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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."
I would guess that it isn't working properly from their standpoint making it a PITA to maintain and deal with.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This has been a life-saver for me; rather than having to remember what movies my wife wants to see, and having my movies held up when she takes a week to watch one, I can set her up with her on mini-queue and then not have to worry about it. What Netflix fails to realize is that there is no way in hell I will pay for a separate account for this, and I doubt many other people will, either. I was fairly upset when I got the email, and am considering looking at the Blockbuster service, since I can also use it locally... anyone know if Blockbuster provides something similar to the Profile feature?
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
there's an up-side to this.
lately, I've been THROTTLED (big-time). I just upgraded from a 3 at once plan to almost double that. and for the first few weeks, things came in the mail on schedule and on time.
lately, though, things are being sent from far away centers; when I return discs directly to the PO, only some are showing up the next day at NF (I live in the silicon valley area and its ALWAYS a 1day hop from local to local!).
there are many tricks NF is playing, but the short of it is: if you are a heavy renter, you get penalized.
solution: go away and come back. at least that's what I have read. cancel for a month then re-join. you get a new slate and they stop throttling you (for a while, at least).
lather rinse repeat.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
We are using this feature to manage two queues: one for our kids and one for the adults. It has been a great feature. Before it was introduced we have to continually micromanage the queue, hold on to disks to 'work' the systems (postal and Netflix), and suffered the occasional disappointments.
The profiles allowed us more flexibility and better service. I think that Netflix is trying to increase revenue without increasing their monthly fees. Downgrading our plan and subscribing to another minimal would cost us at least $2.00/month. It is definitely a hidden cost increase.
Has anyone here had experience with the Blockbuster service? Does it support queues and how is their selection?
-- Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui
I'd give it a week and some skilled firefox hacker will create some addon to put it back in from the user side.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
According to their customer support, this was a feature only used by 1% of subscribers, but was a significant drain on resources, increased maintenance difficulties, and slowed down adding new features. I don't particularly buy most of that, but if the 1% thing is true, then I can see how they'd make that choice. If more of that 1% convert to full subscriptions rather than cancel, it'll be a win for them.
Well, this feature is what makes Netflix make sense for us. I divide up our plan into two queues - one for me, one for the wife & kids. They get what they want, I get what I want (I have less time to watch, so sometimes I have a movie at home for a week or more) and we don't get in each other's way.
Fundamentally, without this feature, Netflix becomes a pain in the butt to manage for us. Right now, I can be sure that when I send a movie back, I get one of my movies. The same goes for the others.
I'm going to cancel on Aug 31 (and have told them so) if they don't keep this feature.
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years. This is the first time they've ever taken a step backwards. And their complete lack justification is very strange.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
That's strange because Lovefilm, the dominant DVD-by-mail company in the UK, has only recently introduced this feature.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I use the profiles feature, but not in the intended way. I keep a separate queue for different types of movies. I currently have 3 profiles. One for TV shows (so I always have 1 Torchwood disc at home), one for mindless action & scifi movies that I can watch without my wife, and one for movies for us to watch together. All the movies are for me, but I've had to create three profiles with fake names. Each time I switch between queues, I have to login again. Any since it thinks each queue represents a separate person, it doesn't remember any of my past rentals or movie ratings.
Personally, when I got the email from Netflix, a little part of me thought 'good... maybe their going to try to do it right this time'
That's not to say I would put the slimeball tactic outside of the realm of possibilities, but that just seems less likely.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
Profiles is the only reason I would have switched from Blockbuster to Netflix. Blockbuster was great for my wife and I because we could return movies to the store and get more movies for free (my wife watches a lot of stuff on the days she has off). But we're moving away from any nearby Blockbuster stores this week so I was seriously considering switching to Netflix. I would love it if my wife and I each had our own queue. Then we wouldn't get 10 romantic comedies in a row or 10 action movies. Ah well.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Not only were profiles helpful for queues as stated here, but also for keeping the varied tastes of myself, wife and children separate too. Having gone through and rated a large number of movies, we are now getting *fairly* accurate predictions of movies we might like.
If they actually follow through with this and family/friends merge into one profile, the prediction algorithm will be lobotomized since it will try to predict based on different people's opinions. We'll be back to getting notices like this one that I got before we had separate profiles: Based on your ratings, we think you'll like the following two movies: Bambi Platinum Edition and Scarface 20th Anniversary Edition.
I was in the first wave to join Netflix, and I was a user who, early on, made repeated requests for better ways to manage the queue. What they implemented was a good try, but it was not that for which I was looking. As the account owner, I wanted to be able to manage all queues from a single screen. I despised the way I needed to manage each queue on its own screen (I gave up on profiles at least a year ago, so I don't know if they rectified this).
What I envisioned originally was to be able to manage multiple lists on a single screen: lets call them List A, List B, and List C. When browsing and adding movies to the queue, you still have one button to add movies, but it would have a drop-down option that would let you choose another queue. Thus, the default button action would be the same, but you would have the option of diverting the request. For queue management, I had pitched a system similar to the one the adopted, allowing you to specify how to intersperse the movies from the other queues. For controls, I envisioned parameters only on the sub-queues. Using the names I provided earlier in and example, you could configure List B to send one movie after every three sent on the primary queue. I envisioned being able to drag-and-drop between the lists on the same GUI page. As for others adding their preferences to the queue, the account owner could specify users (by email address) who could logon and add to specific queues, much the way the service was implemented. For younger kids who may not have their own eddresses, Netflix could have allowed the account owner to create logon accounts that would be child accounts and have limited rights. If the owner's logon was thisuser@somedomain.com, for example, I envisioned secondary accounts that could be named subAccountName~thisuser@somedomain.com.
Oh, and yes, I was this verbose in passing my comments on to Netflix. I was pleased that they opted for profiles, but was disappointed by how cumbersome they were to manage. Placing all profile management in a single page view would have gone far in making them easier to use.
I guess I'm disappointed to see Netflix throw out the baby with the bathwater, but they can see that users like me have stopped using the profiles. It reaches a point where the amount of developer support hours and system maintenance tasks invested in a minimally used feature necessitates a pause to rethink the strategy. Hopefully we will see an improved queue management system in the future.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Pretty sure Netflix CEO Reed Hastings knew this would go over badly.
He exercised 2,500 options and then sold off 10,000 shares just last week.
See: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/13/ap5115170.html
The big problem is if you have seperate accounts the chances of renting the same movie goes up. With Profiles if you selected a movie that is already on another profile it would warn you of duplicates.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Does anyone know if Blockbuster's movie-rental-by-mail program offers separate queues?
Exactly. I have over 1000 movies rated under my own profile which is secondary to the main profile of my wife. Now if they do this, not only will we lose ability to maintain separate queues (which is very important, because our tastes are not completely overlapping), I will lose all the ratings which was essential to get new suggestions. New suggestions were one of the main resources for me to find new movies according to my taste.
I am a big fan of Netflix for all the good reasons, but this decision is almost a deal-breaker to me. Give me a fucking chance to get my history and data back.
I realize that there was a legal settlement a few yrs ago with NF.
but they have NOT changed their ways, not in any significant way. read their TOS - they have the slipperiest weasel words possible.
they STILL do ALL the things they were accused of. they have not changed one bit, other than their WORDING on their site.
its deeply built into their business model, I guess. but its still WRONG to say 'unlimited' when its clearly not at all unlimited.
I live 20 minutes drive from their los gatos main center. I drop my dvd's in the mail AT THE POST OFFICE early in the AM. I am 99.9% certain that each one does get from sunnyvale to san jose in a day. there is just no way in hell it can take more than that; so why do discs not show up as 'received' until about 2 days later?
and even then, some of them 'downgrade' to shipping tomorrow over the course of the day. I check NF at 7am and I see that 2 have been received and are said to be shipping today. but later in the day, mysteriously they change to shipping tomorrow. yet my queue has over 300 entries!
they are still throttling. and they are lying thru their teeth about it every time they deny it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
"rent, rip, and return the next day."
I really don't understand this mentality. Blank DVDs aren't free, and Netflix is so very inexpensive, and very few people over the age of six actually watch a movie more than two or three times.
It is CHEAPER, if you use netflix, not to rip at all. Just buy the few movies you actually want to watch again. AND you get them with all the pretty packaging for your bookshelf.
Not to mention that it doesn't make sense to buy any DVDs at all at the moment, since the DVD successor is already on the market, and therefore only a few years away from price-parity.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts.
Well, here's a customer who just changed to paying for no accounts. I'll just go back to getting movies from the library.
1 at a time: $9 / month
2 at a time: $14 / month
Proportionally, a 29% surcharge to have 2 x 1 at a time.
I've used Redbox a number of times and I'm very happy with it. Much more cost effective for somebody who only rents a couple movies a month. The only problem with Redbox is they're space limited (of course) so they only provide new releases. If you want something from 6 months ago forget it.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
"Free up programming space?" This means save a dime. You might recall that Netflix is offering a $1 million prize to someone who can improve their recommendations engine by 10%, and on the other hand they can't afford to maintain profiles. Give me a break.