switch
> tactics (which, is what this is, if you offer unlimited, you simply cannot "throttle") on an grand
> scale is completely fine, as long as the customer can terminate their contract without repercussions.

Your question is invalid since it assumes their behaviour is bait and switch.

NF initially offered a given service for a given price. They then changed that service and/or that price.

Your current opinion is that NF were deliberately deceptive. Others will disagree. Still more will not hold an opinion, since they cannot know with the information they have available.

I aver it is impossible to specify a hard and fast rule which defines such a change in service is normal business or deliberately deceptive behaviour.

Who are you and I to assert for a given company that their change in service stems from deliberate, preplanned deceit rather than an over-optimistic initial assessment of the market?

Moreover, how can we say that a change in service IS deceit, even when the original intent was to obtain a large body of customers and then reduce their quality of service?

In fact, in this particular case with NF, their behaviour in not bait-and-switch, since they decided to mislead their customers by not informing them of the changes to their service. This is wrong, but it is not bait-and-switch; how can it be, when the customer does not know of the change? my OP was misdirected, since I was unaware that NF hid the details of their changes.

If NF had in fact been open about the changes to their service, then we would have to consider that people who subscribed to NF's initial service did so because they wished to do so and that people who then unsubscribe from NF's new service do so because they are not satisfied with what is offered.

Accordingly, the people who remain with the NF service, assuming they are well-informed, do so *from their free choice*. They remain satisfied; who are we to say they are wrong?

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[turbidostato]

"instead of allowing the greedy cheats to downgrade my service"

You rose up a good comparation. What I can't understand are the conclussions you extract out of it. Instead of concluding that crappy "unlimited" broadband are fraudulent too and a clause auction is proper, you accept the 'statu quo' from the movie renter too!

If they advertise "2MB unlimited", the only way I can be a "greedy cheater" is if I manage to get 3MB unlimited. If they promise "2MB unlimited" but then they make provisions (be it the "short letter" in the contract, a "fairness algorith" or anything else) so I can't really get the promised "2MB unlimited", the "greedy cheaters" can't be anyone but them!

Of course the same is valid when they promise "no-limits movies" but then they make provisions for "no-limits" being "five movies a month" instead.

Re:Voluntary and well-understood

[loraksus]

Your question is invalid since it assumes their behaviour is bait and switch.

But it is (at least for new users). I completely agree with you on the point that for the users who had the TOS switched on them, Netflix's actions aren't bait and switch (I believe they even dropped the price when they adopted the new TOS which would give them further protection)
However, Netflix still continues to attract customers with the promise of unlimited DVD rentals. More on this below.


Your current opinion is that NF were deliberately deceptive

Maybe they were, maybe not. I do know that even a year after this article was written and well after the settlement was agreed upon, their advertising still has many, many instances of "unlimited".
That use of "unlimited" is the "bait", which brings potential customers in. You don't get to see the tos until you begin to sign up - and even then it is one of the last things you see. It really doesn't matter though, as the FTC has something to say about this sort of activity (it should be noted that they filed an amicus brief against the settlement, although it was mainly because the settlement was essentially a 2.5 million dollar advertising campaign)

From here.

Sec. 238.2 Initial offer.

        (a) No statement or illustration should be used in any advertisement which creates a false impression of the grade, quality, make, value, currency of model, size, color, usability, or origin of the product offered, or which may otherwise misrepresent the product in such a manner that later, on disclosure of the true facts, the purchaser may be switched from the advertised product to another.

• (b) Even though the true facts are subsequently made known to the buyer, the law is violated if the first contact or interview is secured by deception.
  

And I realize that bait and switch has traditionally been used in frauds against people purchasing products, not services - but the laws against it still apply.

So yes, a company changing its terms slightly outside of a contract isn't illegal, as it is completely reasonable to assume that the terms and conditions will eventually change. It may be shady and upset the people using the service - especially when the costs of switching to a competitor are high (and if the "competitors" collude to match an ever decreasing level of service), but it happens quite frequently.

Bait

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch

It's like the British ADSL industry... you sell something you know to be unsustainable, then add fair usage policies.

Re:Bait

[loraksus]

A very good comparison.

My experience is with the Canadian internet access industry - and mirrors (and, I believe, will predict) the netflix situation quite well.

Shaw (who provides cable internet) once advertised "unlimited" service.
Once people started signing up, they realized that they weren't willing to actually offer unlimited service.
Then they put a statement about "excessive usage" in the AUP - it wasn't defined, of course, but people still got nasty letters and the mouthbreathers who man their "excessive use" line even threatened to charge people for "excessive usage". These "excessive usage" fines were, of course, pulled completely out of their ass. No documentation could be found regarding when the limit was reached, what the overage charges were, etc, etc, but people were still threatened with, and possibly even were charged those fines. An almost magical fee, but one that would appear on your bill and would have to be paid, or your service would be disconnected and your account sent to collections.
After several nasty letters from lawyers and possibly some lawsuits, Shaw finally decided to write down the bandwidth limit in their advertising, at almost the exact same time their competitors did the same. Sounds like a couple people had a meeting.

What you can clearly see is that not only was Shaw involved in false advertising, but it continued to engage in such criminal activity far after their illegal activities were exposed. Moreover, their actions clearly were to the detriment of the person buying the services. Furthermore, collusion - whether intentional or just the other company matching policies - between Shaw and its competitors has led to an continuously decreasing level of service for the end user and shaw has suffered virtually no consequences.

In the end, netflix will face virtually no consequences (and before anyone says anything about the settlement, please, don't waste your breath. Bumping your users to the next tier for a month - and not bumping them back down at the end - is undeniably a win win situation for netflix).
Furthermore, the shady - if not outright fraudulent - actions of netflix in stating the return date of dvds*, has gone, and will go unpunished. In the end, blockbuster (ok it has) and the completion will eventually adopt a similar tos - putting in writing what it is doing - and the situation will only get worse as time goes on. Furthermore, "advanced throttling" - such as sending the dvds on time, but from a service center across the country - will become commonplace, since once something is in writing, it will be used.

And finally - and perhaps most importantly - "unlimited" will still be used in their advertising until a regulatory agency or a number of lawsuits convince them to change it - both Blockbuster and Netflix currently do on their websites - even though their ToS states that they throttle. And have no doubt, once one company changes it, the other will change their advertising within a month.

*If you're being throttled, if you send back 3 dvds - even 3 dvds in the same envelope - netflix will receive 2 a couple minutes apart and then "receive" the last one several hours later. Try it out ;)

Re:Bait

[Da Zeg]

Yeah but who actually READS the small print? According to tiscali's terms my bandwidth should be throttled if I use a lot at peak times. I have yet to see this happen. And It's not like I hardly use it. I took out an 'unlimited' package because I need one.

Re:Bait

[Bing Tsher E]

*If you're being throttled, if you send back 3 dvds - even 3 dvds in the same envelope - netflix will receive 2 a couple minutes apart and then "receive" the last one several hours later. Try it out ;)

Possibly, that could be happening no matter wether you're being 'throttled' or not. One would have to examine their processing methods. They could have one staffer who opens all the parcels and dumps them into a bin. They might then be scanned into the system at varying time intervals. It's even possible that they have 'pickers' who pull popular and much-requested disks out of that bin earlier, if they are trying to 'expedite' popular selections.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a conspiracy behind it.

Re:Bait

[Anonymous Coward]

BT Retail requested that its highest users pay excess charges, sometimes exceeding £100 a month, or leave for another ISP.

The way BT Wholesale charge ISPs, at around £1.5 million a year for a 622 Mb pipe, it's not hard to calculate how many idle users you need to cancel out one heavy one.

Re:Bait

[loraksus]

The thing is, when I had them and did this, each and absolutely every single time, 2 showed received within minutes of each other and the other one was delayed 10 hours or so. I can understand it happening once or twice, but a dozen+ times in a row? When I finally got rid of netflix, I had over an inch thick pile of spare envelopes.

Re:Bait

[klparrot]

I think Rogers pulled the same thing as Shaw. And now that they do have a limit written in, they're still trying to prevent users from getting the bandwidth they've paid for. I pay for 100GB a month at "up to" 800kbps down. I'm cool with that. Except that the "up to" is not due to network traffic, it's due to Rogers' traffic shaping; they reduce any BitTorrent connections to worse than dial-up speeds. When I signed up for 800kbps down, it wasn't so I could get email faster. I've found a way around it for now, but if they cut that off too, I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

Re:Bait

[loraksus]

The limit for shaw is now 50 gigs a month, down from 80 and 120. And yes, they packet shape and I'm pretty sure do something with QoS on Vonage packets.

Of course, the DSL provider here (Telus) matched them almost immediately - I believe they changed their policies within a week. 30 gigs a month for the cheaper package (they don't show the limit to you in this package though) and 60 gigs for their "Enhanced" package. There are no other high speed providers in our area and even the most expensive business package is $160 a month and only offers 100 gigs of bandwidth.
Besides, Telus is the company who censors sites it disagrees with - they blocked access to several union sites during a strike and disconnected the internet access of striking employees, so I probably won't switch to them.

I fully expect shaw to drop the limit to 40 gigs or so within a few months.
And, by the way - these limits are continously decreasing for people who are locked into 2 year contracts, of course, they aren't allowed to switch without paying a large cancellation fee.
The bottom line is that the customers gets screwed in the end.

customer service denied anything was going on

[syneca]

Netflix did this to me. When I contacted customer service to ask why movies were suddenly taking so long to arrive, they sent me unrelated generic responses and then blamed it on the postal system. I finally sent them this email:

"Thank you for the response. It does not address my question. The problem is not with the transit time; it is with the processing time at Netflix. When I ship the DVDs back, they get there in one day. Then there is a period of 5 to 6 business days before the next DVD is shipped to me. Once it is actually shipped, it arrives in one day. I recently had to rent a movie from Blockbuster because Netflix took so long to process my DVDs. Netflix has wide selection, but I am becoming frustrated with the generic customer service responses and the lack of service in general. Please send me a real reply."

and they replied with this one:

"Thanks for your inquiry.

What titles are you referring to specifically? Rentals process within one business day from the time we receive a return.

We process nearly 100% of returns the same day we receive them. When we check-in a return, an e-mail is automatically and promptly sent to you to let you know that we have received your DVD.

Our goal is to ship you the DVDs listed highest in your Queue. We try to ship you DVDs from the distribution center closest to you so that you get movies quickly. Often, on the same day that we receive a DVD from you, we will ship the next available DVD from your Queue. In certain instances, your next available DVD will not ship until the next business day following our receipt of your returned movie. This can occur, for example, when your top choices are not available to you from your closest distribution center or the number of shipments to be processed by the distribution center on that day has been exceeded. When this happens, your DVD will ship on the next business day and may come from an alternate distribution center.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,
Scott,
Netflix Customer Service"

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[YaRness]

Yeah, so they sent you another generic response. I've had the same experience, as I'm sure many other /.ers have as well.

Did you get any actual, undeniable interation with their customer service?

I think what Netflix needs is some real competition. I've considered switching to Blockbuster, but I've been informed by a movie critic friend of mine that they suck too.

Any other viable alternatives yet?

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[Anonymous Coward]

*Posting anonymously because my user name will give away my account name with Netflix*

They have been throttling me because I like to rent series of discs. Go ahead and laugh, but I have the following en queue:

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Thundercats
Inuyasha

I'm less than 10 miles from their distribution center, and when I send a title back to it, it gets received 5 DAYS LATER. Then, I get an email saying "title X" is shipping tomorrow for a retreival date that is 3 to 4 days later. This is a wait of a week and a half to receive a title that ships from only a few miles away.

I'll reserve my nasty comments about their bad business practices and false advertising. I hope they get PUNISHED for this.

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[Speare]

Yeah, you're really hiding your identity-- they can just query their database to find out which of the TWO losers actually rented Thundercats, and find that only one of those losers also rented the more popular NGE and Inuyasha series.

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[gcauthon]

Yes, the whole idea of renting movies through the USPS totally sucks. I can't believe netflix is still suckering people in. I had netflix for a couple months and every single movie I ever returned to them had to be reported lost in the mail. You absolutely have to return the movie immediately after watching it or else you are getting ripped off. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you're watching between 6 and 9 movies a month for $20 then you can get better service at your local video store.

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[SirTalon42]

If he was smart he could of thrown Thundercats into his post to hide his identity better ;-).

Re:customer service denied anything was going on

[bill_mcgonigle]

if you're watching between 6 and 9 movies a month for $20 then you can get better service at your local video store.

Well, that depends on four things:

• How far is the 'local' video store?
  
• What's the price of gas?
  
• What's your time worth?
  
• Does your local store have the shows you want to see?
  
  If the local store is 15 miles away and doesn't stock much of what you'd like to see, Netflix is a no-brainer.

so lets get this straight....

[scenestar]

People who actually pay for instead of download their movies get screwed over?

piracy:1 - MPAA: -20

Re:so lets get this straight....

[MisterSquid]

People who actually pay for instead of download their movies get screwed over?

You've been modded funny, but your humor is actually very insightful. In 2006, those who pay for a service are exactly the people who will get screwed over when there is a free alternative. The degree of screwing varies according the nature of the company, but everything from DRM'd music files to encumbered computer hardware to dongled production software to you-name-it--paying customers are treated poorly by the very companies who need them.

Re:so lets get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd never understood why waste money on posting physical media when one can send info via sattelite at much lesser cost

Re:so lets get this straight....

[Ilex]

Sadly you are exactly right! I used to belong to a Netflix type company until one too many discs went 'missing' (i always returned them next day). I was charged for the disc. In response I cancelled my membership and joined an alternative company which doesn't require the physical shipping of the disc itself.

Customers are willing to play fair but if the media company's want to stop piracy they'll have to play fair too.

Re:so lets get this straight....

[Richard_at_work]

You were probably joking, but I entirely fail to see how the MPAA can be held responsable for the actions of an independant and seperate company supplying services the MPAA has nothing to do with.

This is Netflix thats causing the problem (Lovefilm in the UK have the same clause in their terms and conditions, throttling of high usage users, and Lovefilm supply the backend service for a LOT of the online rentals clubs in the UK).

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently don't know Jesus is also an important prophet in the Islam. Learn to troll better, dumbass.

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[aug24]

"I shit on your Jesus and piss on your God.
Your mother sucks my prick and swallows my wad!"
But free speech'll win
Over arbitrary sin
So fuck off and die arab clod.

what an amazing business decision....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell your biggest customers that they're no longer your priority.

Re:what an amazing business decision....

[NorbrookC]

Tell your biggest customers that they're no longer your priority.

Biggest does not mean profitable. In this case, just the opposite. Every business, if they hope to stay in business, does this in some form or another. The service levels match the profitability of the customer. It's why you have to go through several levels of phone prompts and wait listening to muzak to get tech support, while a corporation with a big $ support contract gets someone on the phone immediately.

This is the problem with any "flat fee" system. The profit is from those who use the system the least, not those who use it the most. Rent a lot of DVD's, and you're not their best customer, you're their worst.

So what everyone is complaining about is that NetFlix is giving priority to their best customers, while stepping back service to their worst customers.

Re:what an amazing business decision....

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?
 
Please explain to me exactly how, in this case, the customers who rent the most, and therefore spend the most amount of money, are NOT the best customers? I'd love to know how exactly more sales != more profit. Especially as those customers who rent on a regular basis, who are clearly happy with the service, require less marketing than those who rent less frequently.

Re:what an amazing business decision....

[Registered Coward v2]

Please explain to me exactly how, in this case, the customers who rent the most, and therefore spend the most amount of money, are NOT the best customers? I'd love to know how exactly more sales != more profit. Especially as those customers who rent on a regular basis, who are clearly happy with the service, require less marketing than those who rent less frequently.

Everyone pays a flat fee - so the most profitable customer rents zero movies in a month, and the profitability declines from there. At some point, the costs of sending the DVDs exceeds the amount the customer pays; that customer is unprofitable to NF.

NF no doubt has some magic average rental / customer number that represents the threshold where profitability dips below what they believe is acceptable and they try to run the system to stay below that number. If every NF customer simply dropped the DVD in the mail the same day it was received NF would be screwed - they can't make money shipping 20 plus disks / month to all of their customers.

Personally, I think their model is not viable in the long run unless a significant technological change occurs. The adoption of high speed internet access will make the direct delivery model better since it cuts out the shipping and handling costs; once the studios develop a licensing scheme that makes prices close to NF viable you'll see competition spring up. Eventually the DVD player will be supplanted by the movie player that attaches to the internet and gets the movies you want when you want them.

The self destructing DVD would be a bone to NF - if you could get the cost of that disk less than the cost of handling a return it would be more profitable. Demand estimation would be vital to avoid getting stuck with too many or too few disks and you'd need regular versions to maintain the catalog once the movie is no longer new. For the initial demand when it is a new release though it might make sense; NF would need a TOS that limits how often you'd get a self destructing DVD.

Re:what an amazing business decision....

[rob.wolfe]

Tell your biggest customers that they're no longer your priority.

Except that in this case biggest isnt the most profitable or in any measurable way best customer. When most folks think of their biggest customer it is usually synonymous with "best" because they make more money from them. In this case, you profitless from your biggest customers than from your smallest.

When you start a company with a business model you make a lot of assumptions. Perhaps 15 rentals a month was a level of use that never dawned on anyone. Does that mean that they messed up their analysis that led to the business model? Sure it does. Does that mean that they have to take losses, and be sure that someone who is renting 15 dvd's a month is likely to generate posses, because an assumption that is fixable within the contract, was wrong?

I am not usually a profoundly pro-business person but I think that this is a little bit of a tempest in a teacup

not the only ones...

[loraksus]

Blockbuster also does this - basically, if you send 3 dvds back - even in the same envelope, blockbuster will "receive" 2 at x time and then "receive" the other one later.

We aren't stupid, so we can see that this is clearly bulllshit on their part.

As a result, you'll only get 2 dvds shipped out that day, and a third will ship a day later. That said, blockbuster is really forgiving about missing dvds (damn post office lost 15 or so in a couple months)

BTW if you want a free month with blockbuster and have had their service for a while (3 months in my case), go to the cancellation page and they will give you a free month or two.
Not sure what netflix does for customer retention, but I'm sure it is something. The legal settlement with netflix is a joke, btw (google for details)

Also, for those with "long delays" for certain movies under netflix - try killing your queue and re-adding the delayed movie. Theory is that they have to send you something and you should get bumped. Of course, this does kill your queue...

Re:not the only ones...

[jbarr]

...and have had their service for a while (3 months in my case)

I would hardly characterize 3 months as a while...I would consider you a new customer.

Re:not the only ones...

[MisterSquid]

damn post office lost 15 or so in a couple months)

I have a post above talking about my experience with DVDs lost in the USPS system. Not to rehash, the short version is: the USPS almost never loses mail and if it is "losing" mail on a regular basis you can GUARANTEE that the USPS Postal inspector would be very curious to hear your story.

Your postal inspector might be a very unsexy bureaucrat but let me tell you, he or she DOES NOT fuck around. Write a letter to your Postal Inspector explaining that your DVDs are getting "lost". The problem will be cleared up, whether it is the USPS's fault or Blockbuster.

Re:not the only ones...

[loraksus]

Maybe, but bb's process was literally checking a box and hitting submit, they never cut off my service or anything. I'd have to say at least 1/2 did show up eventually. I think it is less theft and more "the envelopes suck and fall apart and the loose bits get collected and picked up every x weeks". Netflix had really good envelopes in the begining, but they seemed to get cheaper over time. BB's were usually really weak.

Re:not the only ones...

[bitingduck]

Or possibly it's the USPS carriers taking advantage of your netflix subscription without stealing the discs.

When I was a kid we used to see the mail carrier sitting out in his Jeep reading some of the magazines before delivering them. It's entirely possible, if not probable, that carriers and other postal employees are doing the same with netflix DVDs-- snag them, open them up roughly so it looks like a machine trashed them, watch them, wait a few days, insert them back into the system.

If only a one or two in an area are doing it, and not very often, nobody notices. If several are doing it independently then it might start to add up. And then if some damaged DVD envelopes start coming through, people might say "oh, it's already damaged, I'll give it a view before I put it back in the system" so a DVD might get watched a few times before getting to you or back to netflix.

Re:not the only ones...

[Klowner]

So far I'm fairly content with blockbuster's service, perhaps I'm just an idiot though, I don't know.

I've noticed that they ship out my next movie (usually) the day after I send one back to them, and then I typically get an email notification that the disc I had returned has be received 1 or 2 days after that. I don't know if they get notification from the USPS, or how it works, but it's nice.

Re:not the only ones...

[alienw]

I REALLY doubt the postal service is doing that. First, machines don't tear up envelopes. It would be obvious if an envelope was opened. Second, they can get in a SHITLOAD of trouble if they do that (as in, major jail time in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison). If anyone is stealing the discs, it's Blockbuster/Netflix employees in the receiving department.

Re:not the only ones...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a machine tear up a postal envelope. Any DVD inside it would have been reduced to splinters (I had to uncrumple my letter to read it).

Re:not the only ones...

[OverlordQ]

Blockbuster also does this - basically, if you send 3 dvds back - even in the same envelope, blockbuster will "receive" 2 at x time and then "receive" the other one later.

I call bullshit. Each DVD has their own sleeve and their own pre-paid envelope to send them back in, If you're putting all 3 into 1, well then there's something wrong with you, not Blockbuster.

So don't advertise "unlimited"

[Huntr]

FTFA:

Hastings said the company has no specified limit on rentals, but "`unlimited' doesn't mean you should expect to get 10,000 a month."

Well, der, no one wants 10k movies a month.

But, if Netflix had a point they didn't really want people going over, why not just advertise X movies per month, instead of unlimited? According to the articles, most people don't rent more than 11 per month. Set the limit higher than that, but at a point where they can make the profit they are aiming for with throttling.

They don't end up looking like buttholes if they are just honest about it up front.

Re:So don't advertise "unlimited"

[globaljustin]

They don't end up looking like buttholes if they are just honest about it up front.

you're 100% right. What is wrong, however, is that our way of doing business rewards businesses who are as hidden and dishonest about their business practices as possible. Really, it comes down to pleasing shareholders vs. customers...

good businesspeople understand that pleasing shareholders and customers is, at it's core, the same thing...anyone who makes a distinction is selling out

Re:So don't advertise "unlimited"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple as that: "DVDs unlimited" pulls more than "20 DVDs a Month"

Hey, I've got a great business idea!

[Ezku]

Now that we've managed to establish our business, we will proceed as follows:

1. Piss off all of our most loyal customers by selectively giving them worse service
2. ??????
3. Profit!

Re:Hey, I've got a great business idea!

[tomhudson]

Now that we've managed to establish our business, we will proceed as follows:

1. Piss off all of our most loyal customers by selectively giving them worse service
2. ??????
3. Profit!

Step 2 is obvious and easy. It takes time for peopel to change their habits. In the meantime, their quarterly profit goes up, making them look more profitable than they really are. Step 2 is SELL OUT TO NEW INVESTORS" and let someone else be the bagholder for the accumulated BS.

This is actually quite common in the direct-mail and mail-order business. Stop all advertising for 3 months - your expenses drop tremendously, and your net profits go through the roof, even if your overall volume goes down (you're riding the coat-tails on the previous quarter's advertising). Now you can shop the business around and show phenomenal profit ratios.

Same wiht rental real estate properties. Stop all maintenance for a while, and the building is much more profitable - on paper. Sell. New owners have the headaches, you have the profit.

Re:Hey, I've got a great business idea!

[Ezku]

That's an interesting explanation. What troubles me is that Netflix seems to be using having to ship from another state as a means to explain the decline in service quality, which to me would imply increased shipping costs. Is it really that economical?

Re:Hey, I've got a great business idea!

[rob.wolfe]

Now that we've managed to establish our business, we will proceed as follows: 1. Piss off all of our most loyal customers by selectively giving them worse service 2. ?????? 3. Profit!

if your most loyal customers are also the ones that cost you more per unit sold to deal with... that IS a good strategy

What's the big deal?

[EvilCabbage]

Seriously, can someone explain the popularity of Netflix to me?

I like getting out of my house, going for a walk (the few miles each way won't kill anybody) and actually interacting with normal people, picking a few movies to watch off the shelves, paying a few bucks and walking back to my home. If I'm feeling lazy, I might even drive.

I never thought services like Netflix would take off, but I guess people have proven to be lazier than I gave them credit for.

Re:What's the big deal?

[xwizbt]

It's the not having to interact with normal people that does it for me.

What, seriously? Oh, okay - choice, convenience, price, the fact that you can queue up things to watch based on how desperate you are to see them. Oh, and not having to interact with normal people, now I come to think of it!

Re:What's the big deal?

[stove]

I'd love to walk to my local video store (really), but...

-The closest video store is about 7 miles away. The closest real video store (not just one wall of videos) is more like 15 miles away.
- Said video store does not carry old silent movies, current documentaries or eclectic TV shows. Which, interestingly enough, is what I'm interested in.

I'm unhappy that Netflix is doing this, but it does pretty much provide me with a relatively unique service.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Mikey-San]

It's not an issue of being lazy. Blockbuster is notorious for either not carrying titles or carrying shitty, edited versions of the titles they DO carry. See Requiem for a Dream as an example. It's only been recently that Blockbuster has started doing away with non-widescreen DVDs, too.

Its big-chain competitors aren't really much better, selection-wise, and the non-chain local stores I've lived near have always had pretty bad return windows compared to the bigger guys.

Little non-chains == more eclectic selection, small return windows (in my experience, that is . . . your mileage may vary)

Blockbuster and similar chains == Better return windows, crappier selection

Netflix == Good selection, kickass return window

Once you add "it comes right to your door", it's absolutely no wonder that NF has taken off.

Re:What's the big deal?

[ryusen]

I like Netflix over a video store because; they have a bigger selection, finding things are much faster, and if you want a particular old movie, you don't go to the store to find out it's been rented. i also like the convinience of building alist i want and just having it sent. no more trying to find a video, then finding out it's not there, etal...

Re:What's the big deal?

[layer3switch]

Try living in a place where cable companies with on-demand are forcing small/big video rental stores to close and making video rental vending machine a real competition by comparison!

Where I live (in Brooklyn), there are couple of foreign video stores (about a mile away) which rents out only Indian and Russian stuffs and other places just are plain tasteless porns only. I have to literally walk 2 hours to get to closest BlockBuster which may and may not carry what I want to rent.

Regardless of the distant, anything at this point seems very attractive alternative and that's including a freaking video rental vending machine.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Broken Bottle]

Geez, I guess it's a crime to enjoy a service that provides a great convenience, savings if you are a heavy renter, and access to a MUCH larger selection of films than a local video store could ever offer (unless it were operating out of a space the size of an Ikea).

Personally, I'm a big fan of Netflix just for the quality and quantity of their selection alone. If you only rent new releases two or three times a month, yeah, you probably wouldn't get a lot out of Netflix. Blockbuster and the average mom and pop video store around me only cary new releases and popular catalog titles like "When Harry Met Sally" and stuff like that and I can completely understand why. Movies take up a lot of space on shelves and their stores can only be so big. I wouldn't devote space to a lot of movies that rented twice a year either if I had rent to pay and was only able to service a relatively small area.

With Netflix, I get movies delivered to my door at a reasonable price. I never have to worry about watching them TONIGHT because they're due back tomorrow before 5. And, occassionally I don't feel like watching the latest Jerry Bruckheimer big budget fiasco. I like documentaries every once in a while, and classic films like "Hell's Angels" and "Logan's Run" :) If I get a bad disc from NEtflix, I send it back and they send me another. If that happens at Blockbuster and it's a catalog title, most of the time, you're SOL.

There are a lot of advantages to Netflix. I get plenty of exercise and human interaction in ways that don't involve my local video store

Chris

Re:What's the big deal?

[m50d]

The whole flat-rate thing is, to my mind, the main thing. You could go to blockbuster and take out 2 or 3 movies - and you'd probably pay more than the netflix monthly fee.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Trip Ericson]

The nearest video rental store is 20 miles away, in a town we never visit. The next nearest ones are 40-50 miles away, and my family probably goes into the city maybe once per week--and since the three cities are about an equal distance apart, we might go to a different city each time based on which stores we have to go to.

You tell me.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Rashan]

For my family, it's because we don't have cable ($90 a month for a few channels we'd actually watch is too much for our finances right now), the network TV reception is awful, and with a 5 month old baby in the house, it's very difficult to get out to see a movie. We take lots of walks but there's only so far I'm willing to walk on a rainy day. As for local video chains, I used to do that... but I'd get screwed over by the late fees every time. I'd end up paying more than the $19 to watch a couple of movies than the 9 to 11 I get from Netflix... the throttling has been annoying me, but I guess it's still better than massive late fees for being a day late because I had to give my son a bath or something else a little more important than returning a DVD to the Blockbuster.

Re:What's the big deal?

[rolfwind]

My place takes 15 minutes by car (one way). I'm not about to spend 60+ minutes (2 gallons gas = ~$5 for the 2 trips to get and give back, back and forth) on a car ride so I can "interact" with a shop clerk over whether I want goobers with my DVD. That whole process of picking out, recieving and returning take less than 7 minutes with Netflix.

Plus the local place has shitty anime (only thing I want anymore) and the ones they do are constantly being rented, thus when I went back to blockbuster in the day, I constantly had to go away without my 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice - and if I was feeling masochistic picked an alternative 4rth choice that likely sucks to make the trip "worth it."

No thanks.

Re:What's the big deal?

[LordNimon]

You must live in a white-picket-fence neighborhood if you think that interacting with people at your local video store is a pleasant experience. For everyone else on the planet, we have to put up with the unmotivated and ignorant salesdroids at Blockbuster.

However, the real reason why Netflix is so popular is the selection. They have almost every DVD available, orders of magnitude more than any brick-and-mortar store. I no longer have to worry about whether the movie I want to watch is available.

For instance, I prefer to watch TV shows on DVD. I can configure my Netflix queue to send each TV show DVD after another. So I watch the first disc, and then when I'm done (about 1-2 weeks later) I sent it back and get the next one two days later. The typical blockbuster only carries a few TV shows, and in many cases they're missing individual discs from the set!

Re:What's the big deal?

[Quiet_Desperation]

For me it's the sheer selection. A single video store can't hope to match it.

And there's really no need for the snarky lazy comments. Just because someone likes Netflix has no connection to their level of laziness.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I hear ya on the amine. :) I no longer care that DirecTV refuses to get Anime Network. I even rent the ones Cartoon Network shows if I like the first episode and get through them long before the CN run finishes.

Re:What's the big deal?

[boingo82]

Lazy doesn't even factor into it.

I recently went for 7 months with no car at all. We're a family of 3, including (at the time) a toddler of just over a year, and we walked everywhere - to get groceries, to get movies, to work, to the bus stop, to the bank, etc. Carrying a 20+ lb baby.

I joined Netflix when Blockbuster charged me $14.95 for returning ONE movie 15 minutes late. The sales slip said "due back on Friday, 12 pm" and I mistakenly thought that was midnight...it was noon. (Off topic - why the heck doesn't 12 pm come after 11 pm?)

At the time I was working a 4 pm to 2 am shift, and most days I was not even AWAKE by noon.

I realized that not only was Blockbuster's schedule completely incompatible with mine, but they were assholes too. They refused to remove the late fees - they had charged me for another 5 days for being 15 minutes late - why not ONE day late? There was a class action lawsuit against them a few years back for this.

Nevermind that I can't get the movies I want through Blockbuster anyhow - when's the last time you saw Cannibal the Musical on their shelves?

Re:What's the big deal?

[JesterXXV]

It's cheaper. Did you seriously not consider this?

Re:What's the big deal?

[The Cydonian]

I usually walk past my area's video store during my evening strolls, but I stll subscribe to our local Netflix-lookalike because of its wider selection. I like to watch Latin American and French movies, and the Netflix-lookalike is the only source out here for high-quality DVD's.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey prick why the fuck are YOU so lazy?

why dont you go to the post office for your mail?
why dont you see ALL movies at the theatre?
why dont you fix your car, change your oil?
why dont you hand trim your lawn?
why dont you count time with a sundial?
why dont you type out all of the 1's and 0's instead of using a computer?
why dont you pick your nose instead of finding tissue to blow into?
why dont you just shower after shitting instead of wiping your butt first?
why dont you get rid of your car and walk EVERYWHERE?>
why dont you ....you get the picture

before you start calling other people lazy, how about you look at your own life you prick.

i use netflix because it's easy and fast, and has the BEST selection
I compost EVERYTHING
I recycle EVERYTHING
I reuse EVERYTHING
I take 5min shower 2x/week to save h2o

I think, just maybe YOU are the lazy prick...

Re:What's the big deal?

[crimson_alligator]

I like walking, too. I walk everywhere. However you did not address the quality of the movie selection at the video stores within walking distance, or even reasonable driving distance.

For those of us who are not interested in blockbusters, but prefer old, obscure, or foreign films, most video stores don't cut it. Hence Netflix.

For me, there are very few video stores where it is a pleasure to browse the shelves.

You also did not address late fees. Netflix has no late fees.

You also did not address cost. For people who watch quite a few movies, Netflix is cheaper.

Re:What's the big deal?

[infochuck]

Dude, if going to the video store is your exercise and social interaction for the day/week/month/year, then Netflix isn't for you.

For the rest of us - people who live in the sticks, or get their exercise/social interaction from other places (like, I dunno, the grocery store, and walking to the mailbox to get the Netflix DVDs), or just have crappy video stores, or have enough stuff going on that they don't want to bother with listening to screaming kids and waiting in line at a video store for their third choice because the ten decent movies they had were out - for *real* people, who don't complain if they can't watch 10 movies a week, Netflix is exactly what it's supposed to be, and has a much better selection than any of their competitions; in short, it rocks.

Re:What's the big deal?

[EvilCabbage]

I post my own snail mail, I change my own oil (and car parts where I can), I save water where I can, use as few resources as possible really.

What I probably should have mentioned in my first post, what's so wrong with supporting local business? You fuckers always bitch and moan about outsourcing but seem only too happy to pump money into a business based *anywhere* but your home town.

If you're unhappy with the local selection, ask them to 'fix' the situation, but they can't do that while you're putting money into someone elses pockets, can they?

If you don't support the local guys, how long until they're gone altogether? This isn't just limited to renting movies, but buying books, music, anything. I'm in one of the remote areas of Australia, we're a big fucking desert and we can still find local stores to take care of the community. Maybe you guys just lost that sense of community a while ago...

Re:What's the big deal?

[evilviper]

Blockbuster is notorious for either not carrying titles or carrying shitty, edited versions of the titles they DO carry. See Requiem for a Dream as an example. It's only been recently that Blockbuster has started doing away with non-widescreen DVDs, too.

Forget about being Edited for content, and Pan & Scan DVDs. The thing that pisses me off the most is that whatever they use for DVD encoding totally fucks up the colors beyond recognition. Recording the screen with a camcorder would look FAR better.

I can hardly sit through a single 90 minute Blockbuster DVD because the picture is so painful to even look at.

horrible but expected

[globaljustin]

I really hate that this is happening, but it makes total sense. First, netfix has its customers by the balls. NF is guarateed that automatically billed monthly fee. They are counting on people being ignorant to new, abusive policies like this one that penalizes people for using the service they pay for.

Before I get any further, let me address your defense of NF:

It would only be ethically wrong if they could change their contract and you could *not* leave

first of all, shame on you for defending such abusive business practices. second, this is only ethical if NF sent out a notice saything something to the effect of:

we are changing our policy regarding rentals. we have designed a computer program to identify people who rent excessively (more than x number of rentals a month) and those excessive renters will have their movies shipped later, and be put lower in the que for new releases

Anything less than the above admission from NF in PLAIN LANGUAGE is abuse of their understanding with their clients, and no ammount of counterpoint/cabal.bs can change that fact.

another thing, from TFA:

After collecting consumer opinions about the Web's 40 largest retailers last year, Ann Arbor, Mich., research firm ForeSeeResults rated Netflix as "the cream of the crop in customer satisfaction."

so this is what passes as collecting customer feedback??? this 'foreseeresults' company is probably full of shit...just like most of the people in their profession...an evil, self-sustaining virus of a profession that only circulates bullshit and misperception.

Re:horrible but expected

[paeanblack]

I really hate that this is happening, but it makes total sense. First, netfix has its customers by the balls. NF is guarateed that automatically billed monthly fee. They are counting on people being ignorant to new, abusive policies like this one that penalizes people for using the service they pay for.

Give me a break...am I supposed to believe that the Netflix customer that gets 12 movies per week is some wide-eyed babe struggling to understand this brave new world of technology?

Bullshit.

The only reason the abusers have been copying movies faster than they can watch them is they knew the deal was too good to last. Otherwise, what would be the hurry?

The people getting throttled aren't "ignorant to new, abusive polices"; they have been scrutinizing the Netflix TOS and dreading this day's arrival. They know they got a good ride. Now the ride is over. Deal with it.

Re:horrible but expected

[globaljustin]

I usually wouldn't respond to a comment like yours that is so obviously full of assumptions and misperceptions, but one part caught my attention:

The people getting throttled aren't "ignorant to new, abusive polices"; they have been scrutinizing the Netflix TOS and dreading this day's arrival.

What is wrong with that behavior? It is our right as consumers to hold businesses accountable for what they SAY they are selling us. If they say UNLIMITED then consumers have the right (some say the duty, caveat emptor...) to take full advantage of the company's services within the limits of the agreement. That was the point of my blockquote in my original post...NF is ethically bound to make their policies clear, then consumers can make an informed decision...they did not make their policies clear, therefore they are abusing their customes. It's that simple. Therefore, your defense of NF and criticism of alleged 'pirates' are both rendered invalid by logic.

Re:horrible but expected

[farker haiku]

Give me a break...am I supposed to believe that the Netflix customer that gets 12 movies per week is some wide-eyed babe struggling to understand this brave new world of technology?

Bullshit.

The people getting throttled aren't "ignorant to new, abusive polices"; they have been scrutinizing the Netflix TOS and dreading this day's arrival. They know they got a good ride. Now the ride is over. Deal with it.

Actually, my wife wife and I just had a baby (well, she did all the hard work). My wife was just asking me last night how to add a header to a word document. Not two breaths later she was saying she had gained a reputation at work for being the tech savvy person in the office. When I was done laughing, I told her how to do the header thing.

While you may wonder what this has to do with netflix, my wife watches dvds from netflix all the friggin time. She only works 12 hours a week. The baby sleeps a lot. We don't even have a DVD burner.

Recently, my wife has been complaining that the netflix rentals have been taking longer and longer to arrive. It seems that every three day holiday weekend for the last few months we've had to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie - simply because there wasn't a netflix movie in the house. I'm emailing the link to my wife, and I guarantee we'll be considering alternate vendors.

Re:horrible but expected

[paeanblack]

What is wrong with that behavior? It is our right as consumers to hold businesses accountable for what they SAY they are selling us. If they say UNLIMITED then consumers have the right (some say the duty, caveat emptor...) to take full advantage of the company's services within the limits of the agreement.

You sound like the kind of guy that takes a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet and sues the restaurant because the waitress stops clearing your table as quickly after your twentieth plate.

Get a life.

Re:horrible but expected

[fermion]

I honestly do not see this at all. I have never heard that netfilx refuses to stop subscriptions or has agents who get fired if they let a subscriber go. I have had to deal with companies like these. Give comments in the netflix threads, I do not think that netflix is one of these companies, therefore it can hardly be said that netflix has anyone by the balls by autobilling. One just needs to cancel it.

Additionally, netflix is a cut rate bussiness. The model is based on providing cheap products, which any reasonable person would realize also implies cheap service. Expecting anything more is equivilent to taking spam seriously. Sure the lame and gulliable and desperate respond to the cheap sex ad, and we mercilessly make fun of them.

By the standards of American business, I have never seen anything misleading in their copy. They claim most DVD will arrive within a day, but they have no guarantee for time to check in a CD or get the next one out. A reasonable person would calculate 1 day in, 1 day out, 2 days to check in, 2 days to ship, or perhaps 5 DVD a month, if you are lucky 8, on the $9.99 plan. Sure Netflix could do it faster, and if they do they should be commended, but again, those who expect this are the same who send thier $1000 overseas to a stranger, then expect out sympathy at being duped.

So, perhaps we are complaining that Netflix rents DVD for an average of $2 a piece, which is perhaps a good deal. We might have expected that we could get DVD to rip at $.50 a piece, and are disappointed that can't, but again, I have never seen any copy in which netflix guaranteed a minimum cycle time. And again, if the value is bad, one can cancel. One can hardly complain tha someone has fixed a machine in which on has been getting free product, anymore than one can complain that walmart requires intrusive searches in exchange for cheap prices.

Re:horrible but expected

[globaljustin]

You sound like the kind of guy that takes a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet and sues the restaurant because the waitress stops clearing your table as quickly after your twentieth plate.

heh...more TOTALLY AWESOME assumptions on your part...

just b/c I expect to get what advertising promises doesn't mean i'm a cheap redneck/whitetrash bastard...you must work for the RIAA

Re:horrible but expected

[Ant2]

If Netflix were honest and straighforward with their intentions, they would advertise "up to five DVDs per month for $20.00."

But that wouldn't sound like as good a deal, would it?

Re:horrible but expected

[Stalyn]

Actually it's not that big of a deal. The dvd copiers will just band together in a p2p network or a darknet and just trade. Get together with a few of your friends or coworkers and each rent 5 movies a month. Just collaborate on who rents what, which is easy through word of mouth or the internet(IM,email,forums, etc).

The only people who get punished are the honest ones who want to watch 20 movies a month.

Re:horrible but expected

[Toby The Economist]

> > It would only be ethically wrong if they could change their contract and you
> > could *not* leave

> first of all, shame on you for defending such abusive business practices.

What's shameful about it? what's wrong with changing the service you offer or the price you charge?

I concur that there is an ethical obligation upon NF to be up front about what they're doing and making sure customers are informed. That follows naturally from the mandate that contracts must be well-informed - if NF make changes and do not inform customers, they are in violation of the free market, since their customers are not in fact being offered a free choice since they have been willfully uninformed.

Re:horrible but expected

[turbidostato]

"You sound like the kind of guy that takes a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet"

No. It is obviously not the same case. It is all you can EAT, not all you can take away.

"and sues the restaurant because the waitress stops clearing your table as quickly after your twentieth plate."

No. It is obviously not the same case. It is all you can EAT, not all we will CLEAN.

The most stupid side of it is that most probably you are not a corporate owner, so you are on the recieving end too, still you defend such unethical practices.

If you go to an "all-you-can-eat" restaurant, pay your bill and then discover you are not hungry at all, you assume you lost and that's all. But then, somehow, there must be some protection for the bussiness if a gargantuan fellow arrives and eats the restaurant's week benefit! A bussiness is a bet: you offer a service and bet you'll make more money than the running costs. But then, you can win your bet or you can loose it; you just don't break the laws so you always win. If you don't feel comfortable with a particular bet (like no-limits movies at your home, even when you know that you will loose money if people ends up asking for too many films), then you should make a more conservative bet (like "up to six movies a week"): fraud cannot be an option.

Re:horrible but expected

[ValourX]

You should get HBO On Demand. Movies and -- better -- original series shows any time you want to see them. Sopranos, Rome, Deadwood, Extras, Carnivale, Curb Your Enthusiasm... once you get hooked on these shows you might never go back to network TV with all of its editing and commercials. Forget Netflix.

-Jem

Re:horrible but expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to put things in perspective. I copy everything that comes in via netflix BUT i'm also lazy so things don't always go out the same/next day.

That said, I commute 4 hours a day. 5 days a week I watch at least one movie each day. The main reason I copy them is just to get them back sooner so I won't run out. I'm a heavy user and I really do watch that many movies.

Re:horrible but expected

[Twanfox]

Too true. Words have power, and what word you use will help determine what light that puts on the deal. If you say "Unlimited* DVD rentals at your home", you think 'yay, as many as I want', but that * refers you to some small, fine print that says "Except where you rent over 10 a month, in which case we may not ship anything more to you that month."

However, if, as you say, say the deal reads something like "Rent up to ten (10) movies a month for $20!" Now, does the deal seem quite as good to you? Sure doesn't to me. Oh, I may be getting my money's worth, but honestly, phrasing it this way clearly spells out your limits and puts your mind into a constraint.

Re:horrible but expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break...am I supposed to believe that the Netflix customer that gets 12 movies per week is some wide-eyed babe struggling to understand this brave new world of technology?

Bullshit.

The only reason the abusers have been copying movies faster than they can watch them is they knew the deal was too good to last. Otherwise, what would be the hurry?

There are a variety of scenarios where a household could feasably watch several movies per week and turn them around the next day. Heck, that's why we got NF. Consider this: I get home from my nine to five, but the wife gets home later (retail manager) and that new WWII/scifi movie just got here that I know she's not interested in. So I get a beer and dinner and then watch the movie and wrap it up and slide it into the mail on my way to pick her up at work later that night. Instant 24 hour turn around on one movie. Additionally, she's off on Tuesday and, while I'm at work during the day, decides she wants to do nothing more than sleep late, have breakfast and watch the two chick flicks that came in the mail the day before. She's done and has them in the mail by 2pm when it gets picked up. Even faster turnaround. Who has to rip DVDs for this to happen?

This scenario can, and does, repeat itself several times a month - and for this my account gets throttled? Why did I sign up for NF in the first place? What about a bigger family? Kids? With a tv in every room and DVD players going for less than $50, you could have 2-3 movies a day running in your household. The kids could be watching Harry Potter and mom and dad could be watching OZ season one! And all of it back in the mail the next day!

The point is, if you're thinking "unlimited rentals" and NF is pushing it that way in it's advertising, then don't tell me there is some insidious back-room plan to limit me to a dozen movies a month when I could easily watch eighteen or more. If NF is losing money, then offer me a plan that's truly "unlimited," even if it means paying more money, and let me decide if it's worth it or not. I never agreed to anything that said "three at a time, but no more than twelve or thirteen a month." Don't play games with me - my monthly debit for rentals is just as good as anyone else's.

Re:horrible but expected

[LoRdTAW]

The other night I was traveling over a very desolate bridge here in NYC. Upon reaching the toll booth the clerk was watching a DVD on one of those portable players. She had next to it a stack of Netflix envelopes. I chatted with her a bit and learned on her graveyard shift she would watch up to 4 or 5 movies to pass the time.

Netflix contact info

[loraksus]

Give 'em a ring.
1-888-638-3549

1-800-290-4518
M-F 6AM-7PM, Sa-Su 6AM-2:30PM

Re:Netflix contact info

[superwiz]

Just gave them a ring. Thanks. I asked for $5 refund (quarter of the $20 monthly fee) since I didn't have any movies for one week. If everyone did this, I think they might abandon this policy pretty soon. They don't even have to delay shipping to you... They can just ship from Hawaii to NY and vice versa to make sure it goes slower. I, personally, will call and complain about every movie that is late now. Looks like they just got slashdoted.

Re:Netflix contact info

[GooberToo]

Thank you. They've been screwing us since Mid December. I had assumed this was what they were doing. I just wrote a nasty email yesterday so your timing today is wonderful! I plan on asking for a partial refund.

I've even been considering a partial charge back since the account is paid via credit card. I've been trying to figure out if they is somehow federal fraud since they are blaming the USPO while in breach of contract. Somehow, I don't think it is...but would love to have a club to hang over their head.

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[Anonymous Coward]

go and eat some pig, pig

It's my fault

[fishdan]

I don't know that I'd call it "Screwing Over" but to be fair, but it is deceptive advertizing. I'm not a huge fan of class action lawsuits, but I do trust them to take care of things like this. Everyone should make sure that they get their piece of the settlement, and feel free to organize and sue again until their practices are actually outlined.

I wonder though if my habits screwed everyone...my general netflix usage is DVDShrinking the disc as soon as I get it (my mail gets delivered about 2:00pm) and then walking it down to the Post Office for the 5:00pm outgoing mail collection. I've wondered if this sets off any flags, and I guess it does. I think maybe I'll throw a 24 hour delay into there.

My Bad.

Re:It's my fault

[vp_development]

...My Bad... If you're sharing on p2p, there's no need to apologize to me.

Re:It's my fault

[Reliant-1864]

While we're on the subject of "ulimited" being deceptive, let's also sue ISPs for offering "unlimited" internet access. I wanted to have 800 hours of interent access in January, but because of my ISP's "throttling", I was unable to exceed 744 hours of internet access, a far cry from the "unlimited" they advertised.

And how about downloading? My dial-up was throttled down to 28,8 which meant I couldn't download an unlimited amount of content, my so called unlimited account was throttled to force me to have a limit of less than 9 gigs of traffic per month. How is that unlimited?

It's because of stupid claims like this that you get those idiotic warning lables on products, like a bag of peanutes that says "Peanuts" still needs to have the label "Warning: May contain peanut products", or commercials that say "Professional driver in a closed course" when showing F1 racers, and the classic "Do not try this at home"

If they were to put a numeric limit, such as "3 DVDs per day, with a limit of 20 per month", you'd still have people accusing them of deceptive practice if they couldn't physically reach 20 per month because of time constraints. Must we have ads with more legalese words just so lawsuit phreaks don't run around pointing "Hey! That's not technically correct, it's deceptive advertising".

"Unlimited" means without limit, but if you give a time period of a "month", you have already limited it, therefor, it can never truely be unlimited. If you rented thousands of trucks and completely emptied out their warehouse, it still wouldn't be enough to qualify as "unlimited"

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go, douche bag!

Re:It's my fault

[SkyDude]

You must be too young to remember Steve Rubell. He was the primary owner of the old Studio 54 disco in NYC. He was convicted of tax fraud after bragging on a TV talk show once that "what the IRS doesn't know won't hurt them" or similar wording. He bragged publicly how much money he was skimming from the club and the IRS agents happened to see that interview. He got out of prison after a couple of years only to die from AIDS.

Re:It's my fault

[paeanblack]

Copying Netflix movies is like bringing a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Suing them for throttling is like complaining when the waitress won't clear your plates every two minutes.

In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior. If copying a Netflix movie were "reasonable", you would not need to ship the discs back, since they could make a new copy themselves for less than the cost of the return postage and let you keep the old one instead of bothering with DVDShrink.

Re:It's my fault

[Heem]

"I wanted to have 800 hours of interent access in January, but because of my ISP's "throttling", I was unable to exceed 744 hours of internet access, a far cry from the "unlimited" they advertised."

You're not going to be happy about this then....

This month, I heard they are only going to be allowing you 672 hours.

Re:It's my fault

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I have a reasonably large DVD library that I'd like stored on my hard drive. I can't figure out a good program to transcode to mp4 though. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Re:It's my fault

[anthony_dipierro]

Copying Netflix movies is like bringing a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

No, it'd be like bringing a copying machine to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just screwed yourself.

Signed your own death warrant.

Dug your own grave.

If I were you, Id start investing in a whole lot of lube.

Re:It's my fault

[mmkkbb]

ffmpeg (well, i use ffmpegX and then steal the settings it passes through to the command line util)

Re:It's my fault

[fitten]

I've heard of a number of people doing exactly this. Rapid turn around on DVDs and ripping the Netflix ones to HDD. I would imagine that it may be common enough and easily enough indicated (high volumn of DVDs shipped with rapid turn around) that Netflix feels safe doing that.

Re:It's my fault

[Gyorg_Lavode]

The computer I'm encoding on is a WinXP 64 athlon.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

go look up the tutorials on afterdawn.com

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.autogk.me.uk/ works great

Re:It's my fault

[rbarreira]

Or better yet, it would be neither one thing nor the other, since it's a very bad analogy from the start. The problems caused in any of the three situations don't have anything to do with the other.

Re:It's my fault

[giantsfan89]

>> Copying Netflix movies is like bringing a doggie bag to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

> No, it'd be like bringing a copying machine to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Yes, because everyone loves seeing pictures of almost-decent food!

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just screwed yourself.

Signed your own death warrant.

Dug your own grave.

If I were you, Id start investing in a whole lot of lube.

Why? Is your mom coming to visit again?

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to call bullshit on this one. I order 3 a week, about one every other night, and I get throttled. Yet I paid for "unlimited service". You cannot pretend it is reasonable to call it unlimited while disallowing me from watching a movie whenever I want. They ought to just call it what it is: 10 a month for 20 dollars. I think I wouldn't mind. They didn't do that though, so I just reduced my service to 1 at a time for $9.99. If they continue to throttle me at that level I will quit altogether. /wallet... voted...

Re:It's my fault

[noidentity]

"In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior."

People went through the same thing with dialup lines on internet service providers a while back. They wanted to keep their dialup connection active continuously, which would technically be within "unlimited" usage, but not reasonable usage (especially when the ISP had a separate plan for a dedicated connection).

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a question. Most people would agree that making copies of rented DVD's to a DVD-R constitutes copyright infringement. But what about copying it to rewritable media for a short duration (say, less than a week), then erasing or overwriting it? That would be more akin to time-shifting, like we commonly do with TV broadcasts on DVR or VCR.

For a couple of months last year I was renting at lest 5 discs at a time (from another service, not NetFlix). Because I didn't always have time to watch them the same evening they arrived, I would just watch one or two movies on the TV and make copies of the rest on my HD. Then I would return the whole collection the next day, and while waiting for the turnaround (which was around 4 days) I could burn the other movies to DVD-RW and watch them at my convenience, then delete them from my HD to make room for the next batch.

That way I could watch the movies on my own schedule rather than the uncertain schedule of postal deliveries, and still feel like I was getting my money's worth.

(Posting anonymously because we all know how the **AA feel about cassettes and video tapes.)

Re:It's my fault

[arose]

So?

Re:It's my fault

[iphayd]

"Suing them for throttling is like complaining when the waitress won't clear your plates every two minutes."

No, its more like complaining that you can't get a new plate until 5 minutes after you've finished with the food on the previous plate.

The advertisement states "Unlimited," which should translate into "Everything we can do to make sure that you have three movies checked out to you at any one time." Having secret or public delays is not right, because that is the antithesis of "Unlimited." In otherwords, NetFlix is lying when they say "Unlimited."

The whole idea behind "three movies" was that it takes roughly three days for the old movie to get to Netflix and the new movie to get to you. You should be able to get 28-31 movies/month if you watch a movie a day. However, if you are watching that many movies, I suggest you do something else.

As for those jackasses that are ripping the movies. Why? 1) what you are doing is illegal, not just on DMCA standpoint, but also because you don't even own the media. You are renting the movie. Renting voids any right for time-shifting, media shifting, backup, or any of the other excuses you think you have. 2) If you want the movie that bad, either buy it or put it back in the Queue for when you want to watch it again. There are very few movies I have an interest in buying anymore. I just add them to my queue. If they are good enough to watch again, I return them and add them back into the end of my Queue. When they come up again, I decide if that is what I want to watch. If not, I move it back again.

Re:It's my fault

[msobkow]

Not to defend outright piracy, but I know many people (sometimes myself as well) who rent and return movies within 24 hours. It only takes a couple hours to watch a movie, and it beats the heck out of TV tripe most of the time. Some of them will watch a couple movies a night.

So for them, this "heavy usage pattern" is perfectly normal and not a sign of piracy. Having their shipments "throttled" means they aren't getting the full use of the service they signed up for. It's up to the service provider to adjust capacity and/or pricing tiers to deal with the load, not choke off paid subscriptions that actually use the service as advertised.

Re:It's my fault

[henni16]

IIRC there are ffmpeg binaries for windows, though I doubt that this is the most comfortable way.

I tried DVD ripping using Win a couple of years ago, but the programs were either not stable (on my system) or you had to use a crapload of different programs for different tasks.
Program names I remember: TMPGEnc/Xmpeg, Smartripper, DVD2AVI, VirtualDub , Gordian Knot (IIRC a GUI that integrates some of the most popular programs needed for ripping, converting etc).

Though I must say I would recommend to use a Linux distro on another partition with "dvd::rip" as I found it to be the easiest program to use. Though the windows programs have surely gotten better now than six years ago ;-)

At some time there even was a specialised "dvd::rip"-Linux CD out there so that you could pop the CD into a non-Linux box, reboot and rip.
The idea behind it was that you could use an "unused" (Windows) LAN (for example an office network after work hours), boot each computer with a copy of the CD and then use the "cluster mode" of dvd::rip to speed up the transcoding by distributing the workload across all "your" computers in the LAN.

Does anyone know if there still is such a project somewhere?

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

The concept is called time shifting. In the past it was used to justify recording over the air broadcasts to view at the persons own schedule and was ruled legal. I don't know if it would apply legally to DVDs, but it might if you don't have a way to conveniently view the rented disks. Obvious they wouldn't like it, and would call it "piracy", but doing it exactly as you say you are doing it is at least as ethical as the old OTA TV to VCR angle. It certainly appears to be a 'fair use". You paid for it, just want towatch it when it is convenient. The legalities, no idea, most likely technically not. I'm not aware of any court cases. They already said you couldn't watch DVD on your computer if it didn't have the blessed software or hardware.

Re:It's my fault

[mr_zorg]

I think you're exactly the kind of person they're doing this for...

Re:It's my fault

[NeoSkandranon]

Some people have a fetish for cataloging data it seems. I know people who rip movies even though they have no intention of ever watching them again, it's just a point of penis envy competition to point out they have that many binders of ripped DVDs

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we ripping movies from NetFlix? Because movice AND music have become the biggest rip off out there! Mass procudeced over priced crap. So I, as the consumer (who should be setting the price standards for entertainment, NOT the entertainment industry!) am doing the one thing I can to put the pricing back to the fair level that it belongs. Screw the MPAA and RIAA. Read a thing or two about history and you will learn that artists, musicians and play writes and such, where some of the poorest people alive up until the time of the recording industry and the ability to produce copies of performances. Since then the RIAA and MPAA have come along, and now we have a bunch of suites charging us billions per year for entertainment (half or more of which is just pure crap any ways) so they can keep them selves stocked with whores, coke, and limos. Why should titty spears make millions of dollars for her poor singing talent while I struggle to get by with my awesome and MUCH MORE USEFUL TO THE WORLD programming talents? Fuck all these rich music and movei stars, I SAY WE TAKE THEM ALL DOWN SEVERAL NOTCHES!!

I am tierd of hearing these ass holes complain about us "stealing" there shit. BS! They should all be thankful they get to live the rich lifes styles WE ALL PAID FOR!! If WE ALL decide to stop paying them that much, and start taking some shit back, thats OUR RIGHT as the consumers who set the price!!

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Because maybe, just maybe mind you, they don't want to watch it the very moment they get it. They want to save it for later, say, movie night. This way, they have three fresh new movies every weekend, without having to have the original disc around.

It's time shifting. If you don't like this, then burn your VCR/PVR.

Re:It's my fault

[Jinjuku]

You hit the nail on the head. My wife and I share the middle teir service. If one of us doesn't watch our pick in 2 days, it goes back unwatched. If you want it again, just re-queue.

For the people that are ripping all these movies, lets assume a prolific 20 DVD's a month at an average rate of 3GB a movie, they are filling up a 300GB HD every 5 months, and a 300 GB HD is in the$130 range, it's cheaper to keep the service and re-queue if you want to watch it again, plus all the saved effort of not squandering time ripping in the first place.

I would love to see the netflix rippers get busted.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

As for those jackasses that are ripping the movies. Why?

First reason) I used to copy movies that my wife wanted to watch but she never got around to doing so. Eventually there would be five movies that are sitting around for two months unwatched because she won't let me return them. However, now that you can manage separate queues inside one account it's not needed. I let her have two movies that for all i care sit around for two years to make her happy - and I get to rotate my three around continously.

Second reason) I wanted to learn how to do it on linux. Wrote a nice shell script with a menuing system that rips the movies fairly easily. It offended me that I couldn't legally watch DVD's that I had purchased and/or rented on my linux system and while learning how to watch dvd's i learned how to rip them into mpeg/ogg format for usability purposes.

Re:It's my fault

[vp_development]

There is a perception that there is no legitimate reason for violating the DMCA, and that people who are doing this are selfish. Think what you want, but I have an anonymous friend who spends uncompensated hours a week ACTIVELY opposing copyright law by breaking it. He's not doing it for shits and giggles. He's doing it because he thinks copyright is morally wrong. I'm gonna throw some Thoreau at you:

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?...

As for adopting the ways of the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body.

There are certainly people who are ripping music/movies/software for kicks, their own usage, or to share with friends/family -- but they are not part of my scene. I'm doing it because I do not support the idea of intellectual property. Period. Call me an extremist if you will, I think my ideas are less radical than most of the people demonstrating in the media for this that and the other.

I think that anything man can think of he should share with his fellow man. I should get paid for my service, and my labor, but I completely disapprove of people OWNING ideas. Millions die each year because of patents on medicine. Millions live in poverty because of their lack of access (no pun intended) to productivity enhancing machinery and software. I don't know that anyone dies because they can't hear the latest Kanye West song, but I object tot he fact that the industry deliberately surpresses musicians whose ideas are not "commercial" enough. I'm convinced that powerful media companies war against media they do not/cannot own, and this affects us because we are limited in our choices to whom the powerful media companies are willing to present to us.

And they do this because of the money involved. Only by making their products equally (in)valuable to the products that I want access too, can I be assured of access to everything. I think the system is broken, and the only way it can be repaired is to demonstrate to everyone how actually broken it is. I am doing what I can to bring down the system.

Call me a jackass all you want -- I think of myself as a citizen. This is my civil disobedience. There are others like me, and considering the damage one person can do to copyrights, with our infantile technology now -- imagine how much damage we can do to copyright in 20 years, with 100 recruits. P2P now is about gaining those recruits, but eventually, we WILL crush copyright.

We're here, we share. get used to it.

Re:It's my fault

[ipfwadm]

Uhhh... if it's so much crap, why are you interested in having a copy of your own? Or even renting it to begin with? Your argument is B.S., but then you're a troll so what do I expect.

Re:It's my fault

[rpdillon]

I don't think it is a matter of them injecting extra delay - I think the reasoning basically is that the users who rent a high number of DVDs per month pay the same fee as the users who only rent a few DVDs. So, the renters who rent just a few pay a hgher price for each DVD than those who rent more often. What do those renters get for paying more? Well, one thing Netflix can do is prioritize those people that rent fewer movies. This way, those customers who rent a lot get value from the service because of the flat fee, where customers who rent less often enjoy fast response time.

Honestly, while I usually agree with Slashdot on these kinds of things, I think what Netflix is doing is totally reasonable. Unless Netflix has been screwing people over in a big way that I haven't heard about yet (injecting delays just for the sake of delay, rather then merely prioritizing users who rent fewer DVDs), I'm happy they are trying to optimize their service and deliver value to all their users, not just those that want to rip the DVDs the day they get them and then return them.

Re:It's my fault

[ipfwadm]

I wanted to learn how to do it on linux.

And once you learned, you stopped doing it, right? Oh, wait...

Re:It's my fault

[Rogerborg]

No, it'd be like bringing a copying machine to an art exhibition. :P

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that the deffinition of a "troll" seems to have shifted from someone who sits around posting messages that are off topic or nothing but flaming, to now being throw out every time someone else says something you disagree with. Just because someone has a different viewpoint than you doesn't make them a "troll". But I find this mis-use of the term on /. a lot for some reason... One idiot posts something that is surely "flame bait" but gets a score of 5 and is called "insightful". Someone else posts a similar message and they get called a "troll". Seems there is just no standard around here for throwing around that term...

Oh, and I rent the stuff that isn't crap. Figured I would help ya out since you weren't able to come to that logical conclusion all on your own... Perhaps you think it is okay for the dixie chicks to make more than you do (I am assuming) while they put less back into society than those of us with REAL jobs...

Re:It's my fault

[jZnat]

Troll? Do the mods realise that there are only 744 hours in a normal month? The parent is joking...

Re:It's my fault

[pimpin apollo]

This isn't lawsuit material - they've clearly told you what their policy is, and even if they didn't, I'm not sure that this is a recognizable kind of injury. But legalities aside, they've got to understand that this decreases the value of their service. It's not about fairness or buffet line analogies - it's simple: if I can't use the service to get 8 DVDs a month, then I'm not going to pay as much. And if I want 8 a month, and there's a service that does it (Blockbuster ?) then guess who's getting my money.

I've thought Netflix was overpriced for a long time. Certainly their services is better than most others, but it's not worth the premium they charge for it. This only decreases the value even more, particularly if you're paying that premium for 1) quick delivery, 2) high throughput, 3) high likelihood of getting a new release.

Netflix needs to be very careful they understand their customers; I'm underwhelmed with the evidence that they do and if the movie studios can get over their control addiction, they might actually make some money doing what netflix does without the massive postal costs.

Re:It's my fault

[cbensinger]

I've got absolutely no problem with people who rent less movies than me getting a higher priority when it comes to getting a particular movie... That's fine... But *IF* they are shipping me movies a day (or more) later than somebody else; then yeah I have a problem with that... There are weeks when I turn around movies pretty quickly and expect to get something back in a timely manner - in general it seems to balance out as there are weeks when the same three movies sit here for the entire week...

It does seem that if I'm turning around movies pretty quickly that it often takes an extra 1-2 days for Netflix to "receive my movies back" and they don't seem to ship out the same day they've received them back; whereas when I'm sitting on them for several days at a time they seem to be received the day after I mail them back and a new movie goes out same day....

Re:It's my fault

[jessecurry]

try blockbuster's service. I believe that it's 14.99/month and you can always have one movie out or $24.99/month to have two out at a time. I guess actually having to go to the store isn't as convenient, but there is no way that they can throttle you. Hell if you live close enough you could probably get 10 movies a day.

Re:It's my fault

[anthony_dipierro]

That too!

Re:It's my fault

[anthony_dipierro]

Touche, however that was really my point :). Along the lines of the other poster, it'd be like bringing a copying machine to a library and making copies of all the books. Which is to say, it'd be illegal (at least civilly, but maybe not criminally), and according to many people it'd be morally wrong, but according to others (including myself) not at all morally wrong.

Re:It's my fault

[anthony_dipierro]

The advertisement states "Unlimited," which should translate into "Everything we can do to make sure that you have three movies checked out to you at any one time." Having secret or public delays is not right, because that is the antithesis of "Unlimited." In otherwords, NetFlix is lying when they say "Unlimited."

It's unclear to me, from reading the article, whether or not they're actually lying. If all they're doing is giving priority, for the same movie, to someone who uses the service less, I think that's within their right (even if it's called "unlimited"). IOW, if you use the service excessively, so they give you movies further down on your list which are in lower demand (and if you don't have any low demand movies on your list and they don't have enough of the high demand ones to go around then you wait), I think that's OK.

As for those jackasses that are ripping the movies. Why?

Personally I do it for research purposes. For instance, so that I can refer to the movie if I need to look something up, and so that I can cut out clips to use on websites under the doctrine of fair use. I'd also like to run a program over my collection so that I can search in the subtitles of my movie collection for certain phrases.

1) what you are doing is illegal, not just on DMCA standpoint, but also because you don't even own the media. You are renting the movie. Renting voids any right for time-shifting, media shifting, backup, or any of the other excuses you think you have.

The DMCA specifically allows fair use, and even to the extent I exceed fair use I doubt I would be found criminally liable since I am not copying for commercial purposes.

If you want the movie that bad, either buy it or put it back in the Queue for when you want to watch it again.

We'll see what happens in the Google Print copyright case, since they're doing essentially the same thing as I am (except they're doing it for commercial purposes). If the judge in that case tells Google that they have to buy the books in order to scan them in, then I guess I'll reevaluate whether or not what I'm doing is legal.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Xavier Naidoo who was smart enough to admit using illegal drugs during an interview. The police picked him up right away. Bragging about illegal acts on a non-anonymous public information channel is equivalent to a confession.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

"A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time." -Moderator guidelines

Re:It's my fault

[KDR_11k]

I don't believe in the concept of property at all. I hope you don't mind if I just go into your house and borrow a few things you don't need?

You are aware that the medicine you talk of falls under patent law and that copyright is never about anything that's required for survival? If it's medicine you object to then copy those medicines and sell your knock-offs on the street, don't try to make creativity worthless.

Without copyright there would be no real reason to write a book, a song or a program for anything other than personal use. There'd be absolutely no reason to make movies or games. Since inventing automatically puts you at a disadvantage (R&D costs money, copying doesn't) you'd see creators go out of business while the copycats get fat. And since big business is better at copying than everyone else you'd just see small business crushed while the big megacorps continue to grow. I agree that this has been abused but totally abolishing it would be comparable to deciding that you don't want politicians to govern you and fighting for anarchy instead.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Philosophy 101 assignment for today is to read about Kant's "Categorical Imperative."

Creating movies, even indy flicks, isn't free. So you're supposed to pay to watch them. If you don't, and everybody else follows your example, there will be nothing to watch. Sorry, but that's the way it is. You just haven't realized it yet.

Re:It's my fault

[TheSpoom]

One of the most interesting comments I've read on Slashdot in quite a while. Thanks for posting that.

I found an interesting short story a while ago about how copyright will eventually strangle creativity: it's called Melancholy Elephants, and it's an interesting read if you haven't seen it before.

Re:It's my fault

[Red Alastor]

To be able to get what I want at a good price, I went with Peeflix instead. The way it works is that instead of of having of central warehouse with movies, people just trade between them. When someone wants a movie you have, you pay for the stamp and mail the DVD. When you do so, you get points (they call them peerbux) which you can trade for another movie someone else have. They charge you $0.99 per movie you order. The $0.99 is for the service of connecting people but also for the insurance. If you get a defective disc, you get your points back to get another one.

Each movie takes a bit longer to get to you than with Netflix so you are better to buy a few prewatched DVDs and earn more peerbux than movies you can watch at a time so it cost a bit more to start but once it's started it a lot cheaper ($0.99 + stamp / movie).

Beside it's nice that when you don't want to watch lots of movies, you can just stop returning those you have until you are free to watch them.

And I'm sure that it annoys the MPAA which doesn't make money on it since First Sale enable us to trade our physical goods without restriction once they are first bought :)

Re:It's my fault

[John Harrison]

It is not just about priority. It is about delays as well. Every disc in my queue is listed as available now since they are all relatively obscure. Yet I now have about a 10 day turnaround from the time I mail a movie in to the time I get the next one. This despite the fact that the return center is less than 10 miles from my house. Our first few movies had a 3 day turnaround. I would at least like to be able to return a movie Monday morning and have a new one at my house by Friday, but that no longer happens.

Re:It's my fault

[vp_development]

...Without copyright there would be no real reason to write a book, a song or a program for anything other than personal use...

There would be no monetary reason. But as an occasional singer of songs, I can tell you I get alot of joy out of entertaining. And at least for me, I get a huge rush when I here/see someone singing a song I wrote -- it could not happen enough for me! There is art in performance.

...totally abolishing it would be comparable to deciding that you don't want politicians to govern you and fighting for anarchy instead...

Ugh, I actually wept out of despair when I read this. Not wanting politicians to govern you is not the same as wanting anarchy. I'd be in favor of government in which I had a voice. but there is no such thing as a community of 280 Million people. I'm not naive enough to not understand that "evil" can organize into large enough numbers that "good" has to similarly organize -- I even support a federal government that has some power -- but when the government can take your house to put up a shopping mall and arrest you for not showing your papers to a government official on demand...things have gone too far. Resistance to that sort of government does not mean that you're seeking anarchy.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

With peanut products, they usually only note on the packet "May contain traces of nuts". This is because nuts and peanuts are not the same (peanuts are legumes), and people who are allergic to peanuts are not necessarily allergic to nuts (and vice versa).

So by having the warning that it may contain traces of nuts, people allergic to nuts know not to have the peanuts.

There's no stupidity there at all - just ignorance of people who believe that peanuts and nuts are the same, and that people who allergic to one would be allergic to the other as well.

I dare you to find a product label which actually says that "it contains traces of peanuts" or equivalent for a product which is obviously peanut-based. Next time, please read a little more carefully :)

Re:It's my fault

[raoul666]

While we're on the subject of "ulimited" being deceptive, let's also sue ISPs for offering "unlimited" internet access. I wanted to have 800 hours of interent access in January, but because of my ISP's "throttling", I was unable to exceed 744 hours of internet access, a far cry from the "unlimited" they advertised.

So you wanted the ISP to add 2 more days to the month of January? I knew they were getting a little too powerful, but that's just ridiculous.

Re:It's my fault

[Reliant-1864]

I stand corrected on that aspect, I didn't know about the difference between nuts and peanuts, but I really did see a warning for "may contain peanuts" and not "nut". I was cracking up on the word "may", as well as having to say "peanut" twice. Why not just come out and have the label say "Yes, this bag of peanuts does contain peanuts, don't make me tell you again"

Re:It's my fault

[Romancer]

Perfect logic.

I just sent a letter to them stating as much:

I pay for the 5 at a time plan, as such I would expect on avarage to get more movier per month than a person with the same viewing habits as myself but on a 3 at a time plan who is paying less. I heard that you are throttling down sending me my selections because I watch a lot of movies. I thought That's what I was paying the extra money for, to watch more movies. If you are "throttling" down shipping my movies, I am not getting what I paid for. I had the 3 at a time plan and wanted to watch more movies per month, I upgraded to the 5 at a time plan to do so. I have been enjoying this plan. Now I hear that you want to restrict the amount of movies I watch by delaying my shipments. Any delay that is not caused by circumstances beyond your control is a restriction on the "unlimited" part of the plan that I pay for. Just because I watch more movies than another customer is not justification, especially if I pay you more for the service. Are you throttling my account? If so please stop. I don't pay you more a month to get throttled down because of it.

Re:It's my fault

[jarod670]

I was DVDshrinking everything else as well, but I was at least waiting until the next day to throw them back in the mail. I would like to know what judgement they use in deciding whose movies they ship out right away and those whom they ship the next day. I get 8 at a time and a friend of mine gets 5 at a time, his movies have been shipping immediately after they recieve the last batch. Most the time mine are one to two days later. If I sit down with a pen and paper I can technically recieve more movies per week if I cut back to 5 at a time. You would think Netflix would like the extra couple bucks a month they are getting from me for 8 at a time and keep me happy. Also when new movie release dates are announced I move them to the top of my queue and "hope" I will be lucky enough to get a copy of it right around the time it comes out. I haven't had a new release the week it is released in months, I have to wait at least 6 weeks for it. I am not sure what business model Neflix is looking at, but they are about to lose me as a customer altogether.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the dark ages (phoneline + modem) my ISP contacted me that if I was connected for more than 300 hours a month I would have to buy a commercial account, despite the fact that I had "unlimited" usage.

Re:It's my fault

[Baddas]

Actually it's more like recording movies on HBO with your VCR.

Which was, incidentally, ruled entirely legal for personal use.

Re:It's my fault

[Tim C]

It's time shifting. If you don't like this, then burn your VCR/PVR.

You are allowed to time shift broadcasts, in order to watch them at a time that's more convenient. You are not allowed to time shift rentals, other than by renting them or keeping them until you actually want to watch them.

Given that services like Netflix don't charge late fees and let you keep the disc for as long as you want (as long as you're a subscriber), there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for time shifting them.

Re:It's my fault

[JesseMcDonald]

There would be no monetary reason. But as an occasional singer of songs, I can tell you I get alot of joy out of entertaining. And at least for me, I get a huge rush when I here/see someone singing a song I wrote -- it could not happen enough for me! There is art in performance.

I think there would be a monetary incentive to create, even on a copyright-free society. If I want to read a book, and it doesn't already exist, then I need someone to write it for me. If I'm lucky, I'm not the only one interested in such a book. Assuming that individuals with the time and expertise to write such a book are relatively rare (which seems to be the case), I would cooperate with the other interested individuals to sponsor the creation of the book. It's not like the current media-distribution model is the only one around. It certainly isn't the most efficient model, and it carries a lot of inherent risk for authors in that they can't be sure anyone's interested in actually buying copies of the book once it's written. A system based on sponsorship would eliminate those risks, more efficiently direct media creation according to the wishes of media consumers, and be completely independent of copyrights. Furthermore, it would be suitable for not just books, but also music, inventions, low- or mid-budget movies, etc. Sponsorship organizations, combined with privately-funded competitions for original art, would be an effective replacement for the current copyright and patent systems.

Re:It's my fault

[Dirtside]

No, its more like complaining that you can't get a new plate until 5 minutes after you've finished with the food on the previous plate.

Slashdot: Home of stupid analogies.

Netflix doesn't say, "Okay, iphayd rents too much -- start delaying his DVDs by 24 hours." What they're saying is, "Okay, iphayd rents too much -- when he's due to be shipped a popular DVD at the same time as other people, put him near the bottom of the list, and put the people who don't rent as many discs near the top." They have to order the priority list one way or another, when the demand exceeds the supply for a particular DVD; why not this way? Should the heavy renters have HIGHER priority?

If you want to stick with the buffet analogy: You're the guy who races through the buffet line, gobbles everything down, and goes back for more. Constantly. Non-stop. The waitress comes along and says that you need to let these other people, who eat at a more normal speed, go through the buffet first. You now bitch because even though you can still eat as much as you want, you can't do it quite as fast. Of course, you're not the only customer, you're paying the same as everyone else, and you're making it *harder* for everyone else to get their turn at the buffet line.

It makes sense from a business standpoint -- you're only paying them a fixed amount per month, and there's a threshold where once you receive more than a certain number of DVDs per month, it's now costing Netflix more money to provide you with the service than they're getting from you.

They're of course aware that some people will do this; they make money because most of their customers don't do this. And the set of people who watch DVDs fast enough to break that threshold consists almost entirely of people who rip the DVDs and mail them back the same (or next) day, then watch them at their leisure. Considering this is a violation of numerous copyright laws (regardless of whether you think those laws are justified), you can hardly be mad at Netflix for wanting to make things a little easier on their more casual customers -- the ones off whom they are actually making money.

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen some great warning labels, one of the best was on an asthma inhaler that contained a mixture or norepinephrine and something else "Warning this medication has been associated with sudden death. If sudden death occurs, please contact physician immediately." Nice couple of lines tucked in between some warnings about heart attack, stroke, excessive blood pressure... Those were not important enough to contact your physician immediately though. They changed the label back in the 80's to fix this, but I kept that bottle around for awhile for a laugh.

Re:It's my fault

[size1one]

In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior. If copying a Netflix movie were "reasonable", you would not need to ship the discs back, since they could make a new copy themselves for less than the cost of the return postage and let you keep the old one instead of bothering with DVDShrink. [ Reply to This ]

Then that should be listed in the advertisement. I can do whatever i want with the movies as long as i don't damage them. If all i wanted to do was immediatly put them in the sleeves and mail them back, it would be perfectly within my rights to do so. Even if we chose to do something illegal it does not give netflix the right to "throttle" us, they are neither a judge or a jury.

We were told unlimited movies per month and we're not getting it.

Re:It's my fault

[dabraun]

I think that anything man can think of he should share with his fellow man. I should get paid for my service, and my labor, but I completely disapprove of people OWNING ideas.

So if he can't own his ideas and therefore sell them or the right to use them - who exactly is going to 'pay him for his labor'? Who determines how much he deserves for his labor? Shouldn't how much he gets for his labor be a function of how much / how many people WANT the results of his labor? Should one get paid the same amount for resaerching the behavior of magic the gathering players as one gets paid for curing aids? Capitalism is a system of determining value based on how much other people value what you did ... it has it's problems, but your post provides absolutely no alternative system ... what, is some governing body going to determine what is worth paying for and what is not and then take money from the populace to make these payments? We already do this to some extent (government grants for all types of things) and the value of that may or may not be good - but as an absolute system for creating all intellectual property - there are many many things of value to many people that would never have been created if not for the fact that our government enforecs the validity of intellectual property - often to a fault, but some form of ownership of your creations and ideas is vital to the functioniong of an intellectual and creative society.

Re:It's my fault

[KDR_11k]

The problem with sponsorship is that it destroys the darwinism inherent in a semi-free market. A bad author will still receive the same money to write books and even though noone might want the result (because it's just bad) the author got his money. Sure, you can decide from there on to throttle sponsorship for those who are perceived as bad but that would mean establishing arbitrary criteria as to what is good. So you'd enforce a formulaic approach to art. It's one of the most criticised aspects of total communism, it does not put pressure on producers to improve or keep the quality of their output. Capitalism isn't perfect either but usually compromise approaches are the most effective ones (a totally unregulated market would turn into a monopoly, for example). And with sponsored authors you'd have to have a system in place that determines who can get funding in first place because otherwise you'll see too many people signing up, writing crappy books to keep the money flowing and causing expenses that you can never possibly cover through taxes (and even less through voluntary donations).

Re:It's my fault

[shmlco]

I think it's great that you've found your own private form of civil disobedience. And one from which you can personally benefit at the same time. How... convenient.

Re:It's my fault

[JesseMcDonald]

That would be why I suggested a combination of sponsorship (for reputable authors, and cases where people know exactly what they want) and prizes (for new authors or experimental ideas). Furthermore, I was most definately not endorsing government sponsorship. How could They possibly know what kinds of things people want to read? That would be a communistic approach, and I agree that it would fail. The system I was describing was more like the one I described in an earlier post:

The organization would probably set the scope of the content -- the general topic, audience, medium, etc. -- and then hire promising authors, artists, and/or inventors willing to work within those limits. Some groups would, of course, be more free-form than others, but ultimately the parameters of the group would be dictated by its paying members. Members would have numerous advantages over non-members, including contact with the patronees, first-run editions of the resulting works, shareholder rights in the group's decisions, discounted merchandise, etc. The membership fees would fund the production of new stories, movies, and/or inventions.

One addition that I would make to that system would be competitions in which artists could submit their work in exchange for a chance at a monetary prize, as well as recognition, training, and better chances at future employment / sponsorship. That was something I envisioned when I wrote the above text, but neglected to include in the comment.

Given that the ones in control of the selection of rewarded authors would be the paying public (just as is the case today), I do not believe that there would be any additional bias toward formulaic work that is not present in the current system. As for "bad" (unpopular) artists, you wouldn't just hire any random applicant for a long-term position. New artists would compete for the prizes (at their own risk, as with the current system), and then may be hired later on the basis of their past work. In that way it would be no different than, for example, choosing a new employee on the basis of his/her grades in college.

One last point: free markets only turn into monopolies when monopolies are the most efficient form of organization for the market (i.e. natural monopolies). Natural monopolies follow the same rules as any other free-market organization, and they are still subject to competition should they fail to remain the most efficient provider. Only enforced monopolies (i.e. government monopolies) can avoid competition without remaining efficient. Rather than explaining the reasons for this here, I will simply refer you to this excellent economic analysis by Murray N. Rothbard.

Re:It's my fault

[Infe]

>I think that anything man can think of he should share with his fellow man.
>I should get paid for my service, and my labor, but I completely disapprove
>of people OWNING ideas.

Farnsworth: "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in... get the hell off my property!"
Free Waterfall Junior: "You can't OWN property, man."
Farnsworth: "I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie."

Re:It's my fault

[KDR_11k]

Your system still has very big problems, if the popular vote determines what you get then you get only popular stuff. That'd make niche interests even worse to handle because you might not be able to get enough funding for some genres. Would be even worse with more expensive to make media like movies or videogames. And how many people would really donate for these funds instead of just downloading a copy via the internet or grabbing it on a "500 latest books" CD some guy at the street corner is selling for two bucks a piece? Would that really be enough to sustain a sizeable media industry?

The cheaper information becomes the less profitable it is to supply it. Many media are ad sustained now because the information can't be sold with a profit. You often see people complaining about "bought" reviewers that are afraid of pointing out problems because they might not get further support from the big company that makes the product. Now add a system where those reviewers are completely depending on money from either their foundation or the advertisers, both of which might have a beef with some statements being made.

Overall reducing the value of information to nil means degrading the quality of the information because supplying independent information is no longer self sustaining, you have to either give up your independence or supply information only as a hobby. While opensource may be a good example of that working the model cannot be applied to everything. Especially with entertainment media a consistent vision is hard to create with a group of volunteers and there seems to be a tendency for opensource groups to just copy what the corporations do intead of being innovative.

I just don't see it working well, even the current model, despite its flaws, produces better results.

__

Monopolies have a much wider range of actions to sweep smaller businesses off their feet (dumping, for example), it's not that hard to stay in that position after you've taken it. Hell, look at the browser market, IE is still the most prevalent browser despite being pretty much shit on a stick. Oligopolies are very dangerous as well, multiple large companies that work together instead of really competing (an unregulated market wouldn't stop them from doing that).

Re:It's my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't seem like "bragging" would be the equivilent of confession. It seems like there would still have to be some level of proof given that one could claim that one was lying about said illicit drug use, tax evasion or whatnot. It is not after all sworn testimony, and my understanding is that lying isn't illegal unless it is slanderous or libelous. (I highly doubt you can slander yourself.)

More likely what would happen is after the law enforcement official hears the interview an investigation is initiated finding ample evidence of wrongdoing to actually convict the person. I'd even guess that the interview would be enough evidence to obtain a search warrant.

Just speculation.

Re:It's my fault

[JesseMcDonald]

Monopolies have a much wider range of actions to sweep smaller businesses off their feet (dumping, for example), it's not that hard to stay in that position after you've taken it. Hell, look at the browser market, IE is still the most prevalent browser despite being pretty much shit on a stick. Oligopolies are very dangerous as well, multiple large companies that work together instead of really competing (an unregulated market wouldn't stop them from doing that).

Did you even read the analysis of "monopoly" economics? It covered both of the issues you mentioned. Dumping, for example, is itself self-defeating. A smart competitor would merely buy up the below-cost product, wait until the monopoly can no longer sustain the losses, and then sell back the monopoly's products between the dumping price and the new price at a profit. Even bundling works out to the favor of the competitors; take, for example, the "give away the razors, sell the blades" mentality. A smart competitor would manufacture compatible blades, undercutting the brand-name on price, which they could do since they're not trying to support the below-cost razors as well. As for IE, the primary problem there is ignorance, not bundling. If people knew of its faults, they would be willing to look for something better -- unless its faults aren't bad enough to be worth getting something better.

Oligopolies tend to break down naturally, either through mergers or through competition, whichever is more efficient. An efficient oligopoly is effectively the same as a natural monopoly, and they will eventually merge to reduce operating costs, increasing their efficiency. On the other hand, an inefficient oligopoly will break down into competition as the more efficient members tire of propping up the less efficient ones.

Re:It's my fault

[StikyPad]

No, it's more like when the buffet is all out of real potatoes, so they give you that instant crap. Then instead of telling you, they just let you eat it. The even have a measurement for it: RPPC, or Real Potatoes* Per Customer. As long as their ratio is below .25, they turn a healthy profit.

Sweet potatoes are not covered under this measurement, as they are really yams, and not potatoes at all. Additionally, studies have shown that the number of yams any one person can eat without getting sick is less than two, therefore yams are a self-limiting consumable.

Re:It's my fault

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'd cancel my subscription if I were you. Maybe re-subscribe under a different name and credit card type if you want it.

The trouble with any of these algorithms is if there's a bug they screw the typical customer.

What has customer service said about it?

Re:It's my fault

[plague3106]

Copying a netflix movie and netflix implementing a throttling are not necessarly related. It could be that someone watches a movie the day they get it, and return it immediately.

Likely, they do this because the more movies they watch on $20 / month, the more value they are getting from Netflix. With the changes though, its possible that it becomes more expensive to rent from Netflix than your local video retailer.

I always laugh at the commercial that says 'keep them as long as you want.' Of course they want you to do that, if you only rent 2 movies a month, thats $10 per movie..

Other Options?

[JabberWokky]

Which does bring up a good question... I was planning on getting a NetFlix account in the next couple days (actually, my finace and I decided to a couple days ago and just haven't gotten around to it yet). Is there a good multi-vendor review and comparison? Something that lists turn around, number of discs you can get at once and what is in the library (I'd like TV show discs)? Everybody I know just uses NetFlix, so I have no experience with anything else. If it turns out that NetFlix is the best, that's fine... but I'd like to read a comparison review of other options.

--
Evan

Re:Other Options?

[LordNimon]

I don't think you're going to get an unbiased review, but I believe the consensus is that Netflix is better than Blockbuster, assuming the throttling thing doesn't bother you. It doesn't bother me, because I don't return movies the day after I receive them, so I've never been throttled.

Honestly, the best way is to just try it. Both have free trial periods, so just take advantage of that.

Re:Other Options?

[The Mad Debugger]

Acutally, Consumer Reports recently did a test, published in their print version, and I believe they picked Netflix, but noted occasional delays. They're about as unbiased as you can get, and worth every penny. Seriously, go subscribe now. They accept no advertising or freebies of any kind, which helps them remain impartial.

few days

[wwmedia]

hmm why wait few days, when ur nearest Usenet outlet delivers in few hours? beat that netflix

Re:few days

[Ilex]

Official DVD rental has a larger selection especially when it comes to older titles. Usenet has the faster delivery but you have to take what's available at the time, this tends to be the higher demand new releases, which are harder to get on the legitimate rental platform. They both cost about the same @ $12-20 per month depending on the subscription plan.

Many (techi) people choose to subscribe to both instead of getting a premium rate cable / satellite service.

Now if only there was a totally legitimate way to download non DRM'd DVD's / TV for say $30-40 per month instead of having to send the digital bits and bytes physically through the post. I guess the media companies see my idea as too sensible to work.

Re:few days

[wwmedia]

I guess the media companies see my idea as too sensible to work.
ill have to agree with you, alot of these media companies dont have common sense to realise the fortunes they can make by utilising new technologies

Old News (On Slashdot in 2003!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System - "Netflix uses the number of movies you have previously rented to determine your priority in getting movies. The more movies you rented during your last billing cycle, the less chance you have of receiving a movie versus an individual who has rented fewer movies. This is why new users have great success getting their movies and older or heavy users have a difficult time getting some movies."

Re:Old News (On Slashdot in 2003!)

[millennial]

Mod parent up. We've known about this for quite some time.

Check the DATE

[Anonymous Coward]

That says January *2005* (hint: it is 2006 right now).

And yep that is true, this story is in fact over a year old...

Reported as lame, and old news.

Re:Check the DATE

[loraksus]

And yet, netflix continues to use "unlimited" in their advertising. Link.
I guess that spyware companies aren't the only ones who hide things in their ToS or EUIA.

In fairness to Netflix

[Wansu]

Perhaps they just have too many customers.
 

Slashdot: Yesterday's CNN today.

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff is old news. Just like the last 5 Slashdot stories that were just copied off CNN. WTF?

I don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this guy needs to get throttled if he is watching Golden Boy at his age...

Their Advertising is the problem

[Crashmarik]

Netflix still advertises as an unlimited service. They make no attempt to inform the subscriber that they are throttling them. This is at the very least a deceptive practice.

Now when you couple the throttling practice with the terms of the lawsuit settlement, the subscriber gets a bump in service level for one month theres a real problem. What prevents them from just further adjusting their shipping algorithym so there is no actual bump ??

Say what you want the problem is netflix not informing their customers about what they are actually buying.

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[GooberToo]

It's called fraud! Period.

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[the eric conspiracy]

Say what you want the problem is netflix not informing their customers about what they are actually buying.

If you take the time to read the FAQs and terms of use on the web site they acutally do tell you about their throttling practices.

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[Danse]

If you take the time to read the FAQs and terms of use on the web site they acutally do tell you about their throttling practices.

Yeah, that's really wonderful of them.

"Join Netflix and get unlimited* rentals for just $17.99 a month!"

*Rentals not really unlimited. In fact it's stupid to even use that word. We're mostly just talking out our asses here.

Even something along those lines would be a lot better. It's deceptive advertising, plain and simple.

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[evilviper]

Netflix still advertises as an unlimited service.

Show me where they do that. I've watched their commercials and other ads very closely since I first heard about the class-action lawsuit, and I noticed that they completely removed the "unlimited rentals" mention in all their ads. I just checked Netflix.com as well, and no mention of unlimited rentals there either.

Maybe there's a vestage here and there, but they really aren't advertising unlimited rentals anymore, as you claim.

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[Crashmarik]

I just got a netflix flyer in my mail that says unlimited rentals. Even if that werent the case you are talking about a company that wen't to great lengths to create public impression that they are an unlimited service. If they have not gone to similar lengths to disabuse the public of that impression and they still do not explicitly notify their customers of the policy, then the effect is exactly the same. This is another reason the class settlement shafts the customers.

Imagine if you went for a vacation at the salton sea because your travel agent had shown you literature from the 70's. When you got there and found out it was toxic poo, you might not be happy to hear the locals tell you that they stopped advertising it in the 80's,

Re:Their Advertising is the problem

[evilviper]

You seem to put a lot more burden on Netflix than other companies. When a phone company advertises low rates, then raise them a few months later, they don't go out and buy thousands of ads to notify you that their rates when up. It makes no sense.

If your travel agent gave you a false flyer, they would be at-fault, not the locals who made them 30 years ago.

Broken DVDs per customer (dirty but point across)

[layer3switch]

Once in a while break the DVDs and tell them it was "Postal Service" fault if Netflix lies to you that your DVD is delayed because of "Postal Service."

That oughta fuckup that fairness algorithm.

If it's the cost, just increase the subscription fee. If it's the piracy, just limit the DVD rental amount per month. But don't fucking lie to your customers like everyone is a cheap ass thief who's out to get everyone in Hollywood.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

it could happen

[MegaFur]

Consider: the average American supposedly watches about that much TV a day, right? Now, suppose a person doesn't have cable or sattelite but still wants to consume that level of boob tube watching. Well there's those DVDs.

Re:it could happen

[Loconut1389]

I work from home, about 12 hours a day. Our TV is almost constantly on in the background with something. We have a 5 disc plan and send back an average of 4 discs a week. We live in Ames and our Movies are received the next morning by 10:00a in Des Moines and we -usually- receive the next set the next day. Our mail has taken to getting shredded and broken lately, but netflix physically sends them and we can indeed verify mail problems- theyre not just late, they're cracked, or the envelope is missing, etc.

Anyway, our average hold time on a disc is about 24 hours. Due to movie release tuesdays, sometimes if you send something back friday, they get it saturday and rather than send a movie from lower in your queue, they'll wait and send the new movie on monday which we get tuesday. We like this behavior. Otherwise, 99% of the time, we do get a next-day service and we watch a-lot.

As mentioned our tv is on, watching tv or movies upwards of 12 hours (granted we're not paying 100% attention). Half of our tv-on-time is movies, and about a 1/3 of that is from our own collection of shows and what not we've bought.

But I'd consider us a heavy renter, but we're not seeing this throttling phemenon. Perhaps it applies less as you go up in plans- eg if you're going through 70% of your perceived monthly maximum (1 day turnarounds)- which moves higher as you're allowed to check out more movies at a time.

While this practice is probably true to a degree, this article is a bit of FUD seems like. Now you shouldn't have to buy a higher package to get better service if they're billed as the same 1-day turnaround. Perhaps they just need to say the 3 disc plan is only guaranteeing 2 or 3 day turnaround (if you get better than that, fine) and let people naturally percolate into better paid accounts and the people that dont care when the movies get there will just stick around. IMHO, tiered service is completely ethical and in line with supply and demand- as long as it's marketed accurately, which the current scheme really isnt.

Single disc rental

[maximthemagnificent]

Anybody know how throttling is affected by mutliple people in the same house splitting their account? I'm on 1 disc at a time, while my wife is on 2. I send back very quickly, whereas she's a little slower. Maxim

The problem with monthly fees

[Kris_J]

Whenever you have an ongoing monthly subscription to something the provider has no incentive to do anything fast, or at all. Microsoft has demonstrated this, as has Blizzard, now its Netflix's turn. When I trialed a similar system in Australia I worked out that postal delays and scratched discs were like free money to the company. (Meanwhile, the selection was seriously crap.) These days I buy ex-rental DVDs from a friend at work who also owns an old-school video rental place.

Not a problem...

[kin242]

as long as they do not advertise it as an unlimited rental service. That would be false advertising.

Re:Not a problem...

[layer3switch]

...
Cost
Our most popular plan, 3 at-a-time (Unlimited), is $17.99 plus any applicable tax per month. Click here to learn about other available plans. There are no additional charges. There are no late fees or due dates -- even shipping is free both ways! ...

http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks

New Customer

[Richard Allen]

I was thinking of signing up with Netflix, but this business decision changed by mind. I give my business to companies who appreciate their loyal customers. Obviously Netflix isn't one of them.

Who cares?

[ScentCone]

Their profits or their customers?

Who cares? It's their business. You surely don't think that they casually make decisions like this. Some guy that goes through a dozen movies a week (really, just stop for a second and actually think about that, ok?) is not their typical customer, and is probably just ripping movies as fast as he can blow the dust out of his DVD burner rack.

But it doesn't matter, because if there's really a large market for people who must have more than one DVD a day for $10 a month, somebody will address that market. But NetFlix, clearly the biggest player in that market, has already realized that they can't make it worth being in that business with people like that unless they do it somewhat less aggressively. Otherwise, they have to raise their prices on everyone, and the people who watch three or six movies a month then get to subsidize the uber-couch-potatos and the pirates.

Re:Who cares?

[turbidostato]

"But NetFlix, clearly the biggest player in that market, has already realized that they can't make it worth being in that business with people like that"

So, instead of changing their advertisements (something, you know, like "up to six movies a week to your home"), they LAY.

And still, somehow, you find this reasonably.

Re:Who cares?

[ScentCone]

Actually, I don't think they make any particular claims about exactly how fast a particular movie will get to you, do they? Regardless, they're just like any business - they're trying to react to a new development without rocking the boat for their VAST majority of users who don't have time to watch two movies, every day, all month long.

I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Tranvisor]

I signed up like 2.5 months ago because I didn't feel like buying DVD sets of TV series as much. Put a bunch of Alias, Babylon 5, and World Poker Tour DVD seasons in my queue.

I live in northeast ohio and the closest center is about an hour away in Cleveland, so I figured my responce time would be pretty good. And it was, at least for the first 1.5 months. I'd get 3 DVD's in the mail, I'd rip them to my HD for encoding and backup (to watch later), and send them out the next day. The day after I sent them Netflix would confirm that they had them and send out the next ones. Everything in my queue had the "Now" availablity and I always got my top 3. Every return envelope was also addressed to PO Box in Cleveland (their closest dist. center).

After about a month or so of this cycle there 'throttling' method kicked in. It affected the service in a number of interesting ways. First, even though everything in my queue had the best availability possible I now no longer got my top 3 ... ever. They seemed to pick 3 out of my top 15 almost at random. Instead of them shipping my new picks out the same day they got my returns, Netflix would aknowledge receipt and then say "Shipping tommorrow". And to top it off every return envelope I got was for a out-of-state center, Minnesota, New York, even Oregon (So that it would take longer to reach them).

This sent my monthly total from about 17-18 to 10-11. Now 10 rentals for 18 bucks is still cheap but what made me cancel was because of the unpredictablity of the resulting service. I never knew what I was getting, if my turnaround would be 2 days or 4.

I really have no problem with Netflix curtailing their heavy users (As I was) but they should be more upfront about it and just put a limit on monthly rentals then. If I could get their "normal" service for just the first 2.5 weeks of the month and then they would say "Your allocation is used up" that'd be worth it to me. At least then I would know when to expect the dvd's. $1.80 a rental (10 a month for $18) feels cheap enough for me for those DVD sets I'm to cheap to buy. But if I don't know which ones I'm getting or when I'm getting them it is so not worth it.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Harker]

I've seen this as well, with my own subscription to NetFlix, but after doing some checking, I discovered why.

The thing is, they sometimes ship DVDs from places other than the Denver center (the closest to me), which invariably results in longer delivery, and return time, because of where they are being shipped to.

Once I realized that, I've kept an eye on all the delayed DVDs, and each one of those were coming from other cities.

I'm beginning to think this is all a matter of perception.

H.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, because the story you just shared was very similar to my experience. I had been getting tv shows to have in the background as I did my homework (while in grad school). After about 2 months, my service really started to slow down. I would return something and i noticed that it started to take an extra day for them to acknowledge that they got it. Then it would take 2 days for them to say they were shipping another dvd. And I would get it 3 days later. It was such a drastic change and things got so slow that it was completely pointless for me to keep using Netflix. I ended up cancelling my subscription due to the lack of speed.

I've often thought about going back since I cancelled, but now that I know more of what's going on, I'll definitely pass.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[dema]

Holy shit mods!

THIS IS NOT INSIGHTFUL!

I'd get 3 DVD's in the mail, I'd rip them to my HD for encoding and backup (to watch later), and send them out the next day. The day after I sent them Netflix would confirm that they had them and send out the next ones

YOU are exacly why Netflix is inclined to put something like this in place. You are not "backing up" these as you don't own them. Seriously mods, what are you thinking moding this insighful? I would vote with my points, but they won't matter with the sea of idoits who seem to get them.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why is anybody surprised by this or whining? They are freaking renting you the movies, not selling. You do not own them. It is NOT legal for you to "back them up". It is NOT the same as if they were broadcast since that is "Time Shifting" or whatever, but doing so on DVD's is expressly prohibited. Netflix has stated since the beginning that they would throttle, or has everybody completely forgotten that one? If people keep abusing the system, next thing you know some Senator in Disney's pocket will start gunning for this "grievious breach of copyright law" or some such crap.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to be an ass, but you used there when you should have used their.

"After about a month or so of this cycle there 'throttling' method kicked in."

"there" refers to a place usually.

"their" refers to possion of group.

Like:

"You know those crazy lesbians? Their house is over there."

Can't help myself with grammar nazi tendancies...

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[LordNimon]

Mod the parent up, he's 100% correct. The GP is committing a crime - copyright infringement on a large scale. Instead of copying the disc and returning it the next day, he's supposed to WATCH the disc and return it after he's done. That usually takes more than one day.

I rent TV shows from Netflix, too. It sometimes takes me up to three weeks to watch a single DVD. I've been a Netflix customer for a long time, and I have never been throttled.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of your posts are far beyond retarded. You need to get some serious mental help.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a "heavy user," you're a fucking criminal. You shouldn't be throttled, you should be banned from the service. If you want to back up "your" discs, you must OWN them first, fucktard. You're paying money to have the right to watch the content on that particular media for the duration of time while it is in your posession. Otherwise, why would you subscribe to a DVD rental service? You are not purchasing the content for your personal use whenever you get a whim to watch it. That's why it costs $2/disc instead of $15-20. Your idiocy astounds me. It's assholes like you that make copyright protection justified and ruin it for the rest of us that actually pay to own the content instead of borrow it for a short while. Write a letter to your Congressman and/or Senators demanding that Netflix stop impeding your illicit activity. They may have more pity on you than I do.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Solder Fumes]

Agreed...can we hear from a subscriber that DOESN'T copy the DVDs and still got throttled? The firsthand accounts I've seen in this thread so far involve copying.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[deesine]

Feeling a little, disturbed today? For everyone's sake, please keep the meds handy, as in right next to the computer. (Of course I'm assuming you're not a complete and total moron once the medicine kicks in!)

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU DAMN BETCHA! Copiers are just theives, that is the simple truth and no amount of sleazy weasling talk can hide this. I back up my DVDs, but ONLY those I own. That may be technically illegal under the DMCA but you can be sure that the movie industry will NEVER go after anyone copying their own DVDs since this could result in a court test that might well toss out the entire DMCA.

They WILL go after you sleazy weasels if they find you and I hope they do. A 20K-50K fine will get your attention, I think. As a side benefit, Netflix will have more DVDs for us honest folks while you rot in the slammer where you belong.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[zentec]

And we wonder why the MPAA, HBO and their peers are hell-bent on digital rights management. It's because of this turkey who thinks he has a right to "back-up" what he never owned in the first place. Ditto for the clown in Warren, Michigan who has been all over the press in SE Michigan. For those that don't know, Warren is where you live if you CAN'T get into Detroit.

Let's be honest; many American consumers generally follow the rules and have zero problems with many of the goods and services they purchase. But there's a number of them, that think the world is their feeding trough and they're not getting their dollar's worth if they don't absolutely take all they can. Whether or not it's legal, considerate or healthy is of little concern.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[indianajones428]

For what it's worth, I didn't copy DVD's, and I got throttled.

I subscribed back in 2001, and started out getting the average 1 day turnaround. But over the next eight months, the turnaround stretched to 3 or 4 days and I cancelled. I didn't copy the DVDs (not only did I not have a DVD-burner at the time, I didn't even know HOW to rip DVDs), I just wanted to watch movies I couldn't rent locally.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[plawsy]

YOU are exacly why Netflix is inclined to put something like this in place.

Then explain why it affects my wife and I. We joined in October and have managed to watch about 5 discs or so per week, mostly Farscape (never saw them new!), but a bunch of movies, too. I've never ripped a DVD in my life.

Nonetheless, her queue (separate profile) is now being ignored. Doesn't matter if a disc was at the top of the queue or not, they seem to just ship what they please. Up until about 2 weeks ago, the discs would arrive within a day, maybe two. Now, up to 4 days.

Pretty clearly NF is throttling us, but come on - 5 discs a week is unreasonable? Please.

PL

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless to what you may think, not all heavy users that return their movies the next day are DVD pirates. In my case, we have a family of three and we split the subscription cost evenly - basically one person to a DVD. We used to receive them at a faster pace, but after a little while it would take nearly a week for them to arrrive. I would send my DVD on monday, and receive it the next monday. It's slow as hell, and deeply aggravating. (because of the time it takes for them to arrive, it's finally nice having the movie that we watch them when we get them -- meaning we watch them that day and more or less mail them back on the way to work/school)
The thing to keep in mind here we are not all watching every movie, but the one we specifically chose.

I believe the number of families that follow this sort of routine greatly outnumber the kids sitting in their rooms creating stacks of DVDs as fast as they can.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Horrortaxi]

Agreed...can we hear from a subscriber that DOESN'T copy the DVDs and still got throttled? The firsthand accounts I've seen in this thread so far involve copying.

I'm a subscriber who has non-copying throttling. About a year ago (before we knew about throttling) we noticed that when we wanted to watch movies we often didn't have any, so we actually "upgraded" to the 6 at a time plan for $35 a month. Bad idea since it made it that much clearer that there was a problem. Over the summer (I'm a teacher and had the summer off) I could easily watch 2 movies a day. I'd always return movies the day after I received them. It didn't take long to figure out that Netflix isn't unlimited. Even on the 6 at a time plan I usually didn't have movies to watch. What I learned was that the more you use Netflix, the less you get.

This is the best part. I wrote an email to Netflix saying, basically, "what kind of bullshit is this?" They wrote back saying, basically, "bullshit? sir, there is no bullshit." and then the flood gates opened--I was unthrottled. I suddenly started getting 2 day service (sent it to them on Monday, have the replacement on Wednesday) again like I did when I was a new customer. The "truly unlimited" service lasted for about a month and I probably got 30 movies out of them. When the throttling kicked in again I downgraded to 3 at a time. Currently I have 10 movies on my queue and they all have long or very long waits. I'm getting almost nothing out of Netflix at the moment. You'd think that after a period of low rental activity that you'd get off the throttling list but that doesn't appear to be the case.

They're making piracy look like a really good option. If you use Netflix you'd almost be stupid not to rip your movies and send them right back. Then you'd always have something to watch when you wanted to watch. Or you could just bypass Netflix completely and download all your movies. That's much quicker than waiting a week for Netflix to send you something.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you moronic "honest folk" that have been duped into paying WAY TO MUCH to the entertainment industry gaints! Perhaps you are too stupid, or maybe too "honest", to remember when both of these industries where found guilty of PRICE FIXING!! But perhaps you only care about keeping private citizens honest and not about keeping big business in check!

PIR8 THEM INTO THE GROUND! That's what I say! Too many rich movie and music stars that just don't deserve the money they have...

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[SlartibartfastJunior]

/me raises her hand

I like CSI, the Simpsons, and one or two other shows. I cancelled my cable because, quite frankly, it sucks and they just raised their rates. So I use Netflix primarily for TV show DVDs.

If I want to sit down for the evening, I can watch 4 episodes of CSI back-to-back (one disk). And then maybe one or two more, or I watch one over my lunch break, etc. So I can go through a disk a day, or a disk every two days. Except for some strange reason, the disks started not getting here when Netflix said they would, or the disks would take an extra day (or two or five) to ship. Add to that that about half the CSI disks so far have been cracked (all or partially unplayable), meaning I need to report them/send them back/wait for a replacement, and I'm pretty sure I'm on their throttle list.

I just upgraded my service, from 4/month to 3 at a time "unlimited" to 4 at a time "unlimited" - will they send me any more with 4-at-a-time than they did with 3?

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Braxton_the_Covenant]

You must be new here.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lately, I have been watching them when I receive them and sending them back the next day and after I had sent back 5 in a thirty day period, they started throttling me.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Pyrosophy]

I've noticed throttling in the last two months and I've always considered myself a fairly moderate user. At most I've had 9 movies in one month (last month) and I have no desire to copy them. But in my case I feel even more ripped off because there are several, if not a majority of months in the past two years I've been with Netflix that I have rented no movies at all, keeping my three movies all month until I had time to watch them.

So not only do they throttle "heavy" (can 9/month be considered heavy?) users, but they also throttle people who have absolutely no history of heavy usage, even a history of non-usage. I was their bread and butter for 16 months and they turn on me in one winter month...

I don't have TV, cable, or sattelite. Blockbuster has ethical problems of their own (to say nothing of their crappy selection in my town), and the other local video store is run by a sexist pig. So I guess it's books for me at this point.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a customer who doesn't copy and I've been throttled. It's actually happened in the first month I've had the service. The first two weeks, I would watch 7-8 movies per week (like others have said, I use my TV time after work for movie time instead). I had friends who used the service (also, non-copiers) and they said the sooner you return the movie, the faster you get the next one. So I would actually drop the DVD in the mailbox before I went to bed to be sure it would make the earliest morning pickup. After the first 2 weeks, I guess Netflix flagged me as a heavy user and for the last 2 weeks, the turnaround time is much, much slower. I'm barely able to get 4 movies per week now because of delays. And I'm not getting popular titles either, these are obscure documentaries and movies 2 or more years old. It's lame.

The CEO of the company said the company isn't getting complaints about this, so I made sure to contact them today and register my official complaint.

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[planetmike]

I am a subscriber to the 3 at a time plan. I get throttled, and do not rip the discs. View my detailed netflix history at http://www.planetmike.com/netflix/ .

Re:I was a subscriber, happened to me...

[mandrake*rpgdx]

All the time it's happened to me- and I'm not even a high user. And no, I don't have a DVD burner. When I try to contact netflix, I get weird generic responses that have nothing to do with what I sent.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny as hell!

Re:Workaround

[miro f]

except that they mail the movies to your house so each account would have an address... making it easy to group the multiple accounts together and throttle them anyway

Workaround

[sam1am]

Find what point on your list they skip to and put the movies you really want there..?

Re:Workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, if you're paying for multiple accounts, why would Netflix continue to throttle you? If you pay for three accounts, I'm sure they would have no problem with you renting three times the "normal" numbers of DVDs.

Re:Workaround

[hacksaw56]

Eh, I'd just tack on some phony-baloney apartment number to the address for each account. Lots of apartment complexes have a single street address for multiple apartments, and if I live in a house, then everything will come to my house anyway. They'd have to be pretty stupid to throttle what appears to be an apartment complex, not that I'd put that past them.

Re:Workaround

[jalefkowit]

Except that new accounts aren't free -- they cost US$10-20/month per account. So creating a bunch of accounts can get expensive, making it only of interest to real hard-core DVD watchers.

Which raises the obvious question -- if the problem is that Netflix loses money to households that get more than 5 DVDs/month, why not be up front about the throttling and offer these households the chance to buy their way out of it?

In other words, just say "our Great Low Prices won't allow us to ship you more than x DVDs a month. For most of our customers, that's not a problem. However, we recognize that some of you dedicated fans out there want more than that. So upgrade your account for $y dollars per month and we'll ship them as fast as you can watch them."

It would require taking an initial PR hit for qualifying the "Unlimited rentals" promise, but it would (a) reinforce the idea that Netflix's base pricing is reasonable (since they're not piling up margins they can dip into to serve high-usage customers), (b) give them a way to turn a problem into a new revenue stream, and (c) earn them brownie points for being transparent with customers, instead of skulking around silently throttling accounts.

Re:Workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

what if one lives in an apartment building, you insensitive clod

How to piss off your biggest customers

[99luftballon]

I'm not a Netflix user but I know those that are. The heaviest users tend to be evangelists for the company and have an important role in growing the company via word of mouth, the most effective form of advertising.

If this gets widespread coverage I can see them having some serious problems, that would only be slightly mitigated by people who aren't heavy users joining for the preferential service they would get.

While the company isn't doing anything worse than credit card companies that cut the time required for payment for those that pay in time in an attempt to get them to miss the due date. If you don't like those kind of practices don't use the company.

Re:How to piss off your biggest customers

[Anonymous Coward]

The heaviest users tend to be evangelists for the company and have an important role in growing the company via word of mouth, the most effective form of advertising.

And where did the data for this conclusion come from? Netflix's referral database, or the handful of people you know who use Netflix heavily? Wouldn't the heaviest users tend to be the least evangelistic since they wouldn't want to attract others to the service who could compete with them for available dvds? And, isn't it possible that the best evangelists are the people who live the farthest away from alternative rentals stores, or the people who live in places where the local Blockbuster always has a 20 minute wait, or the people who despise having to make special trips to rent and return a dvd, or the people who like having a library of 3-7 dvds on hand to watch whenever they feel like it?

Re:How to piss off your biggest customers

[the eric conspiracy]

I am a heavy Netfix renter (up to 8 per week), and while I am sure they are throttling me, I don't really care. I watch Netflix DVDs several nights of the week, and also other members of my family watch Netflix DVDs. The service is still great, with a very wide selection and rapid delivery of the material I want. If I feel I need more DVD's I'll just move to a higher membership level. I am not compulsive enough to be frustrated by not getting immediate delivery of new releases - there is so much older material in the catalog that there is plenty for me to watch.

People who are complaining about the throttling don't realize the basic economics of the service, and the fact NetFlix has to make money to stay in business. Personally I want them to stay in business because I like thier service as it currently works, even with the throttling. It is still fast, convenient, economical and the selection is great.

If I had any complaint it would be about the condition of the disks - there was a period of time I was getting perhaps 15% disks that were acutally cracked or had splits in the plastic that made them unplayable. However this has improved a lot since the start of the year and I have had had only one bad disk in the past 50 or so, so perhaps they have improved their QA.

Re:How to piss off your biggest customers

[nanojath]

While I have neither particular ire nor adulations for Netflix (I'm a subscriber and while the service is imperfect, I find it worth the subscription), their position - and response - is fairly typical. Ironically it will doubtless persist in the world of on-demand download, the business that will certainly replace them (or at least their current business model).

It is a problem particular to a kind of business where your most dedicated customers increase your operating expenses but not your revenue. You see the same thing in some subscription model music services: the new, elastic definition of "unlimited." It's a bad position to be in, frankly. Any pay-to-download service that tries to work a subscription-based, all-you-can-eat model is going to wrestle with the same problem if they get successful enough.

If the economics of your business cannot manage a person who truly works your distribution system within the boundaries of your agreement, you have to just bite the bullet and stop marketing the concept of "unlimited" access.

And expect to see plenty of this kind of business sensibility: If their best customers are costing them money there's no point in keeping them. They probably thrive on people like me - casual but steady renters who go for a relatively high percentage of what are probably low-mileage titles; off the beaten track stuff that is probably usually in stock. I judge my subscription saves me maybe five or ten bucks a month over what I used to spend for a comparable number of disks in the B&M video store, but I have rented dozens of items that would never show up in my local rental chain. It takes three to five days for turnaround (day one it goes out in the mail, day three a new movie arives) - usually closer to three and never yet more than five. I almost always get what's at the top of my cue, to the extent I've never noticed a variance though I'm sure they occur. I've gotten one busted disk in the mail, never had a shipment vanish in either direction. Maybe I've found the sweet spot.

Re:How to piss off your biggest customers

[RobertLTux]

bit of a side issue does anybody know what the grid of factors is that could cause a rom to detonate in a drive (ie damage pattern, depth, type of drive , read pattern ect) and yes kiddies due to thermal varience you can make a rom go boom

Re:How to piss off your biggest customers

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

You don't get it, do you? Netflix wants to piss off its biggest customers. A customer who checks out 35 DVDs per month pays no more than a customer who checks out 10, yet the cost to ship them the DVDs is considerably higher. The more you rent, the less Netflix makes.

It's like Comcast and their crappy "invisible" transfer limits - once you hit ~150GB, they throttle you into the ground (or cut you off altogether). Do it multiple times and they'll cancel your account.

When you provide an unlimited service, there are always going to be individuals who actually take advantage of their service to the fullest - in the real world, with things like buffets, they take measures to limit this (you can't take food out, nor can you share food - you're limited to what you can eat in one sitting). With ISPs, they have bandwidth caps. With Netflix, they have throttling.

Netflix needs to be up-front about this. They have been deceptive with their advertisements and they should be held accountable for that. But, make no mistake - Netflix does not want customers who rent 20+ DVDs a month; indeed, at a point, they are losing money.

From TFA: just wanted 18 to 22 movies per month

[michaelmalak]

Since you obviously didn't read TFA, here is the relevant excerpt:

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva's home in Warren, Mich. -- down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company's automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

That comes to about 36 to 44 hours per month, which is just 26% to 32% of the 138 hours per month of television that the average adult in the U.S. watches.

Re:From TFA: just wanted 18 to 22 movies per month

[Rocketship Underpant]

I wonder ... while it's not an ideal solution, could he open two Netflix accounts to split his rentals between and lose the heavy renter status?

Sometimes "unlimited" can't truly mean unlimited

[realTremens]

They've been doing this for a while. Netflix is still better then competition on selection and turn around.

Heavy netflix use

[georgehh6]

I have an 8 disc rental plan for my mother who is disabled. She watches dvds most of her waking hours. Some days she goes through all 8 discs in one day. So there certainly are legitimate users that might watch 3, 5, or 8 discs in a single day.

George

queue wait time listing

[rpillala]

I think this is very old news. I saw something (here even; I'm pretty sure anyway) where a guy queued the same movies on two different accounts with different rental activity and saw different waiting times listed. The light renter account had shorter or no wait times for availability on new releases. The article mentions this. At the time the person was only checking for new release wait times and I don't think the phenomenon applied to older movies that were less in demand. I could be wrong it was a long time ago and I can't find the article anymore.

Oh wait I found it.

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[ScentCone]

There once was a jihaddi named Omar
Whose reach stretched just a little too-far.
His car bombs started losing their luster,
compared to a laser guided bunker-buster,
and Al Jazeera had to shop for a new war.

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

There are other (better) ways to do this.

[EBFoxbat]

I understand why NF is doing it. But how they are doing it is sneaky, dirty, and of poor business ethics. Simply stop offering 3-at-a-time and 5-at-a-time plans if people are abusing it. Send those people a letter saying that they rent too many movies (which requires you to publicly state how many is too many) and reduce them to 1-at-a-time. It's not fair for Billy Bob to get a movie before me when I requested it first. The fact that it's called a "queue" inherently implies a fixed order and fairness. Dictionary.com contains the definition of queue as "A data structure from which the first item that can be retrieved is the one stored earliest." It is false advertising. I have no problem with them doing something of this nature just not by this means. Disclosure: I have a 3-at-a-time plan and go through 6 DVDs per week. That said most of them are TV series that are 6-7 discs per season. All I want to do is get caught up on Lost or Stargate: Atlantis or [insert ./ series here].

Silly

[MrNougat]

What ever happened to "first come; first served?" In this nation of justice, when a great number of people want or need something, we form a line. We wait in that line, albeit in a fidgety way, until it's our turn. No cuts. (Note that for some reason this rule goes right out the window in highway traffic, where some people just zoom around wherever they like.)

In this case, Netflix customers must queue up for new rentals, but it is Netflix who is in complete control of the order of the line. Netflix: no cuts, okay?

Why doesn't Netflix just say that there's a two or three day processing time from when they receive your returned video to when they ship the next one, and just do every one in the order it is received? Wouldn't that be more fair, more honest, and more likely to get me to sign up with Netflix again?

Re:Silly

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes first come, first served more 'just' than any other scheduling algorithm? What about first born, first served? Or least cost, first served (cost could be time or materials)? The latter is usually more efficient in terms of satisfied users/time period and it looks like that's what Netflix is doing with its customers. If printers can put small jobs ahead of large jobs and computers can put ui processes ahead of number-crunching processes, why can't Netflix put low impact customaers ahead of high impact customers?

Re:Silly

[Midnight Thunder]

While I don't agree with using the term "unlimited" in this case, I can understand why they are doing this and that zip.ca seems to have got right. The problem is if you have 10% of the customers holding on to 50% of the popular titles, then that leaves 90% of the customers complaining of bad service. They would rather try to please the 90% than the 10% who are holding to too many DVDs at once and also costing more in postage.

The reason I mention zip.ca is because they have pricing brackets and also start charginging you for postage after a certain number of DVDs per month. You choose the package that suits you the best.

Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[MisterSquid]

I guess "screwing over people who watch a lot of movies" is one of their "improvements" that they've made.

I'd like to gently disagree with the article and with the parent poster because this is something, I believe, that Netflix has been doing since day one. I'm guessing, though, that now they either have a auditable trail (e.g. software) or for other reasons they are formalizing throttling frequent renters.

In 2002 I began a Netflix subscription which back in those days came in one all-you-can-watch for about $20.00 (iirc). I watch movies sometimes three at a go because it is a professional interest of mine and, well, I love film. So, for my first couple of months, I was watching maybe 12 films a month.

My third month or so, I stopped getting DVDs. I checked my queue and discovered they'd not received the DVDs I returned. After 2 weeks, I reported the DVDs missing even though, by gum, I knew I had sent them back. My queue resumed and when I returned the 5 DVDs within one week of viewing them the USPS mysteriously failed to deliver those, too. While considering reporting these lost DVDs to the US Postmaster, I came across an article in WIRED explaining how Netflix loses money on frequent renters: "Some subscribers rent twenty or more. (Which is a problem: Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.)" (emphasis added).

That told me all I needed to know and I cancelled my Netflix subscription. Occam's razor is here inadequate since it would suggest that the DVDs were in fact getting lost in the mail. But I had been using the USPS for objects large and small for 20 years by that point and not a single piece of mail had ever been lost either coming to or going from me. And I'm supposed to believe that somehow, of all the mail I send, that only my DVDs to Netflix get lost?

Netflix is a company like any other in that it wants to make a profit. However, in 2002 they engaged (I believe) in unethical business practices to protect their bottom line rather than, for example, simply billing renters for postage overages. Netflix will never get any of my money ever again and when Internet distribution finally kills them, I probably won't care enough to tell this story again.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, if they claim they did not receive back DVDs when they in fact did, this is called mail fraud. Whether the fraud is perpetrated by an individual or a business is entirely irrelevant. Fortunately for the consumer, the punishment is surprisingly severe -- the postal system and postmasters have surprisingly wide powers of investigation and prosecution.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[dnoyeb]

I think its rather stupid on Netflix part. Those passionate users are likely passionate advocates as well. This is what happens when bean-counters run the ship.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[LordNimon]

Most likely, someone at the post office was stealing the discs. The envelopes are very easy to identify and steal.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, those stupid beancounters, always trying to stop the company going bust because it's being drained of any profits by freeloaders, instead of recognising that they could get a lot more freeloaders draining their profits if they'd only let the first lot of freeloaders get on and hog limited resources even more disproportionately.

Trying to make money? That's crazy talk. How could anyone even think of running a business that way?

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[lubricated]

>> drained of any profits by freeloaders

yeah, those damn freeloader, actually expecting to get what they paid for. Who do they think they are.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[eclectic4]

"And I'm supposed to believe that somehow, of all the mail I send, that only my DVDs to Netflix get lost?"

Pretty tempting though, I might say. Little red envelopes, you know what's in them... or, you can speculate as you did. Either way though, it's still far cheaper than going to blockbuster (or any other video store), you don't have to leave the house, and you do get them quickly so your argument is completely illogical. Yeah, you go ahead and protest them by going and renting 12 movies a month from BlockBuster at $4 a pop. That'll show em that delivering movies to your house cheaply won't be stood for! Unless I can burn 30 DVD's a month for 75 cents, I won't stand for it! Boycot!!!

This is far better than what was available to the average person just a little bit ago. NetFlix rocks, and your argument is completely illogical.

When Internet distribution starts, you can say goodbye to quality, and hello to DRM madness. Yay again!!!

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Richy_T]

I signed up for the 3disks-at-a-time plan and was getting screwed over from the start. Movies sent back on a Monday would "take a long time to get there" and I wouldn't get the new movies until Saturday or later making the service effectively a two-week turnaround with my viewing habits. I downgraded to 1disk-at-a-time and suddenly the new movies started coming in Thursday or Friday.

Rich

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But I had been using the USPS for objects large and small for 20 years by that point and not a single piece of mail had ever been lost"

There have been numerous accounts of USPS employeees stealing Netflix DVDs. Thbey are red and easy to identify as well as small and easy to conceal. Several have been prosecuted. Thisl is not normally the case with other mail. It is a case of knowing what to look for to steal.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the screwing over going on, why haven't I ever had a problem with Netflix? For a year and a half, I've watched up to 18 DVDs a month (though 10-12 is the most common number). Admittedly, there is the odd month or two where I may only swap four or five, but I'm a pretty heavy user. I have yet to see anything I can attribute to throttling. Sure, the new releases aren't always available on Day One. Who cares? I'm still getting DVDs as fast as I can return them. So how is it that I managed to fall through the throttling crack?

My grandmother has watched three movies a week since last summer. She has never had any shipping delays, either.

Frankly, though, if Netflix is reserving high-demand movies for new and infrequent users, I have no problem with that. Otherwise the low-bandwidth users, who have smaller queues with fewer shipping shipping windows, would have a difficult time ever getting high-demand DVDs. Frequent renters, on the other hand, likely have an ass-ton of DVDs they'd be satisfied with receiving.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[palmpunk]

I have worked in a main USPS plant. It is extremely unlikely that a postal worker is stealing mail. Thousands of letters are processed every minute. They are handled by the bundle. Plus you have Postal Inspectors watching your every move.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Xenophon Fenderson,]

Doesn't the Post Office act as an agent for the receiver? If so, Netflix could be engaging in fraud if they are not registering those DVDs as having been received when the Post Office postmarked them.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[radish]

The guy who brings mail to my building has no-one watching him, and ample opportunity to steal anything he wants. There have been numerous cases of mail theft by the delivery people.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[porcupine8]

actually expecting to get what they paid for

Judging from several comments here, it sounds like some people are expecting to get a lot MORE than what they paid for - they're expecting to get permanent copies of as many DVDs as they want, by getting the DVD, copying it, and sending it back the next day. I would call that "freeloading," as well as "illegal" and "ruining it for the rest of us."

I realize that some people are legitimately renting lots and lots of movies, but I have a feeling that if you took away all the "copiers", the problem wouldn't be so big that Netflix would have to stoop to massive throttling. Yes, they handled it in a dishonest manner, but just the fact that they're doing it isn't at all surprising if so many people are abusing the service.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Neoprofin]

That sounds a lot like how I got suspicious about them. I place all three movies in the mailbox, they get picked up by the same postman, mailed to the same place, which is a PO box at the post office where my girlfriends father works and is on a first name basis with the one Netflix guy who comes and picks up all of them.

One would think that with only one path they should all get there at roughly the same time, then I noticed that they would be "recieved" sometimes up to six days apart. On the most part only one will get delayed and it will only be a day or two, but as much as I love to blame the postal service nothing I've sent in the past 20 years has taken more than a day to get accross town, that my DVD regularly take 2-3 seems like there might be a rather uninvisible hand at work.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[PorkNutz]

Exactly!

I live in the same town as my NF distribution point. When a disc was marked as shipped in my NF queue, it would arrive the next day. When I returned the discs, even when dropping them at the very post office where the PO box fo NF is, they would take 3-5 days to be returned. Also during the 3 months I had my NF account, 4 discs were lost in transit.

This behavior was just way too suspicious for me, so I cancelled my account, but of course NF continued to bill me for two months (had to have my CC cancelled and reissued to stop them) because of the lost discs.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[anothy]

i think i'm one of those users you're talking about:

about a week ago, a friend of mine were wandering around and needed to kill half an hour before we could go home. we wandered into a blockbuster, spent half an hour roaming around the store making fun of the crap they stock (a whole shelf worth of Aliens knock-offs and a row of B-or-worse vampire movies) and bemoaning the lack of real selection, especially in Sci-Fi, anime, and television series. by the time we'd left, we'd made use of their heat on a rainy evening for half an hour, bought or rented nothing, and convinced two other patrons to go join Netflix. i consider that a productive evening.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Orion_]

Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.

As much as I like Netflix (I'm a subscriber, and have never had any of the problems that others are reporting), this is just propaganda. The total weight of the DVD plus packaging is less than an ounce. (You can Google this if you don't believe me, or just weigh a DVD.) So using rate and standards information from the USPS web site:

* When Netflix sends out a DVD, it costs them $.371 for the presorted first class, non-automation rate. I believe this mail is ineligible for automation rates because a DVD is too rigid, but at any rate, this can be verified by looking at a Netflix package; it says "presorted" but doesn't have any other markings that would indicate a lower rate.

* When you send a DVD back to Netflix, I'm almost certain that they're using the high-volume business reply mail rate, though I don't have first-hand knowledge about this. This saves them $.54 per piece but costs them an extra $500 a year; I'd think this tradeoff would be well worth it for them. So the cost to them is $.50 per piece.

So this gives us a total cost of $.871 in postage round trip per DVD they send out. Netflix charges a minimum of $10 a month per customer, so for one of these customers they would have to send out 12 DVDs a month before they lose money on postage. Given the natural turnaround time involved, it would be hard for someone on the $10 plan (one out at a time) to rent more than that in a month anyway.

Of course, they do have other costs. Maybe their overhead is high enough that they lose money on a customer if they rent more than five a month. But not much of that money they're losing is actually for postage.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[LordNimon]

There is no other reasonable explanation for having a large number of Netflix envelopes disappear while nothing else is affected. It doesn't make sense to believe that Netflix loses them (intentionally or not), because that would cost them money and customers. I've read a number of reports of USPS employees being caught red-handed with stolen Netflix envelopes.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[johnnycab2000]

Well, if this is true, then one should see an equal number of DVD's not being received by the subscriber. It seems like the complaints - at least in this person's case - only go one way: the return direction.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[bluto00]

"This is far better than what was available to the average person just a little bit ago."

Uhm, public libraries have been around for over 200 years. With my county-wide lending network, I can order pretty much any movie (selection that blows away NF and Blockbuster combined), including the foreign films I prefer. And I'm only paying my tax dollars to support the library - which I (and if you live in a developed country, you) are paying anyway. So yes, I will "protest" NF because contrary to the false choice you present, there is an alternative.

PS - These libraries also lend out bound manuscripts. They have shelves and shelves of them. I forget what they call them, but the amazing thing - they're free too! Now that truly deserves a yay!

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[ant_tmwx]

Maybe your postal person was the one stealing all the Netflix DVDs in the mail?

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Rogerborg]

>"I've read a number of reports of USPS employees being caught red-handed with stolen Netflix envelopes."

If only there were some way that you could provide references for that claim in an easy to follow manner. Dammit, I've got to think!

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Rogerborg]

By your own figures, 6 a month ("more than five") is $5.23, and you seem to have forgotten to include packaging and handling costs. Even without those, that's a very significant proportion of a $10 gross. In fact, you've actually convinced me that the referenced statement is more likely to be true than false.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[cflannagan]

Since when did DVD copying enter the discussion about throttling? Granted, it's a real issue, but it's irrelevant from Netflix's point of view. Illegal copiers rents DVDs, make copies, and returns them quickly. They would rent those DVDs only once. Legitimate but high-volumne renters doesn't make copies, but watches movies and returns them quickly. They would also rent those DVDs only once. Explain how or why we should focus on the topic of illegal copying especially when it's an irrelevant factor in the throttling discussion.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[frizzantik]

Yes, Netflix has been doing this for years. They acknolesged it to me when I asked them back in 2004 or whenever I quit my subscription.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Orion_]

You're right, I'd intended my post to be less argumentative than it ended up coming out. (Damn not being able to edit. Oh well.) I didn't "forget" to include packaging and handling costs; the claim was that they "lose money on postage" after five a month and I wanted to see how likely that was. But I suppose "postage" in this context could be understood to include packaging and preparation.

They probably do lose money after 5/month on their $10 customers. But what percentage of Netflix customers are on the $10 plan? I doubt highly that they lose money on $15 customers (their standard plan) that rent more than five.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[MisterSquid]

It seems like the complaints - at least in this person's case - only go one way: the return direction.

Exactly. It would have been different if I were losing DVDs coming as well as going, but that wasn't happening. Only when I mailed them back to Netflix did they somehow get "lost." I don't rule out the USPS, but the one-way postal sinkhole made me suspect Netflix more than the postal carriers.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[MisterSquid]

Yeah, you go ahead and protest them by going and renting 12 movies a month from BlockBuster at $4 a pop.

I don't do Blockbuster. I have a local (university) library. Twice a month I might rent from the local chain for $3. I buy movies from half.com. All of those places give me what I expect. In my experience, Netflix doesn't work as advertised. This is apart from my distrust of them. So, it isn't a boycott. I just believe Netflix behaves unethically and I wasn't interested in paying $240 per year for a service that in some months would send me zero DVDs.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[xenocide2]

You could always search Lexis Nexus for cases. Newspapers don't carry everything that happens, you know. And not being in a newspaper doesnt mean it didn't happen.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a few who got caught in Colorado:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/arti cle/0,1299,DRMN_15_4371593,00.html

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/6030262/d etail.html

The post office does have a problem with theft, especially at holiday time when they hire temporary workers. Presumably the hectic pace plus employees who know they have no future with the organization aren't a good mix. I experienced a problem myself, as have a few friends in my area (East Los Angeles)-- last Christmas our mail was repeatedly arriving ripped open, particularly brightly covered envelopes that obviously had cards inside... And any cash or gift cards inside would be missing.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[porcupine8]

It entered into the discussion when most of the people who claim to have experienced the throttling are people who are only high-volume because they copy DVDs and send them back within a day.

Point is, let's say that right now 10% of Netflix's customers are high-volume. If half of those are copiers, and they weren't copying, only 5% would be high-volume - and maybe that would be a low enough percentage that Netflix wouldn't care enough to risk the bad publicity.

I don't know the exact percentages, of course, but overall if the copiers weren't copying, they'd certainly have fewer high-volume renters - and it might never have reached a threshold where they felt the need to do something about it.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[itscolduphere]

With my county-wide lending network, I can order pretty much any movie (selection that blows away NF and Blockbuster combined), including the foreign films I prefer.

I'm guessing you don't live in East Nowhere County, WY. I'm sure my county has a county-wide lending network too, but that network only includes about 3 (small) libraries.

There are a large number of people for whom the selection at NetFlix was _much_ better than what was available locally.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[tepples]

You could always search Lexis Nexus for cases.

What individual outside of the legal practice can afford the fee for LexisNexis access just to make a point on Slashdot? Or is there something about LN itself that I'm missing?

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[lewp]

Judging from several comments here, it sounds like some people are expecting to get a lot MORE than what they paid for - they're expecting to get permanent copies of as many DVDs as they want, by getting the DVD, copying it, and sending it back the next day. I would call that "freeloading," as well as "illegal" and "ruining it for the rest of us."

It's none of Netflix's business what I do with the movie while I've rented it. I could be copying it, or I could actually be watching movies that quickly, or hell, I could just be renting them and sending them back unwatched. Doesn't change the fact that the service I pay for, and the service they advertise, is that I rent the movie and they ship it to me right away.

If copying a movie is "freeloading" off of anyone, it's the MPAA's member companies. Netflix isn't in the business of making movies, or even making money off movies. They're in the business of moving physical media to my house; media that just happens to have movies on it. The actual movie, when I return it, and what I do with it while it's here, is irrelevant, as long as they get it back.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[lubricated]

>> Judging from several comments here, it sounds like some people are expecting to get a lot MORE than what they paid for - they're expecting to get permanent copies of as many DVDs as they want, by getting the DVD, copying it, and sending it back the next day. I would call that "freeloading," as well as "illegal" and "ruining it for the rest of us."

You really don't have to rent all that much to get throttled. I know from personal experience. I haven't yet figured out how to copy a movie , I just watch them. In fact if I ever did figure out how to copy a movie I would do that because it would mean I send my movies back faster and thus get new ones faster. The reason I like netflix is because they have stuff other places don't. I like to watch alot of old movies and anime, and that usually has plenty of availability.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Seanasy]

Dammit, I've got to think!

Don't hurt yourself.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

But I had been using the USPS for objects large and small for 20 years by that point and not a single piece of mail had ever been lost either coming to or going from me.

at least not that you know of. it's kinda like claiming your spam filter has never given a false positive.

i don't know of any specific mail that didn't reach me either but judging by the occasional reciept of neighbors' mail, i'd say there's a pretty darn good chance that i've had a decent amount of mail lost coming to or going from me.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[kesuki]

I'd like to point out a couple things. although this article claims the 'average' netflix subscriber watches 5 movies a month, it then also claimes that netflix 'looses money' on people who rent more than five, but that isn't necisarilly true.

As a matter of fact, netflix's profits have been shown to be 'much higher' than expected recently, and the 'average' number of movies rented hasn't gone down.

so why are netflix profits up? 2 big things. #1 Advertising. Every netflix DVD comes with an ad printed on it now, most of these wind up being 'netflix' ads, but quite often ' new in theaters movie releases' will be on there. the other big thing is that with the acquizition of the wal-mart online movie rentals their volumes have gone up, and likely the rate they pay to the usps may have been renegotiated to a lower per item price.

The article misrepresents the 'real' situation, netflix's business model (and thus investor expected profit margins) are based on 5 movies a month, on the 3 at a time plan. people who rent more than 5 movies Eat into the netflix profit margin. they haven't 'cost' netflix money until they exceed 10 movies a month. (I'm fairly sure their 'business model' involves a 2:1 return on investment etc)

Because netflix has a lot of 'heavy movie users' they've also got many tiers of service available, however this may eat into their profit margins since the people who watch 5 movies a month can now downgrade to 2 movies at a time, and still always have a movie available to them.

frankly with my queue i could easily be on the 'nine at a time' plan (which costs as much as having three seperate 3 at a time plans) and still be turning the movies around as fast as the usps can deliver them... which with a very small manipulation by netflix would wind up being around 30 discs a month. as a matter of fact if my finances were in better order i would be on the '9' at a time plan. afterall they have 55,000 movie selections and at least 5,000 are of great interest to me.

anyways, it seems that a lot of the people who are netflix subscribers are using netflix basically as easy weekend enetertainment of a movie, and they don't actually have every single weekend 'free' to watch the movie they thought they'd want to, so apparently they're going to be doing a lot of business, since the 'casual' renter species far outnumbers the 'movie geek' species, on an order of about 100:1 so even if they loose money on that '1' as long as that person is convincing the 100 normals that netflix is the best thing to happen to movies since the corner video store, well... they can bear the burden of having a few geeks renting a lot of movies.

and now they have software to precisely decide just how much they can afford to have these 'geeks' reccomending them. but it could definitely bite them in the ass, if they kill off the most vocal 'word of mouth advertising' that they get, because of trying to eck out a little more profit. if on the other hand they use this software to allot 'how much word of mouth advertising' they're willing to bear the expense of, then they're on the right track.

but yeah I've noticed that i get much better service at the 'begining' of the month, before i've 'cost' netflix profit or money, than towards the 'end' of the month where likely they're trying to control expenses, by simply just 'loosing' the discs i've mailed back to them for a while.

and considering I'm about 250 miles out from their mailing center, and mailman doesn't come to my place til 4pm, so I can't return movies until the 'next' day, and the discs take an average of 2-days each way... that kinda 'limits' the number of discs i can get, even with 'same day' turn around on the netflix end, to about 15 a month on the 3 at a time plan. I've only been a subscriber for 2 months and have only seen 27 movies, and for almost one full month i was on the 5 at a time plan... so clearly they're managing to limit me to 10 a month on the 3 at a time, and 16-17 a month on the 5 at a time plan. becaus

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[jat6000]

I do know that Gamefly had a similar problem with USPS as well. Turns out there were some sticky fingered folks at some of the distribution centers (the red and orange envelopes are easy to spot). New tracking technology they were rolling out within the last 6 months, in conjunction with the USPS, were supposed to track these people down. Not that your experience isn't justified, but knowing this I think Occam's Razor applies well here.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Romancer]

Actually that's a good point.

I pay for the 5 at a time subscription, and I expect that the additional charge is for more movies per month total that I can watch.

compare my total monthly movie rentals to someone with a 3 at a time plan and I should be getting on average 2 additional rentals per cycle of shipped movies. Irregardless of wether someone watches 5 a week or 5 a month, being on a higher plan should mean that they get more on average than a person on a plan of 3 at a time.

Now introduce throttling.

I get less movies per cycle because I paid more for a higher plan.

Say I watch a movie every night that I have a new one available. If I have a 3 at a time plan and it's timed correctly, I could have one in the mail to them, one at home to watch, and one in the mail to me. That would mean that I would have a movie every day to watch. But then the weekend hits and on sunday I don't get mail and then they don't ship out on sunday and everything gets screwed. So I have to go to the 5 at a time plan to make sure I have a movie every weekday, to account for delays from netflix and postal inadequicies.

But then they throttle my shipments back down and I don't have movies to watch, which is the whole reason to have (and pay for) the 5 at a time plan.

That's something bad. A rippoff, bait-and-switch, false advertising, or just bad business, I don't know which. But it's bad.

Netflix: I pay you more. This is the throttling I get?

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[porcupine8]

They make money off of a business model that assumes that average people watch X DVDs per week, and so allows them to make a profit off of anyone who watches X DVDs or a bit more per week. When you rent lots of movies, they don't make a profit. Anyone who watches lots of movies causes them to lose money.

Now, the number of people who actually watch three DVDs in a day, send them back, and watch three more a couple days later, etc etc, is probably pretty darn small. Small enough that Netflix can eat the loss to remain "unlimited." However, a whole lot more people have time to *copy* 3 DVDs a day - multiplying Netflix's loss by quite a bit. So yes, they are in the business of making money off of movies, and this practice causes them to not make money. So of COURSE they are going to discourage it by whatever means they have available. Again, the means they chose are dishonest and I'm not saying they were right - but they were justified in doing *something* about it.

And yes, when you rent a movie and copy it, you are a freeloader, whether off of Netflix or the studio or whoever. You are getting more than you are legally entitled to, because you are NOT legally entitled to make a copy of a movie that does not belong to you. You are getting DVDs for free.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[ssylvis]

i think your judgement against netflix may have been a little hasty. while a disproportionately large number of netflix envelopes getting lost in the mail seems to go against general experience with the usps, the difference is that netflix envelopes are much more conspicuous that your typical package. when a netflix envelope comes through the system, it is very clear what is being mailed and that it is valuable. and because the envelopes are small, i imagine it would not be difficult to steal one discreetly. neither of these points are as true for other packages. anyway, i've seen reports similar to that below, which makes me believe that it is more likely that usps workers are stealing discs rather than netflix somehow lying about receiving discs and attempting to get customers to pay for them (this seems to be what you were implying?). "According to court records, between January and March of 2005, 503 Netflix DVD movies destined for Lyons, Colorado were reported missing or stolen. Netflix told investigators the loss represents 23.33 percent of all DVD movies mailed to that postal area." http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJE CTID=9d25e532-0abe-421a-019e-c94fd786b109&TEMPLATE ID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[xenocide2]

I think that was pretty much my point. Even if you could afford to search with it, I doubt anyone else reading your comment could.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[lubricated]

ummm .. . . ME TOO!!!

seriously, this is why I went back to the 3 at a time plan. The five at a time plan, just didn't seem to get me more movies. Honestly I think a better delivery system is just around the corner though it may remain that way for decades if MPAA keeps it up with the propriatary/drm crap.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[c0d3h4x0r]

Either way though, it's still far cheaper than going to blockbuster (or any other video store)

That's not the point. It's the principle of the thing. It's about corporate integrity.

If they'll take a secretive punitive action like this one against paying customers, then they can't be trusted. Period.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[gonz]

And I'm supposed to believe that somehow, of all the mail I send, that only my DVDs to Netflix get lost?

Let me get this straight: 95% of your outgoing mail is generic-looking envolvopes containing bills and poorly written letters to your Russian bride or whatever. The remaining 5%? Bright red envelopes with "NETFLIX" printed in boldface letters, containing -- get this -- popular DVD's that will be replaced for free if lost in the mail.

In this light, a non-uniform distribution of "lost mail" is not hard to believe. What's hard to believe is that postal workers don't leverage their vast home DVD libraries to launch a competing service. :-)

-Gonz

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[evilviper]

they're expecting to get permanent copies of as many DVDs as they want, by getting the DVD, copying it, and sending it back the next day. I would call that "freeloading," as well as "illegal" and "ruining it for the rest of us."

It's not "freeloading" because they are paying for the service. There's no law that says you have to be a profitable customer. Do you NOT buy items on sale just because you know they don't make a profit for the company?

Also, it's not strictly illegal, although nobody wants you to know that. It does, legally, fall under the precedent of "time-shifting" the movies you've rented.

As for decrypting the DVDs in the first place... The clean-room, reverse-engineered libdvdcss code should be legal by most accounts, and certainly legal on Linux or any other OSes which don't have commercial DVD-playing programs available for sale.

As for the last count, I have to wonder why Netflix doesn't, and doesn't encourage customers to, mail two DVDs in a single envelope. It would halve postage, which is said to be the primary operating cost.

but just the fact that they're doing it isn't at all surprising if so many people are abusing the service.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Just one question. How are copiers any worse than frequent watchers? I mean, do you really believe people are renting movie after movie from netflix, copying them, and NOT WATCHING what they've copied? Or do you believe they are involved in extensive schemes to rent 3 months worth of movies in one month, cancel their service for 2, and start again? Because the Netflix throttling system wouldn't help in that senario anyhow.

How is copying a movie hurting netflix again, or are you just taking the opportunity to expound your own beliefs on a seperate subject (and in that case, paid or unpaid)?

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so rightgeous when you don't think you can get caught. Good for you, coward.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

How adorable, coming from an AC.

Re:Not an improvement but biz as usual.

[Zoarre]

That told me all I needed to know and I cancelled my Netflix subscription.

Do you mind sharing what you decided to do instead? At the moment, I'm a heavy renter but I don't copy any DVDs and I think I'm getting screwed. I keep increasing my subscription limits but now it seems that's just sending money into a hole since it's apparently not going to turn "unlimited" into unlimited.

My problem is that Blockbuster, et al. doesn't have the titles I tend to rent. I have a friend that subscribes to Greencine and they doesn't deliver in any reasonable period of time to be a satisfactory primary service Lately, I find myself frequently renting television titles. Blockbuster doesn't have Bablyon 5, for example.

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the parent modded funny? This is actually true.

Heh.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Wonder what the difference in pollution is, between sending a disc in meatspace, on a truck, vs. multicasting out a few electrons worth of a movie is?

That is, supposing the telecom (originally typo'd this as "telecon"... freudian slip?) industry hadn't defrauded us competely, by charging us for first-class broadband while continuing to deliver third-world, 1970s technology...

Re:Heh.

[Bing Tsher E]

I would call Multicasting (known as 'broadcasting' in the wireless (radio) industry) a third class 1970's technology.

The pollution cost of postal service delivery of a disk is rather low, considering the delivery infrastructure is running the truck along the route wether the disk happens to be on it or not.

Re:Heh.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Multicasting is different than either OTA broadcasting, or IP broadcasting.

That the truck runs the route regardless does not mean that it's a totally free action. Also, figure in the cost of making the plastic for the disc.

Netflix, Blockbuster, then Netflix again.

[Futurepower(R)]

Isn't there an obvious answer?

1) Start a Netflix subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.

2) Start a Blockbuster subscription. When throttling starts, cancel.

3) Go back to step one, this time using another person's name in your household, with a different credit card. This will be indistinguishable from a new renter/owner of your house or apartment.

The above demonstrates one of the problems with a company being tricky with customers: Customers can be tricky too, and there are a lot more of them.

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. taxpayers pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

Re:Netflix, Blockbuster, then Netflix again.

[JesterXXV]

So...what happens when you run out of people in your household, or they don't feel like giving you their credit card number for your stupid scheme?

Re:Netflix, Blockbuster, then Netflix again.

[iocat]

Then you take advantage of their "Come back to Netflix/BlockBuster" offers, which probably excempts you from thottling for a while to re-entice you to the service.

But to me, the real solution is to stop watching so many movies and read a book, which you can get free from a library.

Re:Netflix, Blockbuster, then Netflix again.

[real gumby]

The above demonstrates one of the problems with a company being tricky with customers: Customers can be tricky too, and there are a lot more of them.

As also wonderfully described in a comment yesterday, from the opposite perspective (check out the fourth paragraph).

Re:Netflix, Blockbuster, then Netflix again.

[macsox]

huh?

unless your last name is walton, this would get you through maybe eight months of movie watching.

Maybe it's just me...

[MMMDI]

Maybe it's just me, but I've had nothing but good things to say about Netflix since I signed up back in May of 2004. For $18 per month (3 at a time plan), I've always got something to watch sitting on my desk. Granted, I don't go through all three movies per day, but I do get three or four movies per week for the price of one rental ($4.50). The speed has always been great; I can send back a movie on Monday, have them receive it on Tuesday and send out the next one on my list, and have that new disc on my desk by Wednesday. Would I get throttled if I were to receive three discs on Monday, rip them, send them all back on Tuesday, and repeat that process for a few weeks? Probably. But I'd have a whole lot of ripped discs to watch while I waited for the new ones. Thanks to the recent "revelations" from PA, I'm starting to feel like quite the shill with this post. So, to sum it up: yes, they probably should get rid of those "Unlimited!" offers, but if you just want to watch a movie every other night or so, you can not beat Netflix.

Re:Maybe it's just me...

[RandomJoe]

I'm surprised you don't get throttled just doing what you are doing. I signed up in November because I got tired of the dreck on cable and cancelled it. Netflix sent a "free two weeks" flyer so I decided to try them. I had already heard all the fun horror stories, so I went in with my eyes open, but then I wasn't planning on trying to get huge numbers of discs.

The first two weeks were great. I got six per week. I'd get one, watch it that evening, then send it back. Next day they shipped another.

Then I had two movies to send back the same day (2-disc LOTR). According to NF, one arrived the next day, the other not for a WEEK. A few weeks later the same thing happened. Then the first of the year, it's like the tap ran dry. Conincidentally, I had been in a discussion on a forum about favorite movies, and had filled my queue to around 50 or so. Not sure if that contributed to their formula or not, but before then I had been running only 6 in the queue and would add as I returned one. The biggest time delay was supposedly the return shipment. Of course, they blamed the USPS, but I highly doubt it. The returns managed next-day just fine through the pre-Christmas rush.

Two weeks ago they suddenly said it was going to take 2-3 days to get a movie out the door (they acknowledged my return, but didn't send another for 2-3 days), then the movie took 3 days to mail (it shipped clear across the country) and I got ONE movie that week! This past week I got three, two Monday and one Tuesday. I returned one each day Tue, Wed, Thu and so far NF says NONE of them have returned.

Coincidentally, when I went to check the queue this morning I had a big banner across the top saying my email address was invalid. I go to the email page, just hit save, and what do you know a confirmation email popped up in my mailbox. But I _still_ have an "invalid email" banner on their webpage.

Point is, I was doing good to get six per week - not quite one a night - and would be fine with three per week (12 per month) but they are having some real trouble accomplishing that! I'm most certainly not one of these 3-per-day pirates everyone keeps assuming is who gets throttled.

A coworker has been using NF for a long time. He recently decided to try the 8-at-a-time plan, and he said he's actually getting FEWER movies now than he was before!

If Netflix wants to limit people, that's fine. But they need to state that's what they are doing. If they can come up with a minimum cost per movie, and sell it that way, I'm fine with that too, just say so. Can they make money at $2/movie? Still cheaper than the rental store and I don't have to go get it. So say that, I'm happy, they are happy. They need to stop the "unlimited" bullshit and underhanded juggling acts.

Re:Maybe it's just me...

[MMMDI]

First off, I love forgetting to hit that preview button before posting. Made my post look so nice, it did.

Anywho... a disclaimer before this reply: I do not work for Netflix, and as such, I have no access to the numbers they use to determine anything. What follows is pure speculation, based on personal experience and reports from friends.

You didn't say which plan you're on, but I'm thinking that the three-out plan is a safe assumption based on what you've said. While I entirely agree with your last paragraph, I think that 6-per-week on the three-out plan is a bit unrealistic to expect for any length of time. I'm not saying that you're pirating them if you're getting / wanting that many, but on the three-out plan, you're likely getting close to being an expense to them instead of a profit. It all goes back to that unlimited thing; they really do need to remove that, as I can see your point on that matter.

I don't think that the amount of items in your queue is relevant to their formulas. I've had close to the 500 limit in mine almost since I started (my queue) and as far as I can tell, it was never a factor for me.

If the 2-3 days to ship is the norm for you, then yes, you're definitely being throttled. If they're constantly sending from across the country, then again, I agree with you that that is pretty shitty. It's happened to me a few times (not enough to bitch about, personally), but it's always been with obscure indie titles and such. It's reasonable to expect that they'd have more copies of, say, LOTR sitting around than copies of <obscure indie title>, which would explain shipping it from a distant warehouse that happens to have it at the time.

Again, most of this post is speculation. I don't know their formulas, I don't know how many movies you've been getting, and I don't know if you're getting Hollywood blockbusters or indie titles. Also, again, I agree with your last paragraph... if they'd do away with that silly "Unlimited" word, then all would be good. Just wanted to throw in my personal two cents, since it seemed that all of the comments came from those with negative experiences as of this morning when I replied.

Broken Movies too

[cyranose]

I don't know if I'm the only one with this issue (I doubt it), but the number of scratched/unplayable movies on NetFlix has skyrocketed recently. This last month, I hit the 50% mark (of about 7 movies attempted, 3 retries). Remarkably, the same movie came scratched twice and I'm fairly sure they sent the replacement before they received the original.

I'm wondering if they've discovered that not removing broken disks from circulation lowers their costs too. Not sending me any disks at all would no doubt lower costs even further, as would shutting down the service completely. Or maybe it's just blockbuster renting their movies for "fun."

I'm thinking of marking the painted side of the DVD with a sticker "MARKED AS BROKEN--YOU GOT CHEATED" before I return it next time. If we had enough volunteers doing that, we'd resolve the issue in no time.

Re:Broken Movies too

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a member (about a year ago), they used to have a checkbox on the sleeve of the disc saying you could flag it as a problem disc. I checked around three movies in a five month period as having problems and then noticed that the sleeves had changed - there was no longer a checkbox to flag a problem. Shortly after that, it seemed like I got an increase in problem discs. Perhaps that was just by chance, but it was frustrating. Especially when it happened on the last scene of a dvd. In those cases I wasn't able to skip over the problem area with my dvd player and I was stuck...

Re:Broken Movies too

[Ant2]

I doubt they would do this intentionally. It costs just as much to mail a scratched disk back and forth. If anything, one would be inclined to return the scratched disk sooner than a good disk, thus increasing their costs. Where's the motivation to do that?

Re:Broken Movies too

[Anonymous Coward]

Once I received a disc that had been split completely in half.
It had been superglued back together, but the line was still clearly visible.
Needless to say, the disc was unplayable in my player.

I used to be a pretty heavy volume customer, or at least I thought I was.
I would typically turnaround discs in 24 hours, but I don't think I ever got more than 15 a month.
After a year, I gave up on them.

Re:Broken Movies too

[fuzznutz]

Before I quit Netflix I got a broken disk. I reported it as a broken disk and returned it and received the exact same disk one week later. This disk was split from hub to perimeter and was OBVIOUSLY broken.

I lost half a month on that DVD, because they had begun throttling me and it now was taking a complete week to get my rentals returned and replaced.

Hey Netflix. That's why you lost me as a customer

Re:Broken Movies too

[cyranose]

The savings is in not replacing the disks. I don't know if they pay the Wal*Mart price for DVDs or more since they're renting them out. If they were really smart, they'd have a blanket license for N copies of any given movie and even have the right to burn their own replacement copies on a regular basis. But I doubt it, especially when I've had two separate instances of reporting a movie damaged and getting another equally damaged disk to replace it.

Way overblown

[_LORAX_]

I've had this discussion over and over again with people. It's those "infrequent renters" that make the type of service "heavy renters" like. Netflix, based on revenue in an area, probably processes X DVD's a day. If you are an infrequent renter you jump to the head of the line making sure that you get the movie you want. Heavy renters OTOH might face small delays. This problem is conounded when a regional center is going through a capacity issue and the heavy users will be the first to notice the problem, and the first to leave freeing up the system for regular users.

I use netflix, I would consiter myself a regular->heavy renter getting 3-5 disks/week. But I don't rent new releases. I rent older titles and I rent TV shows. Most of the new releases I am either picking up myself or I can wait to watch them. I consiter the service a "good deal" since it's half as much as I would pay to the local BB or HV to rent those movies and they just show up at the house.

The glory days when netflix was running a loss, when all the distribution centers were new, is over and people should get used to it. The only problem that I have is that netflix need to be a little more transparent in their processes and advertising. Even just using the same disclaimer that the ISP used "*unlimited rentals limited by mail speed and shipping capacity".

Re:Way overblown

[kylef]

I use netflix, I would consiter myself a regular->heavy renter getting 3-5 disks/week.

I have the top-of-the-line rental plan (3 at a time), and if I send the movies back in the mail on the same day I receive them (yes, I've tested this out), I max out at 14 movies per month, or roughly 3.2 movies per week.

There is no way you're getting 5 movies per week from Netflix. And that sucks. I can watch 5 movies in one slow weekend. Unlimited my ass. Selling me something under misleading terms pisses me off considerably.

Re:netflix

[netwired]

Get real,I am a so called "heavy user". I do not watch movies all day, I work for a living. I am on the 3 movie plan @ $20 per month and I am lucky to get 3 movies in a week. The price per movie still isn't bad but its not what they advertised. Because I usually watch the movie I receive the same day I receive it, they route my movies to me from other states - even across the country. The last movie I returned was on Tuesday, this is Saturday, still no replacement movie.

NF is still a good deal.

[FreeBSDon]

We are NF customers and we turn around four movies in a night. Q> How? You must be pirating movies.... A> No, I am married and have two teenage daughters. Each person has different preferences in movies. Q> How can you possibly watch four movies in a night? A> Easy. I own at least five televisions between two homes and if you think about it I am getting a decent deal. Q> How? A> Not paying for four adults to get into the local movie house saves me $32.00 per movie. Buying popcorn, candy and soft drinks at the wholesale club saves me over $40.00 per movie. Not spending an arm and a leg on a movie like 'Humpback Mountain'... PRICELESS!!!

Where to begin?

[bigtallmofo]

Face it, they're just trying to slow down the DVD pirates

Made up facts sure are convenient, but that doesn't make them true. More likely, what Netflix is doing is trying to reduce their shipping charges by taking steps to limit their advertised "unlimited" movie rentals per month. Both are speculation. Which one is more likely?

It does look damn suspicious for a guy to turn around 3-5 movies a day

I suggest you look at the data at the Netflix Queue Tracker. People are apparently getting throttled for getting as few as 6 movies per month. That's a little less than the 90-150 movies per month you're quoting as being suspicious.

the DVD pirates are turning around 10-15 discs a week (or more).

Where in the world are you getting these numbers? I challenge anyone to turn around 10 to 15 discs a week (or more) with Netflix. Maybe if you're on the 8 at a time plan, this might be possible. With the three at a time plan, you're lucky to turn over 6 discs a week. That's assuming you're not being throttled at all. Is it unreasonable to speculate that someone that doesn't have cable and doesn't watch broadcast TV might watch one movie per night? (and even take off a night every week!) No, they must be a pirate.

Re:Where to begin?

[microbrewer]

Ive been able to get 9 DVDs out a week on the 3 out rip and return plan .

Saturday postage delivery\pickup fixes that .

You get 3 on Monday you rip Monday Night return tuesday you get 3 on Wednesday or Thursday the DVDs return thursday or friday and then another are delivered 3 usualy on a Satuarday .

9 Out a week is not hard to do do if you are dilligent Ive got plenty of value out of Netflix .....

Nice business plan

[Bud]

This is just the way to succeed! Build up a customer base around your current service level, then improve your margins by degrading the service.

1. Piss off your most devoted customers
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

--Bud

Re:Nice business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think 'devoted customers' == 'heavy users'? From what I can tell, this would actually improve the service for the majority of customers and and degrade it only for the small percentage who are heavy users. People are devoted for various reasons and some of those reasons may have nothing to do with how many dvds they can cycle through in a month.

Weird Netflix Story

[TallMatthew]

I rented a movie from them a few years ago and mistakenly returned a Rolling Stones CD in the envelope. The DVD player went unused for months. When I went to do something with it, I found their DVD and wondered what the deal was. They had processed the return as if nothing happened. One of those mysteries of life ... this is what I figured.

About a year later, I got an envelope from them in the mail. It had the Stones CD in it. My guess is the DVD I rented wasn't that popular, and had just then been sent to someone, who subsequently discovered my Stones CD and sent it back to Netflix. I thought it showed something they actually bothered to return it.

Re:Weird Netflix Story

[leland242]

A colleague of mine had the same experience- she returned a movie she owned instead of a movie she rented. She emailed them and a week or so later, they sent her movie back.

I was fascinated that they could even find it or that they didn't add her disk into thier rental rotation.

Easier workaround

[TallMatthew]

Install BitTorrent and go to PirateBay, ISOHunt or some other wonderful web site.

He who has the gold...

[jpellino]

... makes the rules.

Reed needs to understand that a survey that says "they're a bargain" can coexist with the one that says "they're evil bad".

They can justify this all they want, but it's the equivalent of the folks at a Blockbuster store seeing you come in for the 3rd time that week, scooping armfuls of new DVDs off the shelf and yelling "Hide! Everybody hide!" and ducking under the counter. How professional. "Cheese Shop" sketch anyone?

Plus the agreement you enter into contains such nice phrases as "We do not process returns or deliveries on Saturdays, Sundays or Holidays." Great. Even less than "banker's hours" Yes, that can't ship USPS on two of these days, but they can certainly pick and pack.

An then there's "We reserve the right to terminate or restrict your use of our service, without notice, for any or no reason whatsoever." IANAL but can they really think that will hold up? Does "any" include because I'm black/white/brown/yellow/man/woman? "No" of course means we don't have to remember the reason or tell you.

My current problem with them is their relationship with the USPS - I've had two DVDs disappear on the way back, one delayed two weeks, and another arrived envelope only, nothing inside. All on the same route, ourgoing on the same drop box. They calim until there's 6 incidents at the same address, they can'd do anything. USPS says they're all wet - they'll invstigate anything they're asked to. Also - Netflix envelopes can't go thru standard sortin equipment - the PO has to cull them and send them thru another way - prolly helps that they're bright red. That explains a lot of mangling, according to both them and the USPS local office.

Beyond that, there's also a secret magic number of delivery incidents that will get you kicked out. I may find it out at the hands of a local postal employee's good time. So who do i tick off?

Re:He who has the gold...

[db32]

Uhm you aren't right at all about the blockbuster thing. Netflix pays shipping costs for the whole thing. So if you are renting enough movies to cause them to lose money in shipping, they sure as hell have a right to be upset. So they are quite justified, and this isn't even remotely similar to your run and hide scenario.

The other part about cancelling your service...well...you are dealing with a private business, not the government. The government doesn't say they have to do business with you for any reason, the government is typically only concerned with hiring practices. They can tell you to go away because they don't like the color of your hair, the hat you wear once in a while...your shoe size...they can quit doing business with you for pretty much any reason they want, and the same goes for you. So absolutely yes will that hold up. Or businesses could pull the reverse on you and say you can't cancel and just happily charge you forever more.

I have heard some nasty stories about the USPS with all of this...hell just heard a story not long ago about a woman who yanked the DVDs out of every envelope on her route, threw them away in the same dumpster every day, and by the time she got caught it was a couple hundred DVDs. So I'd scream at the post office about it...it seems to be a fairly common crime with all the DVDs flying through the mail, and tampering with the mail is a pretty serious offense.

Re:He who has the gold...

[jpellino]

Let's see - Netflix makes movies unavailable to me because I rent a lot. If a brick and mortar store did the same thing, how would *you* see it being done? I'm trying to frame it in an analogy against a traditional service - there is an ugly trend for new business models to do things you could never get away with in the transparent world - and this is one of them.

Netflix is paying all the shipping? Out of what funds? They have some secret money that's not accounts receivable from customers that they use to pay shipping? Of course not. We pay them to provide a service. Flatten it. If you want us to pay more because you forgot to do the math on frequent renters - put in a sliding scale.

What's to stop them from tipping the scales and stopping or throttling service for certain zip codes, demographics, etc. So if they all of a sudden decide to stop renting to blacks and say "no reason" this is OK? Just because they're not a government agency in the act of hiring people? A dear friend of mine learned an amazing level of bladder control so that she didn't have to drag her young daughter into the black bathroom in a department store in Hartford CT well into the 60's. We stopped that, remember? Businesss practices need to be fair, partly to be even handed and also that they won't be along for very long.

Re:He who has the gold...

[db32]

That was kinda the point. Netflix uses incoming money, to sustain the rentals. People who chew threw rentals to the point where Netflix is causing them to spend more on shipping than they are making are te 'bad' customers. I think it would probably make more sense to do a sliding scale price too, and it would garner alot less backlash, but ultimately it really is their choice.

You can't compare the situation to a brick and mortar store, because YOU pay the cost of DVD 'shipping' to your home and back. If you want your analogy to be accurate, your video store has to pay for your gas and wear on your vehicle, and your time driving.

Relating this to racism and segragation is largley irrelivent. If you remember, it was ILLEGAL for blacks to use white restrooms, busses, fountains, etc. The government enforced those laws...civil rights was about finally getting the government to quit doing that. A private business owner can still tell you to get out of their place for any reason he wants, and it is enforcable through trespassing laws. Its his private property and he can set whatever rules he wants. My point is, when you say "do you think that would stand up" the answer is absolutely yes, go around and look at your local business places, many of them will have those little signs posted about their right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.

Netflix has throttled deliveries for years...

[BostonRob]

...and this went around as a discussion on /. several years ago.

A quick scan of google reveals a 2nd site for shipping times and estimated Netflix costs: http://netflix.frogcircus.org/ As a Netflix customer, I've experienced this first hand. After a the first honeymoon month with Netflix where all movies arrived in two days (one shipping back to Netflix, the 2nd returning to me), they slowed down my shipments. I understand the economics behind the decision; you cannot give more then $18 per month to the USPS in shipping costs or you will fail as a business model, but I struggle with their false advertising practices.

Will I cancel? No, because living 20 minutes from the nearest movie store (Blockbuster at that!) combined with the Netflix depth of movie selection, supporting my wife's interest in French films with my interest in series shows, makes them the best option by far. Being busy professionals, the service allows us to maximize our spare time.

I will happily switch services when one is presented which offers the same type of easy service and costs. Anyone?

It seems Netflix is doing the right thing

[db32]

So what? They throttle the highest volume users. ISPs do that all the time and noone is bitching, but you are still paying a flat monthly rate. However, how many people here are honestly turning around that many movies that quickly? I can see 1 maybe 2 per day being watched assuming you have a job that actually pays for your NF subscription and all. If they are shipping out most of their movies to the guys who rip and return, that would also mean that the honest customers are less likely to recieve THEIR movies in a timely fashion. So its ok to screw the honest ones to help the pirates, but not ok to screw the pirates to help the honest ones? I am sure there are a few people out there that actually watch DVDs at that high rate, but I would venture to say with some certainty that the vast majority of them are doing nothing but rip and return.

I have no problem with this

[Weasel5053]

I have been a Netflix subscriber since the service started. I have gone through phases where I turned around movies immediately and went through many in a month. I have also gone through phases where an entire month goes by and I send nothing back. I have never experienced "shipping delays" and always get something sent to me out of my queue even if it is not my first choice. In fact shipping times have gotten better and better (down to next day now) as they add distribution locations and the price has gone *down*.

Netflix clearly has a limited number of each title. When multiple subscribers have requested the same movie why shouldn't the subscriber who hasn't returned a movie for 3 weeks be given priority for first choice over the guy who is ripping and has already gotten 20 movies for the month? Odds are that the ripper has a queue 50 movies deep and will be just as satisfied with choice #2.

To those that think Blockbuster is a better alternative please switch immediately and give it a shot. I did. You'll be back.

Jealous Much ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought so. Must be hard to be over 40 something and never get laid. I'm so sorry that you wildest fantasies ride on 15 guys raping a happy couple.

Re:Jealous Much ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought so. Must be hard to be over 40 something and never get laid. I'm so sorry that you wildest fantasies ride on 15 guys raping a happy couple.

LOLOLOLOLO!!!!!

even though it was obvious that the guy who posted the original comment was trying to brag that he's finally able to get a girl (i'm willing to bet he's at least 40), your response said a lot more about you than it did about him.

you are so incredibly pathetic. it's blindingly obvious you are either a huge loser who can't get any poon-tang or you're secretly a turd burglar in denial. either way, you're still a faggot and i hope you get molested by your father (again) ;p

have a nice day!

Re:Allah Ackbar!

[Anonymous Coward]

put away your bomb and crawl back into your cave.

The bunker busters are comming!

Awesome

[seanvaandering]

It's about time someone who legitimately uses the service spoke up! The MPAA must be falling all over themselves reading this forum, with all these people, "DVDShrink"ing for backup purposes, when clearly, people are blatently copying. How can people justify calling it a backup when you don't own the actual copy? I've got friends, that just last night my wife spoke to, that said they regularly "burn" rentals. I just about fell off my chair - these people barely know how a computer works - but they know how to burn a DVD.

NetFlix knows this - it's their BUSINESS to know. The only issue really, is that they didn't make it clear they were actively combatting this issue. Either from pressure from the MPAA, or pressure from their shareholders for increased profits/holding the line, at this point, I'd be more inclined to take Door #2.

As with any popular service, it's always the people who complain the loudest, that make up the smallest group. Can someone rent 10 movies a week and justify it not due to ripping and burning? Sure, but it's a very small minority. Essentially, as other have said before, they need to either 1. Shut up and deal with it or 2. Move on and thank $diety that it lasted for as long as it has.

Reality is a cruel mistress

[EvilNecro]

Well, I'm sure I will get flamed for this, but...

Lets not forget the whole purpose of Netflix, which is, of course, to generate a PROFIT. Try and stick with me on that for a second, we'll come back to this concept. Remember that businesses don't exist to serve the customer, only the owners/shareholders. It's the way it works.

Now, it's 39 cents one way for a letter here in the US, add in an envelope and some processing overhead, and we can safely assume $1 per rental COST to Netflix to rent you a DVD.

Now, if you pay $18/month, as soon as you hit 18 rentals, you are costing the company money, which, referring back to the 1st axiom of business, is contrary to its purpose, and hence a Very Bad Thing

Now I know a metric ton of you are going to come out saying "but they promised unlimited..." yadda yadda yadda. Let's be real, you aren't morons, you know that unlimited means no such thing. There is NO FREE LUNCH! if you think otherwise, go click on the free ipod/punch the monkey/whatever banners...

Further, I think we can reasonably assume that most of us can do math, and work out the profit point as above.

When a business run by competent individuals is failing to generate a profit, there are 2 options, 1) cease operations, or 2) change business practices.

Now I ask you, which would you rather have Netflix do?

And 11 discs for $18 bucks is still a heck of a bargain.

Re:Reality is a cruel mistress

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Now I ask you, which would you rather have Netflix do?

Stop lying in their advertising? Naw, that's crazy talk.

Re:Reality is a cruel mistress

[BLQWME]

"Remember that businesses don't exist to serve the customer, only the owners/shareholders. It's the way it works". Well Einstein, thank you for enlightening the masses. You must have gone to bidness skewl or sumting. 'Cuz that's the kind of BULLSHIT they teach there. Since when is it acceptable to change the terms of an agreement? My creditors don't give a rat's ass if I want to change the terms of an agreement. I have to live with their agreements or face legal action. "There is NO FREE LUNCH!" You obviously have never worked for or around the government or even better- been a CEO of a company. We're talking smorgasboard here buddy. Corporations are a parasite feeding off of their hosts (oops I mean customers). The people lost the game when corporations were given more rights than people. I am perpetually amazed at the "evil" corporations inflict on society and by the number of business school grads who reply with your above statement. Get a fucking clue and open your eyes! Come back next week and I'll post my manifesto ;)

Re:Reality is a cruel mistress

[RandomJoe]

Actually, what I would like them to do is offer a per-disc plan for higher-volume viewers like me. (Gawd, I can't believe watching 3-5 movies in a week is HIGH VOLUME! But I'm most definitely getting throttled!)

Come up with a price that gives them a decent profit - say, $2 per movie - then charge me that. Wow, metered service, whodathunkit. Then I can be assured of receiving 6-7 movies in a week (one a day, I don't have cable) and they aren't stingy about it because they are assured of making their money.

Instead, I'm not guaranteed anything because if I return two in the same day, they'll hold onto one and not check it in until a week later. Last few weeks, I've had nothing to watch over the weekend. Two weeks ago I got all of ONE movie in the whole week!

I agree, the price is great even at 11 for $18. And no one else seems to beat their selection (I've been getting some really old movies). I'm upset with the spotty, crappy delivery, which is apparently caused by their throttling algorithm.

Re:Reality is a cruel mistress

[fuzznutz]

Remember that businesses don't exist to serve the customer, only the owners/shareholders. It's the way it works.

Huh???? What business school did you flunk out?

If you don't serve your customers, you don't have a business. You have a hobby.

When a business run by competent individuals is failing to generate a profit, there are 2 options, 1) cease operations, or 2) change business practices.

No argument here. The problem is that Netflix advertised a particular service that they failed to deliver. When they were called on it, they denied it until a lawsuit was filed for deceptive business practices. Blockbuster got burned for their "No More Late Fees" horseshit the same way.

Netflix relies on the insurance model. They expect to average out the costs for the heavy renters with the light renters and make a profit. The problem is that they decided unilaterally to ration in order to skew the playing field and increase profits. If they could get away with it, it is better PR than raising prices. The problem is that they didn't get away with it and now EVERYBODY knows.

As a customer I can accept the new reality or I can (and did) take my business elsewhere. They face PR problems on that front too. Anybody that asks me about Netflix gets the story about throttling. I was throttled and I was only renting about three DVDs a week.

I see netflix is following zip's lead

[j_snip]

I am a http://zip.ca/ subscriber, and about a month ago received notification of a rent-volume-cap, wherein anything over a certain number of rentals per month (in my case, at the 4-DVD level, the cap is set at 11) gets billed a surcharge (don't quite remember now, but I beleive it was around $2.50-3.00)

It kind of ticked me off, until I realized that, in the half-year or so that we've been members, we've only once hit, never mind passed, the cap-point.

Seems that there are some heavy users in the dvd-mailout business cutting too heavily into the profit margins, eh?

Nice to see a Canadian corporation lead the way once again ;-)))

Re:I see netflix is following zip's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Zip for about a year now and have been getting around 20-25 DVDs a month from them. I live in the same city as a distribution center and it takes generally 1-2 days turnound. Since I got notice of the 11 DVD cap, I decided to use my rewards points to get an extra DVD this month before it takes effect. They are now shipping me 6 DVDs as fast I as I can send them back. Thanks, Zip!

alternatives to netflix

[einer]

Obviously there's blockbuster and walmart. Try greencine.com for more independant films (and porn). Or gameznflix.com does both games (for every current console) and movies.

netflix theft

[kevin.fowler]

The article disappeared from my local paper's news site... but in 2005 the number one target of postal theft was netflix movies, both in-house and between there and the customer.

I have a $10 plan. When I'm watching shows, I usually have the envelope in the mail at the end of the same day I get it. I try to get through shows as quickly as possible, so as to keep it feeling linear. I've had times where I turned around the single DVD the same day I got it for almost 2 weeks (Band of Brothers/From the Earth to the Moon/The Office) and I did not see a hit in service.

Goodbye Netflix, Hello Blockbuster

[DoubleN]

For a while now I had noticed that I was getting items at the bottom of my queue and that they were shipping a lot slower than before. This, coupled with the fact that a good number of disks that I receive from Netflix arrive completely scratched, prompted me to join Blockbuster this month. Within one day, I received 3 movies, none of which were scratched. I guess we'll see how long the honeymoon lasts, but with Blockbuster offering 3 movies at a time AND 1 coupon each week for instore rentals, I think this is going to be a better way to go. I understand Netflix's desire to maintain profits, but they seem to be targetting a good portion of their core loyal fan base with this move and only time will tell if it ends up hurting their profits in addition to their reputation.

Getting out more instead

[beforewisdom]

If you a person is watching that many movies maybe it would be better for her to think about getting out more or doing the things people complain about "not having time" for:

1. getting or maintaining a romantic relationship
2. losing weight
3. overthrowing the bush administration
4. linux from scratch
5. mowing the lawn

Re:Getting out more instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see -

1. Already happily married
2. Happy with my weight
3. Going to jail isn't on my list of things to do
4. Don't care about linux
5. Its January, the lawn's under the snow.

And if you are posting on slashdot dictating to people what they should with their time that would better fit your goals, then I suggest you find a better hobby and go mow your own damn lawn.

My only problem...

[Quiet_Desperation]

...is that the post office has started beating the crap out of my Netflix envelopes. Anyone else seeing this? I had one arrive as just the paper flap with a sticker saying"this is all we received" put on by the post office.

I had to report it missing, and emailed Netflix a scan of the flap in the hopes they might look into it. All I can figure is maybe a disgruntled Netflix customer at the local P.O. Hey, whoever you are, it's not my fault. Leave my DVDs alone. :(

Losing Movies in the Mail

[KonoWatakushi]

After I experienced the unacceptably slow service that many people mentioned, I decided to cancel my membership. Conveniently, all the movies that I had in my possession were "lost" in the mail on the way back to Netflix. If it were one movie, I *might* believe it, but short of someone driving off with a Mailbox, or the earth swallowing it up, I think this is highly unlikely. Perhaps this is Netflix policy, I don't know. At the time though, there was absolutely no contact information provided. In any case, return your movies before you cancel!

Re:Losing Movies in the Mail

[Teddy_Roosevelt]

What good would it do to "return all your movies before you cancel"? They'd just immediately mail out three more.

Booooo

[Pooldraft]

Boooooo, profit wins again. When will we realize that a system that looks at profit as its main objective is not sustainable. But o well let them suck you of your wealth.

They Are Not the Only Ones

[JenovaSynthesis]

Blockbuster cancelled my account because of too many issues involved with shipping. Those issues stemmed from the fact they have illiterate morons working in their shipping department who apparently cannot read numbers 1-9 correctly.

Statistical information about throttling

[tom_gram]

As a netflix user, throttling is something that i have experienced, and am frustrated with. But my biggest problem with netflix's approach is not that they throttle, but that they claim ignorance, through emails and advertising, of what many of us have clearly observed. I would be much happier as a customer if I knew, in detail, what their usage policy was and how it was implemented.

Scouring the net to try to learn what I could about their throttling practices, I found the following site: "An Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System"

http://dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/

It contains, by far the best information I could find regarding throttling. It includes enough data to actually draw reasonable conclusions about some of the thresholds that netlflix uses for limiting rentals. It has allowed my to adjust my use to almost always get sent new releases.

Re:Statistical information about throttling

[NoWhereMan]

Scouring the net to try to learn what I could about their throttling practices, I found the following site: "An Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System"

I too have been looking for data about this practice. I found hackingnetflix where there were plenty of complaints. One person sent back 5 DVDs in the same return slip. When Netflix got them, they sent an email saying the first DVD arrived. On the next day, a second email arrived saying the second DVD was received. On the third day a third email was sent even though all 5 DVDs arrived on the first day. I will check out the link you provided to see if more of this deceptive behaviour is documented. Netflix is free to run their business in any way they see fit, but they should not lie about limiting the rentals through these throttling techniques.

I can personally testify about how slow they are now compared to the first few months. Last week it took them over 7 days to record the DVDs I sent back. I actually reported one of them as lost and they sent an email acknowledging receipt of it a few days later. This compares to the overnight delivery I previously saw.

This bait and switch tactic seems to be well documented. During the trial period, the service is great and the expectations rise. After a few months, they decide you have been getting too many DVDs and the service slows down. Now the DVDs come two or three days late. I wonder if the account is permanently tagged or if we can hold the DVDs longer to return to the previous higher quality service ;-)

Why is earning a profit bad?

[weedenbc]

Seriously folks, why is everyone jumping on Netflix for actually earning a profit? Is making money now considering evil? They still provide a great service and those who want to "abuse" it (maybe push the envelope is a better term) cost them money. So they throttle that behavior back. Big deal.

Would you rather that Netflix bled money and eventually went under? Or were bought by Blockbuster? Does anyone remember the extrememly shady business practices that Blockbuster used before they had competition in Netflix? Can you imagine life where you choice was Blockbuster (free to go back to old tactics) and DRMd video on demand from your cable company that you had to pay for every time you watched and couldn't copy?

As one of the heavy users affected by this I'm not thrilled. But I will be one to admit I was abusing the service by ripping copies as soon as the movies arrived and sending them back. So I cannot blame Netflix for this. If you do, you are a hypocrite. You are abusing a service provided by a company to make illegal copies of products you don't own, and then when they do something about it you bitch and moan. Now, I'm sure there are a few out there who will reply with "But I actually watch 25 movies a month". Rest assured that you are a tiny portion of the user base. I feel sorry for you but what did you really expect? Everything for free?

Netflix, as a company whose goal is TO MAKE A PROFIT and not provide us will unlimited movies, has every right to do this. They either throttle heavy users, or charge more for subscriptions and/or excessive postage. We as users have every right to not user their service.

Re:Why is earning a profit bad?

[fuzznutz]

Seriously folks, why is everyone jumping on Netflix for actually earning a profit?

That's not the reason everyone is "jumping on Netflix." It's because of bait-and-switch. They advertise and offer a service, but they deliver something else. It's the dishonesty, not the profit motive that everbody hates.

How it seems to work.

[weaklink]

I've been a happy customer with Netflix for a year and a half or so. I recently canceled my account with them but thats because I can not get the postman to take my returning netflix movies. So I canceled rather than trying to deal with the guys supervisor, and have to worry about my incoming mail arriving. Anyway... my lifes problems aren't the point of this post.

During that year and a half, I noticed that my movies started coming slower. I figured they had an algorithm to keep the flow of DVD's at a rate that kept their profits at a certain point. This didn't seem like a big deal to me, all you can eat... isn't... unlimited bandwidth... isn't... so it would stand to reason unlimited rentals would follow the same pattern.

However if Netflix was using an algorithm, that would mean that by changing my behavior I could maximize my return. Now I didn't try to make a thesis, or even write down data, so take my results with a grain of salt.

I learned that how many movies you send is the most important variable. I had a three at a time account and then went to a five at a time account to see if that would get me faster results. What I found is that the recieving time didn't change. I recieved my "We got the DVD" email from Netflix no matter how many DVD's I sent back. This allowed me to factor out the post office.

I have a taste for indy movies, weird Japanese movies, and Samurai flicks, so I never had any notice for waiting times as my movies were not in as high demand. When I wanted more popular movies it was not irregular to have a notice saying there was a short or long wait. So I could factor out other user demand.

So I tryed various schemes from sending one movie a day to sending all five at once, but only once a week. Effectively this is almost the same thing. The first method was sending 6 movies a week the second was sending 5 movies a week. One movie a day kicked once a weeks butt. When I sent one a day, Netflix would send me a message the next day that it had recieved my movie, would ship it out that day, and I'd recieve it the day after. To be more clear, I put it in the mail on Monday, recieved emails on Tuesday, recieved DVD on Wensday. So one day there, one day back.

When I sent 5 movies I would recieve the email notices from Netflix the next day that they were recieved, but typically would not have any movies shipped for two to three days, and that would be one or two, the rest would trickle in after. To make that more clear, I if I put them in on Monday, I recieved email on Tuesday, a movie or two Friday, a movie or two Saturday, and typically what was left on Monday, but sometimes not till Tuesday. This means 10 movies equals something like two and a half to three weeks. Remember I was sending them all together to test response times, so I wouldn't finish watching the last movie until Tuesday or Wensday. Sending them every day 10 movies equals about a week and a half. So sending them all at once was twice as slow.

The delay from sending the mean average of 3 movies at once seemed to be on par with sending 5. What I mean by that is it tended to be two days delay rather than three days at 5. 2 movies seemed to incure a one day delay.

I don't claim to know their algorithm, but it seems like functionally it is near: delay time = (# of movies shipped) - 1

So my recommendation would be figure out how many movies you want on hand, and add two, and that would be the plan to get.

I'd love to hear if other people had the same or differing experiences.

Re:How it seems to work.

[Midwestgeek]

While I do agree that the purpose of ANY business is to generate a profit, I also think that their business plan should have included an estimate of cost per user for every number of rentals per month that is logically possible.

(The numbers in this ex. are all made up)
Let's say that using fastest-case USPS delivery, it would be possible for a user to rent 23 movies per month. Okay, now what are NF's gross revenues, shipping costs, etc. for each rental level, 1 to 23 movies per month? This gives them their breakeven point beyond which they lose money. Suppose they find that users that rent 11 or more DVDs/mo cost them money, 10 or less rentals still earn them money.

Okay, let's use COMMON SENSE here (something that must not have been available at NF in the early days): NF SHOULD have advertised that you can rent up to 10 movies per month (or whatever the actual breakeven point is for them). They could have offered a higher price point (where they still make $) for more frequent renters--and a lower one for infrequent renters. You have then stratified your customers based on usage.

Now, the customer knows exactly what the limits are and is happy. When you tell people up front what the deal is, it's fair. When you overpromise and undeliver (which is basically what NF did), you PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!

Guess what? This idea took less time for me to think up than it took to toast my pop tarts. If I can come up with a simple idea like this, then so can75% of the population. Out of curiousity, how many of you had a similar idea germinating in your heads? My next recommendation would be to fire the geniuses that didn't come up with this. Okay, that's all for now...my pop tarts are getting cold.

Re:How it seems to work.

[the eric conspiracy]

My experience has been that you maximize turnover by sending the movies back as soon as possible. If you send back 1 or two movies they will ship back 1 or two shipped immediately. If you send in 3 movies you will usually get 2 movies shipped back next day, or sometimes you will get 3 movies shipped back immediately. More than three movies - same answer as 3 movies, most of the time. HOWEVER if you send in four or more once in a while you will get back more then 3 - not often, but it has happened to me. Now the weekend appears to be a special case - if you return 2 movies Friday, and three Saturday, Netflix will get all 5 on Monday - and sometimes they will send out 5 the same day - always at least 3.

Now once in a while the computer gets pissed and doesn't acknowledge the return, and you have to wait 6 days to file a shipping problem - then blammo it gets found. Or the computer decides to ship from the other side of the country. But that is why I have a slightly higher membership level than I might otherwise need so this kind of punshment doesn't throw off my schedule.

Re:How it seems to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. It took you 2 minutes to come up with your idea. But ideas are cheap. What you don't know is if it'll work as you expect, or if it'll end up driving off customers and forcing your company to lay off its employees. Sometimes the world doesn't conform to what one person thinks makes sense. Let me know when you put this into practice and kick Netflix's butt. When that happens, then you'll actually deserve your pop tarts.

Re:How it seems to work.

[innocent_white_lamb]

so this kind of punshment
 
Why are you, a paying customer, deserving of punishment?
 
  Are things so bad in "corporateland" that the customers must now submit to punishment?
 
"Thank you sir, may I have another."
 
Just wondering....

Re:How it seems to work.

[Midwestgeek]

My point is, if this idea was so obvious to me, it should have been obvious to them as well. It should have been figured into their business plan.

Any time a company is providing a product or service, they should figure out in ADVANCE how much money they will make/lose.
Net_revenue_per_customer =
Rental_fee - (#_of_movies_rented_per_month x shipping_cost).
Solve for (#_of_movies_rented) = 1 to 30.

Maybe they did figure this out, but they made a bad assumption that "most people won't rent that many in a given month". Still, you solve for your worst case scenario and allow for it in your plans. (I buy insurance for this reason)

If they had figured this into their plans, and the heavy renters didn't go for the higher-priced level, they'd have made more money from the infrequent renters.

Even if they didn't plan ahead, a better way to fix it would be to come up with tiered rental levels, inform everyone of the new plans, ask them which level they'd like to be at, and continue from there. They would end up keeping only customers that they made money on.

The shitty, sneaky method they used (and continue to use) to delay shipments cost them a class-action lawsuit and more bad publicity than Blockbuster could have ever dreamed of buying.

I'm fine with not getting my first choice....

[TrentL]

I can handle it if they want to give the hot new movies to newer customers and make me wait for a couple weeks. OK, fine. I just wish they'd send me SOMETHING instead of sitting on my DVD for a day. Send me one of my rare choices. And yes, I do have a life outside DVDs, but I practically NEVER watch TV these days, so DVDs are usually my night's entertainment (except for Mythbusters, BattleStar Galactica, and South Park).

I'm glad they are doing this...

[codefungus]

If you are NF, and you see that this is happening, wouldn't you do the same? What could happen is that people (I know of people who do this, personally), go nuts renting movies, they burn them, add them to their collection, share with their friends. NF loses money because of this. NF doesn't do anything, then all of a sudden the MPAA gets involved. The MPAA has to decide 1) Make DVD's illegal, 2) Uses it as an excuse to come up with new laws for DRM 3) Decides they can make money somehow by making DVD's super expensive (Kind of like how the government makes a lot of money on smokers through tobacco taxes).

I hope it works. I use netflix and I don't feel like this is effecting me in a bad way.

Worth a suit to force a change

[Anonymous Coward]

A business that is collecting fees from a customer and intentionally chooses to delay the production of the paid for service is stealing in my book.

What Netflix is saying is that profits come before customer service. To what degree is it reasonable to expect they will go? If they can just figure out how to throttle everyone to just four movies per month, we will triple our profits! Let's try it!

Any business that intentionally steals the time-value of money and cuts back on service to maximize profits should be drummed out of business by customers fleeing and by the harsh reality of a court room.

I am no fan of frivolous lawsuits, but I take all of this as a flat out corporate policy to steal.

The bottomline is that if I have movies in my queue and have returned part of my allotment and I am due a replenishment, it should be shipped immediately if it is available, based on the order of my queue priority, as provided as a function of the service.

Workaround

[damneinstien]

I tried Netflix a couple of years ago and hated the service. Then I discovered my local library. They have a plethora of movies and for $1 a pop, its not bad. They don't even mind if you take your laptop over and watch the movie in the library for free.

Netflix now evil?

[Lord Apathy]

Netflix used to be one of the three companies that I thought could do no wrong. The other two where Sony and Google. The jury is still out on Google, but Sony can burn in hell for all I care. Seems like a company starts off alright but as they get bigger they start to turn evil.

I go through Netflix movies like shit through a goose so I guess that I'm on their heavy movie user shit list. Not really going to worry about it I guess. Most of the movies have been sucking so bad this year there is almost no new release that I'm really hot to get. Any new releases that I'm really really hot to get I usually buy anyway. I suppose that I can afford to wait an extra week or two for any other new releases.

Besides, right now I'm mostly watching old TV shows and anime on netflix anyway. Not much of a wait on those titles.

Letter Sent to Netflix; Terms of Service Excerpt

[decomp]

My wife and I have been using Netflix since Nov. 2004, and we have experienced a marked decline in service over that time. Having just learned about the "throttling", we sent them the following letter:

I have just been alerted to your new changes in the "Terms of Service" regarding heavy users. Personally, I am appalled by the intent and also the wording of this recent change.

Perhaps you have serious abusers of your system, but my husband and I are teachers who work 12 hour days. Watching movies is one of our only luxuries. We have seen our level of service go down significantly since we signed on with Netflix. Now we understand why.

After reading some enlightening articles about Netflix and its practices, we will be seriously considering whether or not to keep our relationship with you.

Most importantly, we will no longer be suggesting your service to family and friends, which we have done many times in the past. Instead, we will be sending copies of the articles concerning your business practices to family and friends who already have the service so that they might be aware of what's going on.

For what it's worth: We would have been happy to pay a reasonable surcharge in months when we rented more DVDs. What your company has chosen to do instead is offensive and insulting.

Here are some eye-opening parts of their terms of use:

We make no guaranty as to the shipping and delivery of DVDs and may, in our sole and absolute discretion, change our business practice regarding allocation, delivery and shipping, without notice. We may from time to time revise these Terms of Use but we will not necessarily provide you notice of the revisions. It is up to you to review the Terms of Use frequently to determine if there have been changes.

They send us emails about everything else...but they can't bother letting us know when the terms of use have changed? Something smells bad here...

Wow man calm down....

[Tranvisor]

I was just relating my own personal experience with NF and the particulars of their irrational 'throttling' procedure. That is what this thread is supposed to be about right? I wouldn't have posted if I didn't think I had a unique experience to share.

I never provided any of the stuff I rented to bittorrent or anything. I'm just busy with work and wanted to watch the DVD's on my own schedule. It may be copyright infringment I guess, but it has to be like the tamest kind. I'm not downloading, I am actually paying to rent the stuff.

Re:Wow man calm down....

[kalbzayn]

Does fair use allow you to make copies of something you rent so you can time shift when you watch it? If not, then it is really isn't any more tame than any other kind of copyright infringement. I doubt in your contract explicitly gave you permission to copy them.

Re:Wow man calm down....

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple of things to keep in mind.
1) The DVDs that he is copying from netflix, are digitally marked as rental only. Heck even the silk screen states rental only. So even if he buys it later the digital copy is illegal.

2) What Netflix is trying to do is curb people like him, but at the cost of legitimate users. Given that time between mail pickups is at least 24 hours, it is entirely plausible for a actual viewing of 3 DVDs within that 24 hour period and for the DVDs to hit the mail system again. I am really curious what their algorithm is for determining a heavy user.

Re:Wow man calm down....

[Anonymous Coward]

The DVDs that he is copying from netflix, are digitally marked as rental only. Heck even the silk screen states rental only. So even if he buys it later the digital copy is illegal.

So how, exactly, does time-shifting a rental differ from time-shifting a movie on cable? Certainly you're not "buying" the latter, either. Time-shifting content you're authorized to view, but don't own the physical media for, should fall under fair use. Or do you also think TIVO should be against the law? Quite frankly, what I do on my own equipment in the privacy of my home is nobody's business but mine, and no one has any right to intrude into my private life by random searches to inspect my hard drive, or however you propose to enforce this "illegal" behavior.

Distributing said content is a different matter. The original poster was not talking about that.

Re:Wow man calm down....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just busy with work and wanted to watch the DVD's on my own schedule.

Hello? Anyone home? That's exactly what Netflix is for. You can keep the movie for a few months if you takes that long to get around to watching it.

I just called Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

...to voice my concern in regards to the changes in their terms and was told by their customer service agent that I should not belive everything I hear/read about them. That comment obviously pissed me off so I went ahead and read her the Terms directly from the Netflix.com website. She finally responded with "I'll go ahead and note your account".

I've been a Netflix subscriber for 3 years now and will not hesitate to cancel if my frequent use slows down my DVD deliveries.

An Alternative

[huntdubie]

I am a current customer of Netflix and recently have been seeing them "slacking" in their shipping. I have wrote them several comments about this with no reply and now I know the reason.

I am switching to Blockbuster. If anyone is like me and they drive by a Blockbuster video store almost every day, you can join their unlimited in store rental service for $30 a month. A bit higher than Netfliand you only get 2 DVD's at a time, but if you DVDShrink them every day, you could easily do at least 10 DVD's a week and feasibly 50 a month!

I currently have about 100 movies in my queue. I think that in about 3 months, I can clear Netflix queue with Blockbuster and by then, the delay in shipments won't be as much of an inconvenience as my queue will be significantly lower.

It may not be within the realm of conventional science but, just a thought.

Re:An Alternative

[TomHandy]

My problem with the in-store Blockbuster would be that they have a paltry selection compared to what you could get from NetFlix or even Blockbuster Online.

Correction

[kylef]

I have the top-of-the-line rental plan (3 at a time)...

Heh, I meant to say *middle-of-the-road* rental plan. Regardless, it's still not "unlimited."

Change is in the air...

[mlantz7]

Netflix can afford to do this to their customers because, for the most part, not enough people are going to notice. When you have millions of subscribers, and you p!ss off the ones who are "taking advantage" of your service, most of your subscribers will never know.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can understand their concern over piracy/copying, but lets look at the big picture here: How many of Netflix subscribers rent 3 to 5 movies per month (or less). They are making big bucks off these folks (just like most "buffets" do).

There are new companies out there now like Redbox that are starting to gain marketshare. And, for those who mainly watch new movies, it is probably a better choice than Netflix. And, right now you can get a lot of free movies from Redbox if you have one nearby (checkout the link above).

So, just as video stores started to lose to Netflix, I believe Netflix will start to lose to these local kiosks.

What will the future hold? Imagine going down to the local McDonald's or supermarket, and sliding your card at the kiosk, and it will burn the movie you want to see on the spot. And, when your done with it you will either have to return it, or it will "self-destruct" after 24 hours...

Re:Change is in the air...

[Anonymous Coward]

Redbox has shitty selection, and you actually have to do something to get the movies. With Netflix and BBO, you just fuck around on a computer and it's there. You put it back in your mailbox and it's returned.

NOTHING NEW

[severdia]

Thisis nothing new at all. I guess they considered me a "power user" or whatever because they slowed shipments and had more and more "lost" DVDs. What's the deal? If I watch a movie each day, that's 30 movies per month. For the film buffs, why is that so crazy or considered "heavy usage"?

Alternative

[Futurepower(R)]

Or, get a DVD from the library, which is also free.

Reading books is the best way to get an education and have fun, too: The New York Time Bestseller list. Once you know the title, use your library's online catalog to reserve the book.

So what's the problem?

[edmicman]

So people who get 3 movies, copy and burn them, and send them all back within 24 hours are getting flagged to be throttled? Oh noes!!! Maybe if you didn't abuse the system, you wouldn't be pissed at losing the free ride, no?

Old News

[tfcdesign]

They have been doing this for at least a year now and already lost a lawsuit regarding it.

Note the site still says "unlimited".

Most Companies do this

[sameeer]

I consider myself a normal user of Netflix, never copy movies, just watch and return. Even in this simple cycle, I end up watching 12-13 movies per month (3 at a time), trigerring off their "throttling" algorithm.. it really sucks, but that is what i've come to expect from companies...

Companies do not take care of the established customers.. Not at all.. It just seems ridiculous to me the deals newcomers get as opposed to the old customers.. Companies are more concerned with trying to get in more people instead of putting in too much effort to keep them around.. Maybe statistically established users are less likely to switch to the competitor, merely out of being used to one company..

I really don't see how anyone can defend them though.. Netflix, after all, is trying to control how many movies you watch.. They are blatantly telling u that they care for u less the more you use their service.. They are telling u its all about the money, they're not gonna be nicer to u with time...

And I still can't get myself to switch to Blockbuster.. and thats why companies know they can take established users for granted...

I am a subscriber, it is happening to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't copy DVDs because I honestly couldn't care less. If I really wanted some bloody DVD I would own it already.

I remember when I signed up for Netflix, I would get discs so fast I was impressed. Now I get one a week (on the "unlimited" 2 disc plan) and am seriously considering cancelling my subscription.

To me Netflix is only a deal when convenience and price are taken into account. By throttling I now pay the same price as a few Blockbuster rentals. At that point, why bother? Blockbuster is down the block if I really give a shit.

Either raise prices or stop promising the fast turnaround. All in all, screams "get a better business model" or the old fashioned "Fraud".

What is a legitimate # of rentals per month?

[x8]

Many families can easily watch 3 movies on a weekend. Split over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, three movies isn't that many, especially if you don't have cable TV. Multiply that by 4 to 5 weekends in a month, and you have 12-15 rentals per month, which netflix considers to be a "heavy user". Shouldn't people who pay for "3 movies at a time" be able to watch three movies a week?

That said, the 3 movies at a time plan is a great value, if only for convenience. If netflix is losing money with a 3 movies a week usage pattern, perhaps they should charge more, rather than throttling. I think legitimate users would be willing to pay a little more. The problem is, the "three at a time" plan is the best plan neflix offers.

Typical

[nurb432]

Provide a service and penalize those that acutally USE it.

At that point you are a liablity.

why yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

...contact the helpful people at AT&T and inquire about licensing some of their exciting video intellectual products!

Ok, back up ...

[Tranvisor]

Ok you're right, "back-up" was incorrect language. What I really meant was "Time-shift". Silly me.

When you time shift brodcast television you don't claim to own the broadcast right? It was on the airways and you were being granted the chance to watch it then so according to fair use you can 'save' it for later and watch it then. Fair use isn't codified anywhere, its a grey area. Renting materials and then time-shifting them for later doesn't sound any different to me then time shifting the last episode of LOST with your Tivo. You are just paying for the content differently, one you pay money for and the other you watch advertising for.

More money

[billcopc]

I'm not a member of Netflix nor their canadian analog Zip, but methinks if you rent 3 movies, then return them the same day you're either NUTS or just plain ripping/burning them. Now we can't paint everyone as a horrible, horrible pirate so maybe offer a slightly pricier plan for these extremists, so that Netflix can stop losing money on the nutjobs and pirates.

I think what pisses me off about these things, is I know people who chew threw 50+ DVD-R discs in a day thanks to online rentals, then sell the copies on the street... AND cash a welfare cheque :P I guess I have a similar attitude to the pirate groups: I can turn a blind eye to someone copying for personal use, but making profit from someone else's work should be capital offense. As a bonus, we'd have a lot less welfare to pay out :D

Copying?

[MichaelKaiserProScri]

Either:

A) The renter has no job, no life, and no girlfriend/wife and watches 3 movies a day every day.

B) He's copying the movies to a hard drive and at best, watching them later or collecting them, and at worst, ripping to MPEG4 or VCD and distributing them.

Frequent users rip the dvds and return the origina

[Anonymous Coward]

typically they are movie collectors who do not even watch, just want to posses the movies. They have huge collections of thousands and thousands of movies on their hard drives.

What about "innocent until proved guilty"?

[mangu]

It does look damn suspicious for a guy to turn around 3-5 movies a day and honestly claim he's NOT pirating them and just shipping them back as soon as his DVD ripper is done grabbing the movie. I'm sure there's a small percentage of legitimate people out there that really do nothing else all day but watch movies from sun up to sun down and they don't have cable or satellite, but they're few and far between.

Your comment is typical of an attitude that's so wrong with laws today. I find it very suspicious that you can think of a lot more illegal reasons than legal reasons for renting lots of DVDs. Why can't you think of any legal reasons for renting a lot of DVDs? Are you so involved in DVD pirating that you have entirely forgotten the many legal uses for them?

You see, that's why crimninal laws in every civilized nation have "innocent until proved guilty" articles. Your own perverted imagination doesn't prove any wrongdoing by anyone. You cannot assume that anyone is guilty by default. There's no such thing as "suspicious behavior" in the law. It's law enforcement officers who must, by their experience, evaluate who has a type of behavior that may indicate illegal actions. But even officers of the law must follow strict procedures when investigating anyone based on suspicion. No one can ever assume that any behavior which is not prohibited by law indicates guilt.

Copying != pirating

[jitterysquid]

Look, I rip all the DVDs I rent from NF to my hard drive. I eventually watch them. Once. Then delete them.

Violating the DMCA circumvention provision does not automatically mean that I am a thieving pirate.

If there was an on-demand service worth a damn I would happily pay. Anything that would allow me to watch things when I'm actually in the mood to do so instead of relying on the vagaries of the Queue and USPS would be superb.

You just had a baby

[Expert Determination]

And your wife has time to watch movies all day?

OK, now take a deep breath and look at your baby. Does it appear to be breathing? Does it have a pulse? Does it actually move? They make great looking plastic dolls these days and I think you may have mistaken one of these for an actual baby.

Re:You just had a baby

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Do you know how un-involved the first 3 months of a child's life are? They eat, sleep, crap, and cry. You can hold a child in your arms all day long and still have most of the day free to do things. Even after 3 months, babies sleep a LOT. I never understand the delusion that parents don't (and shouldn't) have any free time.

Re:You just had a baby

[mandrake*rpgdx]

Anyone that has ever actually had a child *knows* that a newborn infant sleeps almost all the time.

That's not how advertising works

[Anonymous Coward]

"In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior."

No, it's not. I only know a little, because my wife got an MBA in marketing and she took many courses in advertising. I read all her books cover to cover, so my understanding is that of someone who has read a lot on the subject.

Advertising is designed so that each sentence means exactly what it says, no more, no less. It may imply something, but that implication is meaningless.

This was brought about because a car dealer in the 60's. He advertised a relatively new car for sale with "air". I'll bet you can see where this is going. At the time, air-conditioning in a car was a rare option and was only purchased by wealthy people. Well, the person got to the dealer and asked "does this have air". "yes sir, it does". "Great, I'll take it".

When they got home, they found that "air" meant it had...air. Not air-conditioning. The courts eventually found this legal because the sentence was literally true. It was too bad the person assumed "air" meant "air-conditioning", but that's too bad on the person.

So when someone advertises "unlimited", it means that unless they put up an asterisk that says "When we say unlimited, we mean limited because we don't really have unlimited". And in fact, most ISP contracts actually say something pretty close to that.

If Netflix is saying unlimited rentals, my guess is there's an asterisk and fine print that says "If you borrow too many from us, we'll slow you down".
So the "unlimited" in this case might mean that you have unlimited rentals as long as you pay the monthly fee, but there is no expectation of when you'll get these unlimited DVD's. Might be over the course of the next 200 years, which is inconvenient, but still meets the criteria of being truthful.

Lets cut to the chase here. If Netflix is limited, then they shouldn't say "unlimited". Say "more than a reasonable person can watch for $20!". I wouldn't even begrudge them that. But as soon as they say "Unlimited", its katy-bar-the-door. Sorry if it breaks their business model, but I'm not resonable for making their business model works. And if they don't like it, then they should drop people. That would be honest and fair. But this is netflix.

Re:That's not how advertising works

[Anonymous Coward]

They could just say "Up to x DVDs per month", where x is a profitable number. It would still be better value than cable. AOL always puts in a specific number of "free" hours, not just saying unlimited.

Re:That's not how advertising works

[ScrewMaster]

Of course, AOL has been known to advertise more free hours per month there actually are hours in a month.

Not worth it for me

[fuzznutz]

Either way though, it's still far cheaper than going to blockbuster (or any other video store), you don't have to leave the house, and you do get them quickly so your argument is completely illogical.

Yes, but not much cheaper than Family Video. For $10.00 per month, I get a 50% off discount. I rent two new releases each week for $1.25 apiece and get two "nearly new" videos free. I also get two free kids videos at the same time. So for that 20.00 per month I get 24 videos per month, guaranteed.

If I decide, I can rent more than 24 videos for a small premium. And I have to drive past the video store on the way to and from work anyway. The only advantage Netflix has for me is the selection and Family Video will take requests. It just wasn't worth the aggravation for me.

PROFITABILITY == MORALITY

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it's the same people who always post on /. saying that if you don't like the EULA or DRM of some proprietary software, then you shouldn't use it. Either bend over for the $$$$/EULA/DRM or stop using the software, but don't use it without paying-for-it/complying-with-its-EULA/respecting-i ts-DRM. Interesting how in a transaction between a corporation and an individual, the individual is expected to fully comply with the law and even the pseudo-legal (EULAs), but the corporation doesn't need to obey the law or the terms of the transaction if they threaten profits in the slightest.

Ultimately that reasoning can be reduced to PROFITABILITY == MORALITY. Take capitalism, replace citizens with corporations, then remove human rights, individual liberty, and the rule of law and what do you have?

Old news

[Kethinov]

Not only that, but this is old news. A friend of mine noticed this happening to him over a year ago. In fact, he posted this comment to Slashdot to its effect. But when he told other people about Netflix' shenanigans, nobody believed him. Now they're eating their words.

Not News

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is news how? Slashdot already covered this three years ago. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/23/130257

Re:Broken DVDs per customer (dirty but point acros

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'll close your account and not refund that month's subscription cost.

Yeah, you sure showed Netflix.

Blockbuster Competition

[wft_rtfa]

Blockbuster now has a similar service at a similar price. I've heard that they can even be faster.

Let's get this straight.

[Raven42rac]

It's not the consumer's responsibility to ensure that you have a sound business practice. The problem with netflix is that the more customers it got, the more exponential its costs rose. It's a case of being too successful. Now that they're publicly traded, they get to rip off the consumer to appease stockholders. I guess this is like not getting another refill on your drink if you happen to be really thirsty. This reminds me of best buy not wanting to deal with the x% of annoying customers who take up a majority of their time. I wonder how many rentals a month the algo thinks is "too many".

Give the heavy renters quick service

[Rich Klein]

I'm a pretty infrequent movie viewer. Sometimes it'll take me a full month to send a movie back to Netflix. I think they should give priority to people who watch movies all the time. I don't think I'd be terribly bothered if I had to wait an extra day for my next movie so that someone who cares more about it can get their next movie. I like the quick turnaround I currently get, but I'm sure other subscribers would appreciate it more than me.

Three pack!

[Phredd]

I have noticed that when I send my three dvd's back sometimes I get two back, sometimes one. I do try to keep them together in a three pack as it makes the "watching" (dvdshrink) easier. If they are going to throttle the movies, maybe I should throttle my monthly payment to them?

Suggestion for Netflix

[AmazingRuss]

Maybe you could send multiple discs in the same package to save on postage for the folks that rent a lot?

Not sure what the postage breakdown on that is, but I know I send two discs back in the same package fairly often, and it seems to work.

Hey, I'm an idea guy. No need to thank me, but I DO graduate this fall, and will be available for conspicuously renumerative consulting or employment gigs...

Re:Letter Sent to Netflix; Terms of Service Excerp

[Anonymous Coward]

"Recent" change? The change was made in January 2005, over a year ago.

OT: TV sizes

[Spaceman40]

If you buy a 32" TV only to take it home and find it has a 20" screen in an 8.5" bezel, would you feel just a little cheated there? (And although that may sounds extreme, TVs and monitors NEVER actually measure their advertised value for that exact reason, often falling up to a full inch smaller).

You know, they measure sizes of TVs by the size of the projected image. On plasmas and other types of flat panels, the projected image is the same size as the screen, so the measurements are fairly accurate. However, for a CRT-type display, the projection is quite often larger than the viewable screen - making a loophole for them to give you a larger size.

It's just like hard drives: for normal computer people, a KB is 2^10, an MB is 2^20, etc. For crazy hard drive manufacturers, a KB is 1,000 bytes, an MB is 1,000,000 byes, etc. It's a pain, but such is life.

Internet distribution has been around a looong tim

[frizzantik]

"When Internet distribution starts, you can say goodbye to quality, and hello to DRM madness"

When internet distribution starts? Movies have been distributed on the internet for quite a while now. Just not by the copyright holders. Quality is often top notch, and it's a lot faster than Netflix too. ;)

Re:Shaw

[MachDelta]

Yup! Shaw did this to me and my family. We got a letter claiming we were "excessively using" our internet connection - a so called "unlimited" service. When we asked them what the limit was on their 'unlimited' service, they refused to give us an answer. So we refused to limit our usage. Weeks later we got a second and much nastier letter from Shaw, threatening us with additional charges/disconnection/yaddayadda. Once again we asked what the limit to their unlimited service was, and they said they couldn't tell us. So after some arguing with Shaw that got us nowhere, we told them where they could stick their "unlimited" services and their threats. We canceled our internet AND cable subscriptions (which they cheerfully insisted was unnesessary), told them they would never again have our business, and switched to Sat/DSL. And we're all much happier for it. :)

Simple Solution??

[michaelconnor]

If netflix is having difficulty making profit due to a small percentage of heavy users, perhaps they should tweak their rental plans.
Just as an example:

Current Rates

New Rates
$09.99 1-at-a-time Unlimited
$14.99 2-at-a-time Unlimited
$17.99 3-at-a-time Unlimited (with current throttling algorithm)
$20.99 3-at-a-time Fast Unlimited (no delays for heavy usage)

Flat rates are easier to understand, but netflix is established now, and should give customers more options. If the plan don't fit the customer, change the plan!

I agree 100%

[Simonetta]

I agree 100%. I would rather watch one or two movies a night than anyone's television programs.

    If Netflix and Hollywood (the industry in general) can't understand that people are beginning to think of their $100,000,000 movies as nothing more than a substitue for two hours of dumb-as-shit television, then they should stop making $100,000,000 movies.

    The whole industry needs to stop thinking of their products in terms of a single-story production, and more in terms as just so many half-hour blocks of time that people are watching their product instead of doing something else with the blocked units of time. Then they will stop rolling the dice with their production budgets on just two or three $100,000,000 movies per year.

    They need to leave the 20th century behind and adopt newer and more realistic business models. If they don't, then someone else will. Might be Netflix; might be someone smarter than Netflix. There is a lot of undistributed high-quality material out there, along with a lot of people with disposable income that are bored with Hollywood product. It's just a matter of getting them together. I had high hopes for Netflix, but it seems that they too are locked into 20th-century distribution mindsets that are becoming quickly irrelevant.

This is news?

[AnyoneEB]

I had a NetFlix subcription a few years ago and they were doing this then. Your priority in the queue for a movie is higher the less movies you got from them the previous month. I fail to see a problem with this. If you get few movies, you get what you want quickly. If you get many movies, it may take a bit a longer to get what is at the top of your queue, but you get more movies over all. Obviously, this also means that new customers get top priority (zero rentals the previous month).

May I ask what the people who do not like this think would be a better way to prioritize the queue?

Blockbust buffoons

[Simonetta]

You are a passionate and knowledgeable film consumer and you brought others into a commercial home film distribution center.

    The fact that no-one in the store approached you for your advice or asked you how they could meet your film needs indicates that the people who run this store have no idea of what they are doing and shouldn't be in the entertainment business.

    They deserve to go bankrupt.

    Other businesses, most any other business, would love to have customers like you come into their store.

More service plans

[Belseth]

I watch a lot of movies and had been planning to get Netflix. The article did make me change my mind. Their selection was the selling point not as much the unlimited. I can burn out a Blockbuster fairly fast since they have poor selections of movies. I would be likely to turn around films fast so the part that annoys me is getting sent to the back of the cue for new releases. Wildly unfair. It costs them money in postage so I understand wanting to limit returns but instead of throttling why not offer a service that takes that into account. Say their $9.95 a month plan plus a $1 service charge per film. That way if I rented no films in a month, a possibility due to work, I don't have to stress about wasted fees. Say the following month I go through 30 films so I get a $40 bill. I'd be happy with that. I used to love $1 days at video stores because I'd rent most anything for a $1. The really heavy users aren't getting all new releases anyway so you get older films rented and keep everyone happy. It's not unlimited but you have control over what you pay and it's still drastically lower than the old ripp off fees of Blockbuster. Blockbuster drove out the mom and pop places then ran their fees up so high it was ten years before I went back into a video store. For what I was paying them I might as well buy the film. Unlimited deals brought me back but their selection is so limited it's a catch-22, you can rent all you want but there's nothing you want to rent.

Stuck at home with nothing to do....

[SpookyMark]

Seems that everyone is going after pirates when a situation like this comes up. It is true that most people that are renting & returning the same day could be making copies of the DVDs, that sure would be a large DVD collection. However, couple of things to think about. What if I am a very ill person that is stuck at home with no where to go, what if I am handicap & can not go anywhere & TV is my way of entertainment, what if I am a criminal that can not walk to the video store because I am on a house arrest. Each one of this time (& there is MANY people like that in USA) will turn me into a "pirate"? because I am renting and watching the movie as soon as it gets to my home and then send it back the next day? I do not find that fair on Netflix part, to make me suffer because they automatically assume that everyone that is renting & returning movies the same day is a "pirate". What about this, what if I was to come into Blockbusters Video or Hollywood Video & rent a movie every day, return it next day, would they tell me "Sorry sir, you need to wait couple of days My two cents. Personally I do hope someone decides to take care of this matter with a small claims court. I know I would sign up for it, since I have been a netflix user since 2001 I have noticed this "throttling" for last almost a year. It is time to try out Blockbusters Online Rental.

They do it to me all the time - my workaround

[tdnetworks]

This has been going on for some time now. All the new releases or "popular" movies have some kind of wait to them and takes me forever to get even if it is #1 in my queue before the release date. I have some movies in my top ten that have had a long wait for over a month. vies also seem to be arriving slower and it takes them longer to process my movies. When I want to get a movie that just came out I just contact customer support and tell them that the movie has had a long wait for too long and they make it avaiable instantly and I get it within two days. You guys will probally hate people like me though because I return movies the same day I get them all the time, sorry... i just like to watch movies I suppose, not to mention I like telling people they can watch whatever they want ;-)

Selection?

[tepples]

Or, get a DVD from the library, which is also free.

How is this practical if my county's public library has (censored) for selection?

Anyone ever work in a video rental store?

[Anonymous Coward]

...They have a simple and effective way to deal with this: Late fees. This is why every rental shop, regardless of the merchandise, eventually settles on late fees. When a customer abuses the deadline, it costs the store real money, because they cannot rent the property to another customer. The value of the property is much higher than the rental price (VHS tapes were $80 if you were going to rent them), so the business doesn't even know if it will get its property returned.

This type of behavior from bad customers also has another effect that hurts the bottom line: You can't make money in advance by reserving something for a future date. If you do that once, you'll likely permanently lose a customer. Time value of money, repeat business -- you know, the whole works. Just imagine making reservations at a restaurant, only to be told: "Well sir, your table is not ready. We don't know when it will be ready. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week."

More to the topic, extra-long rentals will never result in a successful business, because people don't like to wait. It's bad enough that you have to wait while Netflix mails the stupid things out, I can imagine how much the added inconvenience of it not being in stock must tick off their customers. On top of this, Netflix is going to lose their high-volume buyers.

Not everybody has cable TV

[tepples]

You should get HBO On Demand.

Some people don't watch basic cable television. They connect to the Internet through dial-up or DSL or they happen to live in an area where cable Internet access is sold separately from basic cable TV. For them, HBO On Demand would cost as much as roughly 3 Netflix subscriptions.

Netflix officially sucks

[dangermouse1976]

I've got a nice queue about 50+ DVDs long...ALL DVDs showing available.

Now I am a heavy volume renter, 8 at a time...

They just sent me the BOTTOM 8 from my queue.

IS THAT FAIR?

Re:Netflix officially sucks

[billeger]

Show me where it says they have to be fair!

This aint news

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened to me over two years ago. I started seeing my movies being delayed, and I got a lot of them! I opened another account and put the same movies in my queue, and they were all listed ready for shipment and they started rolling. That is when I dumped Netflix. It's about time they admit what they've been doing all along.

Obvious

[JonahDark1]

It's been obvious that they've been doing this to anyone who rents from Netflix frequently. The first few rentals of a month will come back really quick, after 8 or so, they slow down. I don't think it's a bad thing, I recognize that Netflix's business model is based on some "average" number of rentals a month and that a few really heavy renters are causing problems. I just wish their algorithm looked over a broader period of time. Some months I rent no movies at all, some months (like when I was unemployed) I rent 12-15. I just think that people who are renting movies just to rip them are affecting all of us.

Red Box

[bjomo]

Forget Blockbuster and Net Flix; Red Box is a much better deal for me. I only rent AT MOST 2 movies per month. Red Box lets me rent them for $1 per night and I never keep them for more than one night. In fact since I am on their email list, I have been able to rent several movies for free when the send out promotional codes.

I've never used Net Flix but I think it would bother me that I'm paying for a service that doesn't let me pick an action movie when I'm in the mood for it, or sci-fi, or drama, or comedy.

It surely is not for everyone because of the somewhat limited selection, but Red Box is perfect for me. Its cheap and they have machines in the local grocery stores and McDonalds so it is convenient.

huh?

[bjomo]

That would be like if my news paper only came half the time so I offered the paperboy twice as much money to give me what I already paided for. Absurd.

Re:Broken DVDs per customer (dirty but point acros

[Draknor]

Here's what I don't get... if they are sending these things via the US Postal Service, and they claim the USPS is "delayed", isn't that mail fraud? IANAL, and I don't have Netflix, but has anyone who has experienced this "throttling" threatened to go to the Post Office and tell the postmaster that Netflix is lying about receiving a shipment?

Mail fraud is a big time no-no. Shipping your next DVD from across the country is under-handed, but not illegal. Lying about receiving a parcel that you shipped sounds like it might cross that line.

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

"If not, then it is really isn't any more tame than any other kind of copyright infringement."

You really are an asshole. I'll bet even your family doesn't like you that much. Your wife probably just lies there, hoping you'll finish quickly because you digust her. Your kids embarassed that you spawned them.

You seem very self-loathing. And in this one instance, you're absolutely right to do so.

What they should do . . .

[Dausha]

What Netflix should do is change the process a bit. For those who view over 12 movies per week, charge them $1 for each additional video. That will allow them to honor the 3 movie at a time crowd who cycles through each movie each week (3 X 4= 12), without being raped by higher cost of shipping.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

It is monthy. If you do not like the service cancel it. You do not have to do business with them, and they do not have to to business with you.
Your lastest scam to play the system did not work. Get used to it.
If every one did it they would have to raise prices, or go out of business.
At must they need to clarify their advertizing.

I just haven't seen it...

[whoppo]

I'd guess I fall into the "heavy user" category. We're on the 5-disc plan and sometime rotate through 8 - 10 discs per week. We don't subscribe to cable or satellite TV, we don't watch local programming, so pretty much everything that lights up the home theater is on DVD. With me, the chiq and the kids, 8-10 discs a week is average. NetFlix has a return depot right here in Portland, so I drop 'em in the box at the central post office early in the morning and either that same day or then next day, they've shipped out the next batch... like clockwork. This DVD "pipeline" has been moving without delays or interruption for a couple of years now. The policy may say that they'll delay shipments to heavy users, but I just haven't seen it happen here.

Just asking

[way2trivial]

you don't live in Colorado-- right?
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&q= durante+carrier+netflix&btnG=Search+News

My Own Solution

[oMaT]

I just recent signed up for the service again after a lull of a few years. I don't enjoy cable TV as most of whats on is, as you know, crap. So instead I watch movies. Usually about 1 a day after work as I'm making/eating dinner. I'm on the 3 disc plan and I definately noticed that as I've been continually sending in one disc a day my returns are getting slower and slower.

If the average NF user is getting 11 discs a month and I'm looking to get about 22 discs a month (I don't usually watch on the weekends) then that makes me a very high demand user. I chose Netflix because going to Hollywood video and renting one a day is an incredible hassle and the fact that the rentals cost me from $3.00 to $4.00 each. At my rate thats $77.00 (22 rentals x $3.50) a month! As far as I'm concerned, Netflix can charge me more. Hell, charge me on a per-disc basis. Charge me once for my monthly fee ($19.00) then when I exceed, say, 12 discs (my cost then is $1.58/disc), begin charging me $1.50 for each additional film that's sent to me. That would make my average month $34.00 ($19 fee + $15 in additionals). If it costs NF .78 a dvd to ship, their cost would be $17.16, making their profit for the month $16.84.

Not too bad an idea, if I do say so myself.
.02

pfft- maroon- it HAPPENED

[way2trivial]

look for DURANTE and NETFLIX in COLORADO....

Has use of word "unlimited" lost its meaning?

[wired_parrot]

Has it come time that perhaps the usage of the word "unlimited" should be regulated? It's not only Netflix that uses the word deceptively. My DSL provider claims "unlimited" download/uploads, image-hosting services advertise unlimited image-hosting, my cell provider advertises unlimited minutes for their premium plan. All of these of course don't really mean unlimited, but rather "a limit large enough that most people won't reach it". Try and use your high-speed connection 24/7 as a server and you'll soon find that it really is limited after all.

Is it me, or has usage of the word "unlimited" in the tech field become much like the use of the words "light" and "fat-free" in the food industry, which became abused to the point of meaningless until they were regulated. As it stands now, a consumer might expect that unlimit really means "within a reasonable limit" but what that limit is is vague for the layperson without slogging through the fine print.

Re:Has use of word "unlimited" lost its meaning?

[humankind]

This is because there's virtually no regulation of the advertising industry any more. It used to be you couldn't say something was "free" unless there was some real "free" component of substance, but nowadays, about 95% of most claims are bullshit.

You Sure its netflix?

[u16084]

There was a article Cinematical http://www.cinematical.com/2006/01/06/missing-netf lix-the-mailman-did-it/ How postal workers assist with the problems... Those who claim MY MAIL HAS NEVER BEEN LOST in XX Years... Well, they dont want your postcards.. they want your dvds

I'm curious... how does it "ruin it"

[Anonymous Coward]

"they're expecting to get permanent copies of as many DVDs as they want, by getting the DVD, copying it, and sending it back the next day. I would call that "freeloading," as well as "illegal" and "ruining it for the rest of us."

How does that ruin it? If anything, it helps you since the movies are only out for one day.

As to the illegality, most people are doing it so that they have movies to watch at any time. Why should I be constrained by 3 videos at any one time? It doesn't make sense technically or ethically. Besides most movies you watch are worth a single watch, so copying them for the most part doesn't do squat to anybody's bottom line.

I still don't see what it's ruining. Imagine everyone was watching those videos and then returning them. So the videos would be out for 3-5 days at a time meaning either you still wouldn't get your videos or Netflix would have to charge more.

No, the only thing it's ruining is Netflix's postage bottom line. Other than that, there is no harm, no foul on this.

Personally, I don't use Netflix since they started. Back then it was $4/disk and I would watch 3 disks per month some months, none the next. There is no plan for me, so I dropped them when they made rentals a prescription since I judged that Netflix would love for me to join, since rentals would then cost me essentially twice as much, and better yet, I wouldn't copy them so I would never have a movie when I needed it. What a great business model for me!

So please put a cork in your whining. Your one of those internet argue-ers who argue just for the sake of it, as if you have some sort of moral high ground. Meanwhile, Netflix is riding your misplaced sense of morals all the way to the bank. And you're some poor schlub renting an apartment and working in a crappy job. Cripes. You're like a battered woman.

Re:I'm curious... how does it "ruin it"

[porcupine8]

Ruining it by prompting them to start this "throttling" business, which may not have been necessary without the copiers. Is this the only comment you've read in this whole discussion, or what?

Why should I be constrained by 3 videos at any one time? It doesn't make sense technically or ethically.

Uh, because that's what you signed up for? If you feel you have a "right" to more videos at once, you could... I dunno... buy them? Or maybe try the freaking library, they usually have pretty high borrowing limits.

Your one of those internet argue-ers who argue just for the sake of it,

Well, yeah, at the moment I'm just having fun. And I couldn't do it without you. Think about that one.

Meanwhile, Netflix is riding your misplaced sense of morals all the way to the bank.

Well, perhaps if I actually were a Netflix subscriber. I suppose I meant "the rest of us" in a general sense, since I'm not really part of "us." Perhaps I should have said "everyone else."

And you're some poor schlub renting an apartment and working in a crappy job.

Well, I am renting an apartment for at least another few months, but at the moment I'm mostly living off my husband. :) It's a pretty sweet job. My boss doesn't mind if I post to Slashdot at work!

Re:I'm curious... how does it "ruin it"

[Anonymous Coward]

Get back to the stove/bed, beatch, I ain't paying you to sit on yer arse ;-)

just kidding, of course

Not casually...after 15 minutes reflection at leas

[tkrotchko]

"You surely don't think that they casually make decisions like this."

I think it's more like this:

"If we stall out the volume guys, we save $X million a month. We ran the numbers last week"

"Let me think. Yes. Okay do it"

Trust me, it was that quick and that simple.

cost analysis

[vp_development]

why rip to harddrive? Why not to DVD? Cost $0.10 or so

Run your own life

[NMZNMZNMZ]

Jackass.

really?

[artifex2004]

Read this, please.

This is just the latest instance.

Great customer service.

[hesiod]

Oh, so if you are a good customer and shop there often, you get penalized...?

Re:Great customer service.

[lems1]

couldn't agree more with you.

i've been keeping an eye on my netflix queue for the past 3 months and i have not seen it getting any better. i switched to the 3 movies at a time plan to see if that would improve it. but, now that i have read this article i think i know why...

time to send a huge amount of complaints to netflix and let them sort out the problem? after all if we all decide to go back to the 1 movie at a time unlimited plan, they will be loosing $7 from e/a of us per month!

basic math:
-$7 * 12 * Number of Netflix Users = 84 followed by a huge number of zeros of money lost per year!

what's worse?

and if we all just cancel the damn thing and switch to Google Movies (google are u listening?) then they will really get a loss!

We just need a "do no evil company" to help us spend our hard earned cash!

HackingNetflix.com

[Statecraftsman]

A useful link to add perspective on this story. This guy has been following Netflix, their practices, and their industry for some time. Of note is his opinion and the fact that renting from Netflix is still a good deal even if you are throttled. http://www.hackingnetflix.com/ Thanks to The Economist for pointing me to this site in a somewhat prophetic manner.

Why Care

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does netflix care if you copy the DVDs? You could do the same with a rental from Blockbuster.

Re:Letter Sent to Netflix; Terms of Service Excerp

[evilviper]

For what it's worth: We would have been happy to pay a reasonable surcharge in months when we rented more DVDs. What your company has chosen to do instead is offensive and insulting.

Bah! Netflix isn't holding your movies for some preset time out of spite, they just have a queue more advanced than a FIFO, which gives less frequent users priority over more frequent users. I've been with netflix years longer than you, and I'm a moderate to heavy user, and this doesn't bother me at all.

This keeps heavy users from locking lite users out. If a lite user only returns a movie per week, then they should get first pick of the Long Wait movies. I may send back 3 a week, so not getting it the first 3 times still equals about the same 1-week wait time to both of us. Plus, it makes the profitable customers happy, which means more money for Netflix, which means my monthly fee is lower too.

If you really don't mind paying more to get more movies, as you've claimed, then just upgrade your service to the 5 per month, or whatever. That's what those options are there for.

They send us emails about everything else...but they can't bother letting us know when the terms of use have changed?

That's just legalese... They don't want to send out certified letters to every user, to make sure they have been made aware of the TOS change. e-mail is not guarateed delivery, so they can't promise you will be contacted. They'd have to send certified letters to every single user to do that.

It is your fault.

[Dreadflint]

I agree, Why are people complaining so much?

Obviously Unlimited does not mean Unlimited.
There are many limits.

The most restrictive right now is the throttling.

After that it is the Post Office. (Nextflix could hire people to deliver, just like pizza, in just hours depending on the closest distribution point.)

After that is the number of movies that exist in the world. You obviously can't have all of them.

Why do people consider 45 Unlimited and 15 limited?

If you have a family of 25 people with 10 TVs then 45 might be quite limited. Yet people didn't complain when the Post Office was the limiting factor because it was 'reasonable'.

What Nextflix does is quite an impressive feat. It's not easy. They aren't trying to be mean or anything. They are trying to run a business that pays for itself and pulls a respectable profit to pass on to its employees and owners (including stock holders).

They could have raised prices to fix the problem. Would that be more reasonable to you people.

Maybe if you sign up for two or three accounts then you will get the movies you want. Large families and heavy users might have to in the future.

If they didn't change their practices then maybe they would have gone out of business and you would be getting 0 movies per month. Makes 15 per month look quite good. I like a company that tries to stay in business.

It isn't like they didn't tell you:

"Netflix, Inc., reserves the right, from time to time, with or without notice to you, to change these Terms of Use in our sole and absolute discretion."
http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse?hnjr=8#changes

I don't see how a class action law-suit could go through. If it does then you might be in the 0 movies per month category again.

Why not vote with your feet and stop buying their service?

It would be a shame if this doesn't get modded-up. I apologize for not joining in this big pirater pity party.

Oldsters In On The Action

[meehawl]

I was surprised a few weeks ago when I was visiting someone in Florida and ended up in the house of two retirees and they were Netflix devotees. We're talking 70+ here, one of them a former government spook, and now their main hobby is ripping Netflix discs and recording them using one of their two DVD recorders. What impressed me most, and what is lacking with most Netflix "backup" fans, is that being retired fulltime and eminently logical, they had a precise and exhaustive catalog system for their thousands of rips. Every disc arranged with index tags, and a card noting actors, content, and so on.

When I told them they were being throttled they were pretty mad about it...

Exactly, this is a deceptive business practice

[unassimilatible]

And this is exactly why I dropped Netflix this week, and stayed with blockbuster.com. Blockbuster includes four in-store free rentals per month too.

I hope Netflix succeeds, just to keep competition alive and prices down, but they will be doing it without me, a frequent ripper, er, renter.

Wrong, they have been throttling all movies

[unassimilatible]

Netflix throttles more than just new movies. Overall claimed receipt days and turnaround has dropped dramatically for me, and I generally have 30 movies in my queue, many of which are classic titles. Netflix sucks now.

Dealing with it

[unassimilatible]

Now the ride is over. Deal with it.

I did; I just cancelled Neflix this month, and I am sure I'm not the only one.

VCR Usage

[SeanDuggan]

Actually it's more like recording movies on HBO with your VCR.
Which was, incidentally, ruled entirely legal for personal use.
... for time-offset purposes only. The ruling was that you could record shows on your VCR for one later viewing, not a carte-blanche capability to record whatever you want and watch it as many times as you want.

Equivocation and Advertising

[SeanDuggan]

When they got home, they found that "air" meant it had...air. Not air-conditioning. The courts eventually found this legal because the sentence was literally true. It was too bad the person assumed "air" meant "air-conditioning", but that's too bad on the person.
Reminds me of some of those great scams like the potato bug killer.

Not if it targets a group.

[jpellino]

See Denny's See Fleet Bank. See other companies who have been dragged out into the daylight for refusing / changing service to certain demographics. The potential for abuse is pretty high the way they seem to word things, and they're apparent ability to shoot first, explain later.

This isn't like a lunch counter - Netflix knows where you live and they apparently are willing to lump people into a group based on behavior. Suppose thru analysis Netflix decides that certain zipcodes are "bad" customers - their decision, they don't have to say why - and that neighborhood just happens to be north of 125th or Dorchester MA or Park St Hartford CT... Stand back.

As for costs - if their biz model is so inflexible they can't balance the frequents and the infrequents - like very other model should - then they need to refigure it.