Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature

Donald Burr of Borg writes "One of my favorite features of Netflix, the video-rental-by-mail service, is 'profiles.' Profiles lets you create 'sub-accounts' for your friends/family, so that they can share in the video rental love. Each profile gets his/her own Netflix queue that he/she can manage with their own login/password. You can divide up how many movies get sent to you vs. the other profiles under your account. E.g. if you have a 6-out-at-once plan, you can choose to get 3 movies at a time, and have 3 other profiles each receive 1 movie. Unfortunately, the fun stops September 1, at which point Netflix is, for unknown reasons, going to terminate this feature. Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.' Improvement indeed."

Comments

Yes, I received the same notice.

[jggimi]

I do not understand what cost savings Netflix would achieve by this reduction in service.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[something_wicked_thi]

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Immerial]

Yeah, I'd assume that's the main reason -- they want to force people to sign up for additional accounts. Well, if you gonna do that... you should at least make it easy for people transfer their profile data to a new account. To, you know... encourage people to do it.

NetFlix you are doing it wrong!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[BlowHole666]

Netflix just encouraged me to rip and burn their discs. No you did that on your own. You just wanted some sort of justification. Your mother could just as easily get a Netflix account they are not that expensive.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[lena_10326]

If that's the reason, why not just say "we need to charge for this now". Existing users get grandfathered in, new users must pay an extra small fee.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fozzyuw]

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Actually, from a pure consumer standpoint, this change makes no difference. Netflix already has a pricing model such that, the CHEAPEST plan is 3 DVD / time. If you move from 3 to 4 out at a time, you actually pay more and from 4 to any other number, the price is the same (per DVD at a time).

If you had 6 at a time and choose to go to 3 at a time with 2 accounts, you'll actually save money (mere pennies, though). Since it was a separate login/password for each profile, there's no difference between having a separate account, expect for the "master user" having full view access. For those who allow their children to rent, they will still just use one account and they'll have to spend more time on their end managing their queue and that's an unfortunate hassle.

But I think you're right. I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models. They're probably finding legacy code such that the programmers are like "we want to do this but the way profiles currently work, it's preventing us from doing it without a complete programming change to the profiles system".

Instead of sinking a large cost into fixing profile code, they're probably just going to scrap it all together so they can implement whatever new and shiny features or improve database speeds or whatever.

I thought the feature was awesome, but from a "money" standpoint, I don't see how Netflix is doing this to "screw customers" out of more money, as their current payment plans emphasis 3/time movies over any other. Unless there's some research that says that 3/time people keep their movies longer than 6/time people or something.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. Recommendations. I love horror, my wife loves musicals. "Because you liked Saw II, we recommend Chicago". Sheesh, what a bunch of fucktards.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Fnord666]

Any discomfort will soon be forgotten, and they may even be able to shed themselves of the dead-beat "customers" that cost them more than they make.

I doubt that the customers using this feature are the ones they would like to eliminate from their customer base. I suspect that most of customers using this feature do so (like I do) in order to segregate out my selections and returns from my children's choices. They have a tendency to hang on to movies for a while before they watch them, or they watch them several times before sending them back. I didn't really care about it since it was their queue, not mine. Now it is everyone's queue and I will be sending things back in a shorter period of time. In addition, several of my friends have signed up for netflix for their households once I described this feature to them.

This "downgrade" in service has reminded me to take another look at the market and see what other companies like Blockbuster are doing. If they are offering this service, I will probably send my Roku back and switch services.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[something_wicked_thi]

God, I hate people like you.

People who say things like, "Well, obviously, company $x is a business, so they can do whatever they want" or "Your boss pays you money to work, so you have to do whatever he says" are invariably idiots.

NetFlix offered this feature. Some people bought the service in part because of this feature. Now it's being taken away. No discounts or temporary account upgrades or anything. Not even a way to migrate the old profiles to a new account. That's pretty sleazy.

As for "dead-beat customers that cost them more than they make", that does not make someone a dead beat. That makes them thrifty.

It is expected that both sides will act rationally. Customers will make the most out of their money, and NetFlix will cut features that cost them money. Calling their customers deadbeats is idiotic. But NetFlix is not handling this very well at all. They are taking something away without offering a thing. Customers are going to be pissed, and they've got a right to be.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bilbravo]

I would mod you up if I could, I agree wholeheartedly. Not only does it make things more complicated to maintain for 2 people (I can't imagine 3-4) the recommendations are also going to be screwed up (even more so) now.
Sure, it isn't difficult to maintain one queue for multiple people, but it's inconvenient. The entire purpose of Netflix is CONVENIENCE! I don't have to go to a store, I can put movies in a list and drop them in my office's mailbox after I'm done watching. Thus the allure. Now they took away a very convenient feature.
Redbox on the way home is sounding a bit more tempting now, goodbye Netflix.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[ta bu shi da yu]

Hey - just improving the service you know!

I love it when a firm says something this vague and contradictory when they basically realise that a thing that got people to use them is costing them too much money. I mean, if they really meant they were improving their service, then I'm fairly certain they'd say why.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[zoward]

Well, if you gonna do that... you should at least make it easy for people transfer their profile data to a new account. To, you know... encourage people to do it. That would be openly acknowledging that the real reason they're making this change is to force you to have two accounts. They'd rather be able to claim they're doing it to "improve the Netflix website for all their customers", even if the reason makes no sense.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[niktemadur]

Whenever the bank, phone company or any other large corporation sends me a form letter that begins along the lines of "In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer...", immediately I recoil, 'cause I know I'm just about to be hit with some sort of diminished service.

Take the airliners a decade and a half ago. "In order to provide a better service to you, our valued customer, we will eliminate the olive from the salad in our in-flight meal", all because some smart ass junior exec figured out that the airliner could save up to twenty thousand dollars a year, from a budget of billions, by eliminating the olives. Slippery slope from there, pretty soon the whole salad was gone, and all we were left with was boiled peas, know what I mean?

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[harrkev]

True, but managing your own queue takes time. Right now, I have my queue, my wife has hers, and we have a shared queue for things that we like to watch together. Not having separate queues will take a bit of juggling. I get one DVD at a time, and it may take me a week or two to watch it. My wife goes through three a week. It will be a pain to keep everything balanced.

The separate queues is, to me, their chief advantage over Blockbuster. I don't really watch Netflix downloadable movies (and hate being forced into using Windows and IE even if I did), so that is no advantage there. Once the queues go away, I will re-examine which service I want to use. If Blockbuster wins on price, they will get my money instead. If Blockbuster takes advantage of this opporrunity and adds separate queues to their service, they score a slam-dunk and I will switch without a second thought or a bit of regret (I hope somebody from Blockbuster reads this). Being able to exchange one or two movies a month in the store is also very convenient, and a big plus in the Blockbuster column.

1) Make customers angry and shoot self in foot.
2) ???
3) Profit.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[bigdavesmith]

I wouldn't even mind paying more. The real problem with this, at least for me, is that they're basically lying to me as a customer. If I got a notice in my email that said "Hey, look, we're either going to have to charge you $3 more a month for this feature, or get rid of it because we're not making enough money." I'd be way cooler with it. Telling me they're improving my experience by ruining it is just plain treating me like an idiot, and I can get that kind of treatment just by driving down to blockbuster, which is where I'll be going September 1st if they seriously do this.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[CottonThePirate]

That's more like now. When I was young I got a hot meal on a flight, even one that was 2 hours long, in economy class!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

[Thuktun]

they should do it. They are in business to make money, it's not the public library. You're right. They are entitled to shoot themselves in the collective foot by driving customers away. It's a free market, after all.

Not a good sign

[Monoman]

Based on the information coming out on this it doesn't look good. Did they research how much this would piss off the current customers? It is coming off like they don't care. Perhaps the profile feature is causing bigger problems behind the scenes. If it is the later then they should find better programmers to work around the problem(s).

I'm not sure how it improves things...

[Inari]

My family uses it and its only been a positive. I'm betting a bean counter marketing type suggested that it might force me to get separate accounts if I couldnt use the separate queues.

Bad Move

[bullet618]

I think they're trying to get people to pay for more than one account. I don't know what features they could be adding that would warrant dropping sub accounts. I have a funny feeling this is going to backfire and they'll lose more people than they gain.

For your convenience ...

[richg74]

Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.'

Touching. I'm reminded of a sign I once saw on the door of a bank branch, some years ago while I was living in Boston:

For your convenience, this branch will be closed Monday, mm/dd/yy, a legal holiday.

For my convenience. Heartwarming, isn't it, how these folks are always looking out for us.

Cope

[dazedNconfuzed]

I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models.

My boss' response to that kind of reasoning? backed up by the marketing department, CEO, and customers? "Cope."

Massively degrading the user's experience is not excused by programmer's convenience.

Re:Cope

[bughunter]

First you'll have to prove that it's a "massive" degrading of the users experiance.

A manager's next response: "Pardon Me?? You have the burden of proof here, not marketing. If you continue to demonstrate such arrogance, you'll be out of work."

I'm an engineering manager, and agree with the grandparent. We're not in business for the convenience of the engineers. If you can provide a marketing analysis to support your argument, I'll listen. If you can produce a cost/benefit analysis to support your position, I'll listen. If you can produce an ethical/moral/legal justification, I'll listen. If you're whinging because "it's not convenient," all you will do is piss me off.

This seems like a rather poor move, marketing wise. I'm annoyed that I have to move my wife's 200+ movie list over to my main profile, which is never used. But if its simply for the "convenience" of the engineers, I'll be royally pissed.

"It's easy" vs. "It just works"

[dazedNconfuzed]

Why is the iPod successful? It just works.

Netflix Profiles "just works". I have my queue of 150+ movies, and without further effort the movies I want show up in the order I want, one at a time; ditto for my wife, who being home more than I am gets two a at a time. NO EFFORT.

Now you, and Netflix, pull the "quit whining, it's EASY to get the same thing, just go reshuffle the mutual queue..." without realizing that now that we've _made_ our lists (over 300 movies total), now we have to go _update_ that list every day. That doesn't "just work", that takes constant fiddling when we've got plenty of other things to do.

On top of that, our wildly different tastes (sappy chick flix vs. sci-fi noir & grusome action) means that the "suggestions" tool is useless. One of us gets on to review suggestions, and half the stuff suggested will be undesirable (never mind any bizzare half-breed "because you liked '27 Dresses' and 'Akira'...").

Profiles worked. It's extremely useful to some customers. Fix the code; don't wreck the customer experience.

Duh

[dazedNconfuzed]

Of course the suggestion system doesn't work for you: trying to generate suggestions from a hodgepodge of two different peoples' tastes doesn't work.

add comments to the Netflix blog post

[IronyChef]

Even though they've said the decision is final, I suggest commenting directly on the Netflix blog post as hundreds of others are doing...