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

[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.

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"

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:It's my fault

[vp_development]

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

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

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.

[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.

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: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: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: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.