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.

[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.

[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.

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.