Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Changes Its Mind, Will Keep Profiles Feature
xChange writes "I too was disappointed at Netflix's decision to remove the Profiles feature, and let them know via email and telephone. I was surprised to find the following email in my inbox today: 'You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.' I thought that it sounded too good to be true, and went to their blog to confirm, finding this entry. Netflix decided to listen to its customers, and keep a feature that many of us find essential for our use of their service. I am surprised, and very pleased."
Hahahha. Sorry for the laugh, but I thought the whole shebang was a Coke II ploy from the get-go.
I.E., Netflix was never going to cancel profiles. Instead, they pretend they are going to do so, which brings attention to the fact that they offer profiles, unlike one of their competitors.
Just like Coca-Cola introduced the "New Coke" in the 80s simply to draw attention to their brand, meanwhile planning all along to reintroduce "Coke Classic"... which eventually became the only Coke available. (Though I'm still not sure if the switch from cane sugar to corn syrup had anything to do with it.)
Well, what can I say, Netflix... it appears to have worked. As a Blockbuster Online subscriber, I'm thinking of changing to Netflix because of profiles, which I wasn't aware of. It turns out the advantage of Blockbuster (being able to pick up rentals/drop them off at B&M stores) hasn't been heplful to me, so maybe I'll switch over.
Good jorb on the marketing ploy.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I appreciate that they kept profiles. I found them invaluable. Unfortunately, when I was told they were going away, my husband and I painstakingly moved his profile to a different account. Instead of a 3/3 = 6 account, we now have two 3 disk accounts. Damn for being so quick and efficient, I guess.
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
In general yes, but I'm not too surprised that Netflix is one of them. They are one of the few companies that haven't pissed me off to the point of looking for alternatives. I've always been happy with their customer service.
Every time I've ever had a problem with Netflix, namely receiving broken disks or having disks stolen/lost in the mail, they've always sent me new disks right away, without any fuss.
Once when they continued to charge me after I'd canceled (poor student, blah blah), I was forced to email their billing support. Amazingly, my email was answered within about an hour by a *real person*. No form emails, no PR bullshit, just a terse plain-text email. This blew my mind. Not only were they polite, but they refunded my money the same day.
That said, this doesn't surprise me at all. Netflix has always been a pleasure to do business with.
(I don't work for them or anything. Hell, I'm not even a customer anymore. They're just one of the few companies that I don't mind giving my money to.)
OK, what should appropriate profit margins be then? Would you rather discuss actual profit instead of a margin? Whom, and by what authority, should decide this, and with what criteria?
Hear hear! Netflix are one of the only big businesses I've ever dealt with that treats their customers like humans.
I was absolutely shocked last year, when Netflix sent me a tiny postcard informing me that they were cutting my bill by $1/month.
These days, it's a pretty standard practice to lock customers in to multi-year contracts, and not pass on any price-cuts to existing customers. Kudos to Netflix for doing the honest thing. I also move around a lot, and they don't seem to have a problem with updating my address every few months to keep track of me, or suspending my account if I leave the country for an extended period.
Similarly, they're astonishingly trustworthy of their customers when it comes to lost or missing DVDs. If a DVD doesn't show up, or you get a bad disc (a rare occurrence, but not completely impossible), simply fill out a web form, and a new one will be on its way immediately. There's no inquisition, and no accusations of theft. They apologize and fix the problem right away.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
No they didn't. They tried to remove profiles because it was making upgrades to the frontend more difficult and only 3% of their users actually used the feature.
So by removing a feature that fairly few people used, they could speed up development. That's how it benefits us, and they told us this up front.
I'm not sure I understand why the decision was so bad. They obviously did it so that people who watch movies separately would have to buy separate subscriptions. Aside from the fact that they weren't honest about why they were doing it (a repeat of their behavior when they were throttling heavy users, and pretending they weren't), that actually seems pretty equitable.
Say 4 people are sharing a 4-at-a-time account using 4 queues. (I hear this is pretty common in dorms.) Then they basically are getting the same service as 4 people with 1-at-a-time accounts, but for $6 each instead of $9 each. That extra $3 is not exactly a budget breaker, and yet the $9 total seems a pretty reasonable fee to rent 4 or 5 movies a month. Considering that the postage alone probably costs nearly $5.
It makes sense to give people with a single queue a discount per movie, because you either have a one-person household, or a household that watches all their movies together. So a household with a 4-at-a-time membership is probably not watching 4 times as many movies.
Not that it's a big moral issue either way. Netflix seems to be making money (though obviously not as much as they'd like) and people are getting entertained pretty cheaply (though obvious every $ counts, perhaps too much!).
Anyway, cue the flames.
"What? Are you just going to mass migrate all of IBM from Windows? HAH! We'd like to see you try. We'll talk to you again in a week, after you realize it's financial suicide."
Uh, that isn't really out of the question. IBM has an internal IBM-ified Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution that any employee who wants to use that instead of Windows is welcome to.
This has evolved over the years and when I last worked for IBM, I used it on my company-issued laptop for the last year I was there. All the IBM-required tools, like Lotus Notes and Sametime, work perfectly well. Office is handled with OpenOffice (integrated into Notes w/ version 8).
Of any of the companies out there with a large deployment of Windows, IBM is the best postured to switch to Linux. Given IBM's contributions to the open source community and their respect of open standards, I wouldn't put it past them.
Disclaimer: I am not an employee of or affiliated with IBM. I worked there a year ago. They might have migrated everyone to OS2 at this point, I don't know.
This is easily the most annoying thing about phone support.
First the automated system asks you to enter your account number, telephone number, or what have you. Then you get to sit on hold while they scare up a human.
Then you get to the human. What's the first thing they ask? "What is your account number?" My god, I could just kill them!
But it doesn't stop there! First-level support is useless, so you get past them and they transfer you along to someone more useful. Once you arrive, what's the first thing you hear? You guessed it! "What is your account number?"
Doesn't this repetition cost these companies valuable time and thus money? Is it really that hard to make a support system that will hold on to my information as my call is transferred through your organization?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
DVDs: ~$15-20. BD: ~$25-30. Yes, that's a significant expense.
Netflix has over 55 million discs in its warehouse(s), though how many are BD is not clear. They certainly do not pay more than retail for discs, though the extent of their discount and any independent licensing agreements they've reached with studios are obviously trade secrets.
I do have a choice, and that's why I started riding a motorcycle. I only use a car now in order to get groceries, and only then when I need A LOT of groceries.
Does it mean I end up driving in crazy rain (like Seattle is known for)? Yeah, it does, but I bought good gear. If you want to talk about beating the pants off of a hybrid, my 600cc motorcycle cost me $2.8k, and gets about 47mpg at 80mph (I don't even think hybrids can DO 80mph). At that rate, paying off the extra $19k that the hybrid costs? Wow, that would never happen... and $19k can buy you some REALLY REALLY good gear. In the winter a lot of people asked me "aren't you cold?" and my response is, "no, although if I stop moving, I get REALLY hot."
Of course, I also have a 250cc that gets 60mpg, and I bought for just $2k... but I don't tend to drive it to work (even though I probably should, gas just isn't THAT expensive yet.)
I was talking to my ex-boyfriend saying, "you know, I started riding a bike because gas was killing me... it's just getting harder and harder for me to stop." Also, I mentioned to him that my car is a bit of my "red-headed step child" of a vehicle. It hasn't been touched in about two weeks or so...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS