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Netflix To Lose 1 Million Subscribers
tekgoblin writes "In light of the recent price increase at Netflix, it made quite a few subscribers mad. Netflix expects to lose around 1 million total subscribers in the short term after the price changes (which split off separate subscription plans for streaming video and DVD rentals). On top of the price increase, Netflix will lose their contract with Starz in February, which will cost them around 1,000 total streaming titles from their collection."
Please no! This can't be true!!!
Netflix loses a million subscribers?!
No! My world is at an end!!!
While losing a million subscribers is generally a bad thing... I would think they will be doing fine with the other 24 million of us.
Well really, what the heck did they expect? The e-mail they sent out about splitting up the streaming and dvd mailing services was ridiculously patronizing.
I mean, I would have been a lot more okay with things if they'd just been straightforward and said "look, the people we get our content from are raising the prices on us, we need to charge you more to cover it". That's fine, that I can understand.
Instead, those assholes decided to pitch it as some sort of super awesome deal, where instead of being forced to pay for streaming and dvd mailing together, you're now paying for them separately! It's great! So much better than the old deal! And you, the consumer, are such an idiot that you're not even going to notice that the price of your plan increased significantly, doubling in some cases! (if you're like me and you were on the 1 dvd + streaming plan).
Do they not have any sort of market demographics at all? Do they have no idea the kinds of people that subscribe to their service? We're more likely to be early adopters, for goodness' sakes; we're not going to appreciate being talked down to like we're children who can't do math.
And look, I do appreciate Netflix - as convenient as Redbox is, it doesn't quite have the selection. It's just, reading that goddamn e-mail about the new plans left such a bad taste in my mouth I couldn't stand giving them money any more.
I believe this is the risk of being pioneers on something, they inventing this tv streaming service and the dvd rental... Then suddendly the market you invent changes, and as you are the pioner you do not have examples to follow on your way to avoid sotck price to drop in your segment as well as a complete study on how your consumers will behave before the options you give.
Perhaps if they had a client for linux, there would be some amount of offset due to incoming subscribers. If there were a player, I would be fine with paying their new price for service on linux. The only computers I have run either linux or FreeBSD, so there are no options for netflix for me at the moment.
Yes, making stupid (and poorly written) blog posts about your superiority is clearly productive. I guess pushing the shift key also takes up too much of your valuable time?
Starz makes up a big portion of the GOOD options on netflix. I'm probably dropping my service for the blockbuster equivalent if I can get more choice.
The price increase would be fine if I got more in streaming... instead I just get more useless strange crap made in backyards.
I dropped the streaming service. The selection is so bad, it's really not worth even $8 a month to me. I'd gladly pay significantly more if the selection was significantly better. I hope they can get their licensing issues worked out!
I don't respond to AC's.
I tried changing my bank account info and when I called to ask them to reverse a pending charge on the wrong/old account I was told that I would have to close/cancel my service with them, and then restart service at a new higher rate!
So I cancelled. Completely.
Now I have to play the "contest the charge on the credit card game" even though I cancelled on the 9th the charge still showed up on the 11th.
You'd think they would be doing anything to just maintain their current customers, but evidently not.
Say hello to RedBox !
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
Hulu? any others?
I am more concerned about Netflix loosing streaming titles than the price hike. Out of about 50 titles in my instant queue only 5 or 6 are available for streaming and the number is in fact decreasing. If Netflix looses more streaming titles then I will probably switch to DVD-only plan or go to DirecTV/Blockbuster.
I am trying to stay. I like my streaming only subscription in spite of the limited selection. If they would license more stuff for that, and honestly push that I'd be willing to eat a price increase. Right now at $8/mo it's a bargain, let loose the first run movies and TV, and they could double my price. That would still beat the hell out of TWC or Uverse. Even figuring in part of my ISP fee (a higher speed connection because I knew I wasn't going to be getting a cable package) it's way better (for me) than cable. Oddly that net connection is thru TWC, their net service is good, their cable service sucks.
I don't want/need nor will I use the DVD plan. waiting on a single disc wtfever on that shit...
Where they really fell down was how they tried to sell it to the customers. It's pretty well established that during a down economy you don't raise prices if you can help it, you definitely don't raise prices by +60% and if you have to do that then you certainly don't make condescending comments about how it's only the cost of a couple lattes. Lattes are much less elite than they used to be, but they're still significantly more expensive than the alternatives are.
I might have gone along with it had they been honest about it rather than them making condescending remarks implying that they didn't need or want my business.
It's tough to be the middleman... Netflix stands between the consumers and the content providers, but streaming video is rapidly becoming a commodity, so no doubt the content providers will get greedy and decide they want to own the whole thing end to end. I'm sure they'll ignore the amazing feat Netflix has accomplished (namely getting people to pay for streaming content online) and attempt to set up their own sites with onerous terms (pay-per-view with 24 hours to start) and high monthly rates, then be all surprised when no one signs up and start claiming piracy is destroying their business.
If they lose customers, but get more money per customer, it can work to Netflix's advantage big time. Their costs are mostly on bandwidth, and if they lose 1 million customers, that's 1 million fewer people to feed data to. That amounts to major cost cutting, so even if revenues drop a little but are offset by lower costs then they win.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Netflix sees that the dvd mail-order program is a thing of the past and will die out (especially since you have teh redbox competition in every neighborhood).
The future of tv is streaming. They've built up a base who are used to it now, and are letting the others stay if they want, or move on. Smart move.
The analysts keep saying that blockbuster and amazon are the competition, but the fact is that netflix apps are on every tv and blu-ray player out there. Every time Walmart gets someone to try streaming from their site, the new customer also goes over and tries out Netflix too.
So Starz thinks their product is too good for the masses to watch. Fact is, I dropped the Starz service when I went to "Digital Economy" class and I never missed it.
I enjoy digging through the older content, and for new stuff I still will either buy the dvds or rent them through redbox (never rented through Netflix.. the idea of waiting for a disk to come in the mail seemed stupid to me all along).
In the long run, the content providers will need to get involved or be left behind with content they can't get anyone to watch thorugh the compeition.
This comment hits the mark right on the head.
It was bad enough before how much content was actually available to stream versus by mail, especially compared to (not really competing, I guess alternative is more apropos) services e.g. XBL. Now that service is losing even more titles due to licensing issues with Starz. What terrible timing to try and spin a price increase as something consumers actually want, when the service you're charging more for is actually LOSING VALUE. This makes no sense on the face of it, especially in today's atmosphere of belt tightening and budget trimming.
I spent 10 minutes looking for my old login information just to see if I had mod points to promote this comment, alas I had none.
--Ks9
If they expect to lose this many customers, they must also expect to gain enough of a profit margin from the price hike that they can afford to lose this many customers. It's not like they're standing under a bridge and expecting it to fall on them - they are electively changing the prices. This is assuming that a rabid monkey hasn't taken over the management of Netflix, which is not an unreasonable hypothesis given their bizarre adherence to their horrendous new interface despite an overwhelming sentiment of repulsion from their user base.
The idea of even offering plans that are essentially equivalent to cutting a video store in half arbitrarily is so viscerally unappealing - it is just a setup for competitors to step in. The sooner the better - good riddance netflix.
ôó
I've tried repeatedly to restart my subscription, since the DVD-only option is very appealing. But they don't even offer it. (No lie.) I don't see streaming as a viable option for many years, so it's back to the public library for me.
in case you hadn't noticed, slashdot has gone to complete shite.
So they increased their prices by 60% and didn't lose even 10% of their subscribers? They win. Maybe they should raise the rates again.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Netflix is not saying that they will be losing 1M of their existing customers. Rather, they're altering their guidance for the next quarter by 1M subscribers, which is an important distinction, since it more or less halves the impact from what most people here seem to be thinking. Previously, they had been expecting a decent growth of 400K in the upcoming quarter, but now they are projecting a net loss of 600K in the quarter, hence the 1M number. Yes, it's bad, but it's not as bad as losing 1M of your current customers in addition to however many potential customers you'd lose as well.
The article and most of the other blogs are glossing over this detail, but numbers are always important.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-netflix-20110916,0,5009354.story
I'm on the $4.99 plan where you get 1 disc at a time, two per month. I joined in 2007 when they offered one hour of streaming for each dollar spent, so I get 5 hours of streaming/month (they later lowered it to 2.5 hrs/month for the $4.99 plan, I think.) I have received absolutely no correspondence about the changes. They are shipping my next DVD tomorrow and charging me $5. I'll happily continue with this as long as they'll give it to me. Posting anonymously because...well...if I'm not supposed to get this I don't want anyone putting two and two together.
Considering that it seems like at least 20 million people were swearing up and down they'd cancel when this rate change took effect, 1 million doesn't seem so bad. OK, it does seem pretty bad. However, I think the much bigger problem is their loss of content (Sony, Starz and whoever else is next) and the soaring licensing fees for the content they do have.
I really like the idea of Netflix, but they just can't seem to pull it off yet. The selection is horrible and I have to strain to find something to watch. They have a disproportionate amount of bad titles and don't get enough good ones in to keep my interest. I'm tired of spending so much time trying to find something I like. I had cut cable for these type of services, but now I think I'm going to cut them to go back to cable. I hoped they could do it, and I know someone will soon, maybe even Netflix, but it's quite abysmal atm. Them raising the price was for sure the cut-off. Maybe another company can do it better?
Agree... any suggestions for an alternative? Somewhere like old slashdot?
I've been a big fan but the streaming service, loved being able to use my Wii+TV screen, and iPhone in bed. But after less than a year the streaming library feels *way* too limited. It's like what cable TV feels like: there's nothing on worth watching. Loss of Starz is a part of that, but even with Starz I've already seen most of what is worth watching -- that I know of.
Here's a suggestion for Netflix: do a better job of helping me find good stuff and maybe I'll stay. The automatic recommendations don't seem to be narrowed enough to my interests, but what could work instead is user-made lists like on Amazon or some other form of human curating.
Example: there's lots of anime in the streaming library. The teeny-bopper stuff I won't care for, but some of the other stuff I really really dig. Help me find that!
Another example: there are many old films that are considered classics by film buffs. I might like to explore those, but I need a list to work from.
In real life, it was film buffs who introduced me to Jackie Chan, Akira, the styles of individual directors like Sam Raimi or Hayao Miyazaki, genres that I didn't know about, etc. If Netflix had more coherent curating of their existing library I would extract more value from it.
Let's assume 25M subscribers at the standard DVD + Streaming plan, which I believe was $11/mo. We can chop off a few zeros and still get the same effect, so let's do that and keep our math simple.
25 * 11 = 275
I think the cheapest is now $16 for both, so let's figure out what they'd be making if everyone who stayed kept the same plan at the higher rate.
24 * 16 = 384
Let's derive a quick formula.
(24 - x) * 16 + x * 8, where x is the number of people who choose DVD /or/ streaming.
24 * 16 = 384 = (24 - 0) * 16 + 0 * 8
Now, let's solve for 275, to assume they'd be making the same amount.
275 = (24 - x) * 16 + x * 8
I put this into my handy equation solver because I'm too lazy to work it out in my head and can't find paper/pen...
x = 109/8, or 13.625.
Netflix could go down to 10.375M users of the DVD+streaming, and have 13.625M users of one or the other and still make the same amount of money.
Methinks Netflix did their math beforehand. They're going to be making bank, and savvy shareholders are buying now on this dip on bad news. Happens every time. Netflix is here to stay, for as long as the content owners will allow it to exist.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Over the past year Netflix lost an astounding 80% of their customers and 90% of their stock value. Due to monthly losses well into hundred of millions of dollars and a total loss of $8 billion Netflix has announced they will be liquidating all of its assets. One month after the investigation was launched Netflix entire board was formally charged on numerous counts of fraud and insider trading.
Furthermore, the investigation led to further investigations into Microsoft and Facebook which revealed not only more insider trading and fraud, but also murders of several whistle blowers. From these findings the US Justice Dept. the board from both corporations have been formally charged The fraud and insider trading. The board from all three corporations have been charged with 20 counts of murder in the first degree. As a result of these charges and their ties to Microsoft and Facebook the charters to these corporations and others tied into the two have been officially revoked by order of the Securities and Exchange commission.
I find it quite interesting in the netflix prediction:
Prior to model change:
Streaming only: 10,0m customers
Streaming+DVD: 12.0m customers
DVD Only: 3.0m customers
Post-implementation of the new pricing model, Netflix expects the customer base break-out to be:
Streaming only: 9.8m customers
Streaming+DVD: 12.0m customers
DVD only: 2.2m customers
So let me get this straight - the price for streaming+dvd is at least doubling - and Netflix is not expecting that customer count to go down at all. Instead, they are expecting a net loss on the two plans they are creating to make things better - instead of a net loss on on the plan that is going up 100% for many customers.
Splitting DVD and streaming will hopefully allow Netflix to open up to the rest of the planet to the streaming option. I'd happily pay double what they are asking for a service like Netflix.
I switched to their competitor who has more content and better prices!
Netflix did better than I thought they would. They only lost 4% of their subscribers over this, and it looks like their revenue is going to go up. Pretending that everyone was on the cheapest plan, they used to have 25 million subscribers paying $10 a month for $250 million/month. Now they have 21.8 million paying for streaming and another 14.2 million paying for DVD, each at $8 a month for a total of $288 million/month. Since the price of the larger plans didn't change as much as the cheapest one, I think it is safe to say that they will be making more money when this is done than they did before.
Suppose they had given a $2 discount for people on both plans, like I thought they should. They would have increased revenue further by doing that if everyone stayed, and 2.6 million more people decided to go with both plans, or alternately if the same number left but 4 million decided to have both plans. Of course, that doesn't consider increased costs of both plans.
No kidding. That email was a spin-fest from the beginning and the executive team should be roasted about it at the next shareholders' meeting. It insulted the hell out of customers. If they had said something like "yes, streaming has gotten a lot more expensive for us to do, if you want to do it you're going to have to pay more - a lot more," then customers would not have been happy - but they wouldn't have been condescended to like a group of fourth graders. (Hint to fourth-graders: they're treating you badly because you're too young to be able to fight back. They're bullies. Remember that when you grow up - people who bully kids are, without exception, assholes. As a corollary, be kind to the teachers who treat you like a young, unwise, but nonetheless real and valuable person, because they're actually looking out for you.)
I agree with you there. The Netflix recommendation system has to be one of the most confounding things about the service. For example, I generally dislike George Clooney and his films, so I consistently rate them low - as in 1 or 2 stars. Every time I do, the recommendation system whirs and clicks and comes to the conclusion that I didn't like that film because I HAVEN'T SEEN ENOUGH Clooney films and proceeds to start recommending a stream of Clooney films! And it's not just Clooney - it seems like a great deal of the time when I rate a movie, I'm liable to get recommendations for either similar titles to something I rated poorly, or something wildly unrelated -- like "You enjoyed Terminator so here's a recommendation for Spongebob Squarepants". WTF???
Don't be too hard on Netflix; It seems they are caught between a rock and a hard place. The studios let them get by on table scraps before because they didn't see them as a serious revenue source, and saw them as just an opportunity to pick up minor bits of revenue which they wouldn't otherwise collect. Now Netflix has everyone's attention, and the studios are going to want the full slice of the pie. Analysts predict that Netflix licensing is going to increase from $180M to 1.98B in the next few years. With that looming over Netflix, they must be desperate to find a strategy to cope. If the studios get their way and Netflix goes down or concedes to their desired licensing, then we all lose and we end up paying $60 to $120 per month like we pay for cable instead of $8 / month. Personally I just have the Netflix streaming service and no DVD. I don't care about the DVDs, but I wish they streamed more videos. It would be nice to have Netflix under Linux though, so I wouldn't have other options than my console.
So it seems a good amount of what I stream has the starz tag on the cover, which surprises me since they only offer 1,000 streaming titles.
BUT....
You have got to be fucking kidding me, starz turned down 300M in licensing fees for those 1,000 titles!?!?!?!?!?!? WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! You're telling me that three hundred fucking thousands dollars PER FILM was not good enough for starz?!?!? Does not compute!
Seriously. Even at the higher rates, the amount of content you're getting at that price is a damn *steal*. If they told me they were increasing the streaming service to $20 a month in order to provide more content I'd be fine with that.
I have no plans of leaving, reducing my subscription maybe.
As for them loosing starz? Great. 3/74 shows I watched in this year streaming were STARZ.... Not like they are needed.
Aside from having a poor selection of instant view movies, they offer no ability to search the instant views. You can search the whole collection, but everytime you find a movie you like, it's only on DVD. If they offered a better search or browse capability for the instant view movies, I'd pay the $7.99 per month, but as things are, no way.
So according to TFA, Netflix had 12 million people paying $10/month for streaming+DVD. Those 12 million people will now pay $16/month. That's an extra $72m/month.
10 million (like me) are streaming only at $8/month. They're losing 200,000 of those, or $1.6 million/month.
3 million get the DVD only plan. They're losing 800,000 of those. I don't know what the average DVD only customer pays, but let's be generous and say it's $20/month. This'll cost Netflix $16m/month. They're still $55 million/month in the black.
So you're all saying Netflix has done something really stupid because they're...making more money?
Netflix has pissed people off simply because people don't want to pay more, not because the service isn't worth it. I get TONS of value for my $8/month. I may get around to adding the DVD bit for those shows I can't stream because another $8/month is peanuts. I spend more than that for one movie ticket. I spent more than that on lunch today. But somehow I'm supposed to be all outraged that a service I actually like wants me to pay that much to watch movies all month long. I just don't see it. Sorry.
And let us not forget the role of Silverlight in tanking the Netflix experience. It's the direct cause of our recent cancellation.
OK, so they lost 1,000,000 of 25,000,000 that are ditching NetFlix. But what I want to know is how many that were paying $9.95 before said "screw it" and just reduced their payment to $7.99, taking only one of the two services, hopefully DVDs by mail. And overall how did this price increase affect their gross and net income.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I hope they don't renew their contract with Starz for streaming. I got tired of movies showing up for a short time to stream and then disappearing a month or two later. When this happens frequently enough, you end up with tons of movies on your streaming queue that aren't actually available for streaming. Movies should be added to streaming as a permanent thing, not this silly revolving door.
You certainly made the "short list" of features that led to me giving up my Linux install and my wonderfully uber-compatible XBMC installation. In fact, you were the most important factor leading to the change. The fact that XBMC and MythTV work together as well as the Bundys when it comes to broadcast televison, well, now that I think of it, that's the only other reason. Rest assured, you were the reason for the switch.
Now, Microsoft made $50 on the transition; I'm a student. And Windows Media Center is pretty damn good, once sufficiently beaten into submission. I have it now as compatible with videos as XBMC, with metadata collection and display almost as good. However, you guys were nice enough to build an add-in to WMC, cool. $8 a month is pretty awesome for HD movies to just be THERE. Schweet.
However, that just ain't the case. Even though I'm a lucky bastard and can pull down about 3MB/s (and yes, I mean a little over two 1.44MB floppy disks, or maybe 0.0001 Libraries of Congress), "HD Video" just won't play. I don't use quotes for effect, I use them because that's what you call it, I can't get your player to cough up any information about what the hell resolution, frame rate, color profile, or codec. It skips and sputters, surely because Silverlight 4 isn't hardware-accelerated - but Silverlight 5 just isn't there either.
Now, I can: 1. Minimize WMC. 2. Start Firefox. 3. Go to your website. 4. Log in (WMC is logged in separately). 5. Go to My Account. 6. Click Video Steaming Settings (or whatever the hell it is) 7. Change the rate to 1GB/hr. and 8. Click Next. This gives me a 404 error, but it's been changed. 9. Return to WMC, completely stop the movie, and restart. Then we have video. I can't change that shit in the WMC client. That's cool, but it's not HD. Can I get a discount?
Now, I'd be cool with the fact that my HTPC (which is otherwise quite capable of 1080p, thankyouverymuch) isn't getting HD content, because I could at least have that thing playing and use another device, like my iPhone. Now, I was paying for the ability to stream HD to one device, and I wasn't getting that. I can't give you numbers for sure because your client is so locked down. However, I'm pretty sure that the SD-only stream my HTPC receives plus the mobile video on my iPhone still isn't the resolution I was paying for, but that's now blocked.
Can I have my money (and time) back?
(P.S. Dear Slashdot: You owe me karma back from the Google+ post. How the HELL did that end up there?)
I have to admit, i'm surprised to see /. reacting like this. I expect better from you guys.
First off, was dvd really that big a deal? i know i never used it, if something isn't available to stream online, i simply pirate it if i want to see it that badly.
7 bucks for netflix, and 7 bucks for a vpn are still a hell of a lot cheaper than cable. Losing starz is a bitch...but that was 100% starz. They left 300 million on the table because netflix refused to go to tiered subscriptions like they were aiming for.
(because it would have killed them dead in the water for any netizen worth a damn).
All that aside, this forces the migration toward digital, and moves up the death of dvd's, completely a good thing. The people who're crying about losing dvd's will now go learn about wonderful things like proxies, and vpn's, and cyberlockers, and move the cycle one iteration further down the road toward the inevitable collapse of the current status quo. win/win long term.
Are getting screwed. I like the option of getting a DVD for a show that wasn't available via streaming. But when the price changes came, I decided I used streaming more than the real video service, so I opted for the streaming only at 8 bucks a month. Now they are losing stars, which means I am not essentially paying the same for a greatly reduced service.
I have seen the value acquired for the dollar spent on netflix rapidly diminish over the past several months. I'll probably end up canceling entirely and go back to waiting for a service to come along that does streaming right.
( note: I'm not entirely blaming netflix here, they're the middle man and have to play games with the content holders, who we all know are bastards. Doesn't change the end result however. )
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
They are loosing rather than gaining streaming content (decent stuff over 1 star that is) with their failure to keep starz. They better do some damage control and fire a few executives.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
The funny thing is Netflix turned a lot of pirates into legitimate customers. Some pirates I know dramatically dropped the amount of piracy they did after they bought a Netflix account. Stunts like this might actually reverse things. Content creators need to realize that a lot of people are willing to pay. They just want the content when and how they want it. A smart content creator would be trying to nuture and shape services like Netflix and make a model that make both sides happy. Also, I am so tired of running Netflix in a VM.
actual example:
The Natural History of the Chicken (a documentary on the history of the chicken)
Because you enjoyed: We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
WTF Netflix?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unless something's changed in the last week or two, they've already lost Starz (The Washington Post, CNN Money).
--Ks9
My wife (who is homebound due to a workers comp issue) watches Netflix streaming. A lot.
She complains continuously that they do not have the latest releases available to stream, but then she finds herself a new (to her) TV series and watches that.
And when I say "watches," I mean "vigorously consumes". She starts from episode 1, and goes until she reaches the end.
She uses up to about 450 gigabytes per month of bandwidth doing this, by my measurement.
So, as saddened as I am that Netflix's new pricing scheme has finally come to shove, I am moreover disheartened that I have allowed such a travesty to fester to such an extent that it affects all of us.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize. I am unreservedly sorry for my wife's behavior and any impact that it may have upon you and your family.
-adolf, #21054
Kid-proof tablet..
They're losing a million customers, but only 200k would be streamers. Now, 800k seems like a lot, but the disc-only crowd also has high expenses because of mailing costs.
It's the 200k streamers who they won't have that I'd worry about. Netflix is changing their business model and the company is screwed if they can't increase the number of streaming customers.
I thought it was a bad move by netflix to not offer a discount to use both services ($2 - $4 dollar off).
Netflix offers a better streaming selection of online than a few years ago.
I will keep the streaming service but will go down from 3 DVDs to 2 DVDs and pay almost the same price.
I can do this for the following reason.
Two years ago, I had to get Stargate SG1 DVDs. I can now stream Stargate Atlantis.
The streaming on a Wii is amazing. I can stream to my geeks content.
I am streaming Stargate Atlantis.
I can stream Bleach anime
I can stream Cowboy Bebob.
And I don't pay $$$ for digital cable.
Because whats on cable, 10% new programming and 90% old programming.
Whats on netflix, 100% old programming for $8. A great deal still. My kids love it.
And NO COMMERCIALS.
WhatMeWorry!
If I do, it will be for the streaming only service. If there is something only offered by them on DVD, then I'll just download the bitch elsewhere.
I'll slap your gangrenous gullet with FLOPPY NIGGAHTITS muthafucka!
He was fairly obviously joking with that last sentence.
It's correlating you with other people. It seems to, generally, work. The more movies you rate, the better their recommendations, even the "odd" ones. Give them a try once in a while, on streaming you can't lose.
Relax. It's something called sarcasm. I'm sure this guy watches The Colbert Report.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
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Are they talking about the 1 Million who left immediately when the price hike was announced, the 1 Million who left the day it took effect, or the 1 Million they expect to leave within a short time after it took effect?
With all of the patronizing that Netflix did, what they haven't focused on is the group of people who are probably going to be cancelling one to two months out. People don't generally cancel upon the announcement, but once they start to realize how much they're NOW paying, the impact gets felt, and then they start to cancel. I've loved Netflix from day one, but that announcement left a really bad taste in my mouth (like when they tried to raise prices before and received a backlash from customers who cut down on their service). They literally acted like they were so brilliant in their decisions that ANY RESPONSE from customers was irrelevant. I felt the impact this month when my fees went up for the same service I've received since day one with no added benefit. Sure, it's still cheaper than other stuff out there, but it's never been a necessity for me, and I was one of the early adopters because you always, until now, felt Netflix was at least on your side. Instead, it's just another business that feels customers are necessary evils in order to get insane profits. I've been watching a series on streaming that has me in the 5th of 7 seasons right now. When the 7th season finishes streaming, I will cancel Netflix forever. You see, they thought that people would jump over to one of their two choices (streaming or DVDs) once forced to pay for both, so they accounted for that. What they've not prepared for are the people who will jump ship completely and NEVER COME BACK. Those are lost customers that they can't win back through empty promises, special deals or whatever. A lost opportunity is a lost revenue stream, no matter how you look at it. If they profit because of the rest of the sheep who stay, great. If they fail, it was their own greedy fault.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Bandwidth is negligible compared to DVDs. Postage costs far more on a per movie basis. If anything, it's new royalty demands for streaming content, as bandwidth and postage have remained relatively unchanged or have only had slight increases. Royalties, on the other hand, are catching up to streaming content in a big big way.
I sympathize... sorta, and not really. I've been vocal in flipping Netflix the bird on this one. If they think streaming OLD movies is worth $8 a month, they're dreaming. And rather than pay another $8 for DVDs, I can go to RedBox for $1 DVDs or $1.50 Blu-Rays, and they are mostly NEW movies.
Now, RedBox has a delivery system and logistics that truly impresses me. They also have physical locations just about everywhere. The fact that they beat Netflix on price, and I can fluctuate my viewing habits (1 this month, 20 next month, none the following month) is huge. Why Netflix never went to a "Only pay for how many discs you receive per month" absolutely boggles my mind. It would have been a better direction to go here, have taken care of the people who really cost them money (people who get more than 6 per month), brought their prices more in line with local retailers, and might have justified the price hike on streaming.
But they haven't, and now their services are overpriced. So, in my oh so humble opinion, they can go take a flying fucking leap into a cold fucking pond... with all due respect and sincerity.
I8-D
I especially liked the survey you take when you cancel, (which I did) it only gives you options for why you canceled like "not enough streaming options" or "customer service" none of which applied to the actual reason IE price too damn high, redbox here I come screw you netflix.
I currently put my sub on hold until December to see what they might have to offer in the future but if you are losing contracts then I don't know how that bodes well for them...
fees from one company and less to another for the sheer purpose of destroying competition?
Yes the price increase was patronizing and annoying but the bigger issue for me is their ridiculously bad new interface... Check out comments on the announcement: http://blog.netflix.com/2011/06/new-look-and-feel-for-netflix-website.html.
I actually tried to post a similarly disappointed comment but their system maxed out at 5000 negative comments. (The Facebook comments were added later).
Then Netflix responded by saying "We made it and tested it and researched it and tried it out and everywhere we tried it, it had a better reception." http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/06/10/netflix-changes-interface/
I would be willing to bet that Netflix did no testing whatsoever, or at least only tested it internally with their amongst their own design team. I find it very unlikely that they received "better reception" with real users when no one has had anything positive to say about it.
Sorry about rehashing an old conversation: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/06/11/215221/Netflixs-New-Web-Interface-Gets-Thumbs-Down-From-Users?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29
-Tim
If they are getting an extra $6 per month from the 12 M subscribers who do streaming + DVDs, that's $72M.
Losing 1M subscribers (it's from the DVD only and Streaming only categories) is a loss of $8M.
4/5 of the lost customers were from the DVD only side, the more expensive business they are trying to sideline.
I don't want them to go streaming only. Netflix killed the mom and pop video store in my town that carried a giant library of obscure films for 20 years. Netflix streams a tiny percentage of the movies on my 'to see' list.
But I don't think is a good way to persuade them to reverse course.
and go the way of blockbuster.... to bad so sad... oh well.
I knee-jerked when they upped the rates, dropping DVD. After all it was the beginning of Summer. No time for a 2 hour flick. Time to be out side. Now that the weather is cooling and the sun drops sooner, I'll add DVD's back,...until next summer. THAT is MY business model. BTW Dish content sucks much worse than Netflix and cost $40 more a month.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
Supposedly, Blockbuster's streaming service is due to start in October.
This inlcudes dvd delivery, exchange at local blockbuster brick and mortar shops and full streaming.
I've even heard rumors that those who own Dish devices will be able to pre-load movies on their DVR device (like Dish On Demand) and watch at their leisure.
Why is it I see people saying that $8/month for Hulu Plus would be worth it if they removed commercials... and then say that commercial-free content from Netflix is too expensive at $8/month?
Does anyone actually stop to consider what they're bitching about? Or is everyone just jumping on the same, "Let's string up Netflix!" bandwagon?
I'm aware of their correlation strategy, and within genres I think it does a pretty good job. For example, being a fan of 70's & 80's exploitation films, I'm more interested in how other fans of the same genre feel about a given film and less interested in the general public's rating. It's the cross-genre recommendations that seem to flub up. Taking the Terminator/SpongeBob example, I suspect the cause of this is probably along the lines of: Mom and Dad get Terminator, watch it, enjoy it and rate it high; next in queue is SpongeBob for lil' Timmy, he watches it, enjoys it and thus Mom & Dad rate it high. Thus the correlation alogrithms think people (as opposed to accounts, I suppose) who like the Terminator will also like SpongeBob.
So is it a perfect system? Nope, never will be. Do I expect a perfect system? Absolutely not. Is it useful? Sure - in certain specific, yet common, situations. Can it be improved? Yep - one quick idea off the top of my head is to allow sub-accounts at least for the purpose of rating films (not touching the idea of sub-queues). That way Mom, Dad, lil' Timmy and I can all get recommendations based on our individual tastes.
I'm a streaming-only customer with no intention of subscribing to Netflix's DVD service. My prices have not changed, yet because of the small percentage of whining customers who will need to incur a $6 per month price hike, I get screwed because investors now see all this whining and media hype as a major problem. But it's the wrong problem that the media and all these whining customers have been focusing on.
Prices go up, and as DVD subscribers goes down, costs to manage the remaining DVD subscribers will go up. Postal rates will go up. Studios charge more for DVDs. It's how things work. But that's NOT the problem.
The real problem is that Netflix used to have a great deal going, then the studios finally realized that they should get their cut, and they aren't happy with a small cut. So they in turn screw Netflix by either hiking their rates, or not renewing contracts because they can go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the media and "oh so pained" customers get the attention, but this real issue gets brushed aside.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The price increase isn't all that bad, it's the content. If there were enough decent things to stream, I would go streaming only. There are plenty of dvd stuff out there, but good movies (to me) aren't coming out fast enough. There are a lot of dvds I would watch if I just sat down and it was on already, but going through the effort of getting the dvd, switching from the cable to dvd, and then watching it isn't going to happen when it is a 2/5 star movie. I dropped netflix and added hbo back. Half of the movies I would not watch on dvd I will watch when they are on hbo, plus you can dvr movies on hbo, and anything I really want to stream I can rent on amazon through roku.
For me it is just hollywood, if they are coming out with movies I want to see at a rate of 2-3 / month then I would keep netflix. They aren't. Bye netflix.
If blockbuster were smart, they closed down their stores, but are keeping their online presence...so my thoughts are for them to become relevant again,
let them try to setup pricing to go get those 1 million unsatisfied customers.
With the U.S. Postal service planning to increase delivery time to save costs, that could gum up things for Netflix pretty badly.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I have to take two one-hour long train rides each day during my commute. Nextflix + Verizon 4GLTE == catching up on my documentaries on the way in and out... okay, well more like catching up on Lie to Me this week, but I have a bunch of documentaries on my Q that I'll get to eventually. L:D
-GiH
I dropped the streaming service. The selection is so bad, it's really not worth even $8 a month to me. I'd gladly pay significantly more if the selection was significantly better. I hope they can get their licensing issues worked out!
Because of this reminder-story I managed to downgrade my account to 1-dvd-only before the super-fantastic-screw-the-customer plan got billed to my account. Made the cutoff by 3 days. Have to agree, the streaming selection is pitiful at best. None of the past 10 things I've searched for were streamable and some are 10-year-old TV shows. Really? Can't stream Freaks And Geeks? Bah.
My only windows machines are in use for some games, and Netflix. There is talk of utilizing HTML5 to send the DRM downstream, which will be compatible with linux users. It's coming.
I just crunched the numbers. While Netflix stands to lose about 1m subscribers, they will have markedly higher revenue. Using the numbers from their July 25th guidance, they anticipated 25m customers with monthly revenue of $223.75 million. The revised numbers show 24m customers with revenue of $287.64 million per month. And that last number is a conservative estimated assuming that all of their DVD subscribers are on the cheapest 1 DVD at a time plan. So, to recap: Netflix has increased revenue per customer by 33.85% at a cost of 4% of their customer base. That's good business, folks.
while i understand it, I don't support it. I will cancel my subscription once this goes into effect and already signed up for amazon prime streaming. Been using netflix since before the dot com bubble popped and it was sad to see them have no care for the people that have supported them and made them who they are.
..just because you can, doens't mean you should...
I didn't subscribe to Netflix because I wanted the latest content. I wanted something decent to watch, when I wanted to watch something, and I wanted it cheap. The $18 a month I pay for Netflix is still way cheaper then the $60 I was paying to Comcast for shows I didn't want to see and that were loaded down with commercials I didn't want to watch. When I did the math and realized I was paying $720 a year for that privilege, it was time for a change. It's not that I can't afford it, it's just not worth that amount of money to me.
I've been using Netflix for years and streaming for about one year. The recommendations aren't working for me. I'm no longer willing to wade through hours of dreck to find something decent, and that's especially true with the streaming library where, let's face it, 90% of it is crap to anyone with sentience.
A HTML5 Chrome plugin was just released. You may be able to use that in whatever Linux you use, or boot to Chromium OS.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Sigh, it is just TV/Movies, and Netflix has a decent price, and so far enough content that we find enough stuff to watch, and it works at work and at home, which was why I started when they finally added a streaming service. Heck, we did have the 1 DVD + Streaming and after about 5 DVDs in we had one DVD sit for several months, was glad to finally have a reason to send it back. If Netflix gets too expensive, then fine, there is enough other things to do. There is still hulu and youtube which are supposedly legit and then maybe not watching is a reasonable idea. Netflix is hardly comparable to the cable, electric, cellphone and internet costs...
Because people want "all you can eat" services. I do, even though I realize I ended up paying a lot per DVD with netflix. (When I used it, I used it a lot, but disks did/do sit around for a while.)
BTW, they originally were 4 discs/month for $16... Which was still as cheap if not cheaper than brick & mortar stores, and of course they mailed the discs to you. Then I think they started rolling over unused rentals to the next month.. then they went unlimited.
I've dumped Dish primarily because I only wanted 2 cable channels. SyFi & Comedy Central. For the latter, All I wanted was South Park, and they publish the eps the day after on their own website. Syfy use to publish their good shows the day after too, then a month after, now only when the season is finished and they're cancelling the shows I watch for their wrestling and Reality Ghost shows drek. It seems that off-the-air networks have no problem publishing on HULU. I suppose it's because they don't really have to worry about distribution via cable because they own their own transmission towers. Anyway, I was interested in Blockbuster and Netflix online content, but I'd like to know what they have available *BEFORE* I sign the dotted line or set my eMail up for permanent spam by asking for a peek. They don't make any list available. That's a disservice to everyone. It's like telling someone there's a tasty apple in this box if you'll buy it before you see it. There are other web-sites that publish their list, but *REALLY* !!!! Netflix should make this available before submitting your name for harrassment. Entertainment in general is going down the tubes because greed is out-weighing art. Always seems to have been the case. Think it always will........
Netflix is open since last Mon in LatinAmerican markets. They claim "all what you can eat per month for just 7 USD", the catch you need to have broadband line which is very expensive. "10 seconds for get a movie rental" aha, I cannot test LibreOffice because a download of 250MB takes like 8 days on bittorrent. And I have "broadband"... shared with like 300 people in the same zone. Anyway the clients that they lose in USA will be replaced for clients in other zones.
Once Starz is no longer available on Netflix there is nothing unique about Netflix. Their business model never made money by renting DVDs by mail. It was the subscribers who streamed and requested DVDs less that were the money makers for Netflix. Without Starz then Amazon and the many other streaming choices become a far better deal.
my brother uses netflix all the time but only uses streaming because the mail takes a lot more time. it's my thought that most people either use streaming exclusively because the mail is slow or mail in/out DVDs because their internet connection is too slow. if this is the case, people are actually save $2 by sacrificing something they dont use.
yes, i know a bunch of people will be duped into the package deal of both streaming and DVDs (in the same way they do with cable TV/internet/VoIP package) but anyone that actually cares about saving money will probably save $2 with this new pricing scheme.
i understand the kneejerk reaction of anger to losing the ability to have both mail and streaming services but do many netflix users actually use both? (yes, i know some people do and you feel the need to express that you do in an angry reply.)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.