Posted on 09/19/2011 5:56:25 AM PDT by Usagi_yo
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix wrote:
Dear Chris,
I messed up. I owe you an explanation.
It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.
For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.
So here is what we are doing and why.
Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.
I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.
So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.
It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.
Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.
There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.
For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.
I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.
Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.
Respectfully yours,
-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix
p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments
my data hose just starts to dribble.
They have medicine for that now.
Sorry...
I signed up for Netflix late last year. I watched an entire series of a 20-year-old TV show favorite, a few movies, and several specials from PBS, History.
IOW things went swimmingly. It was well worth it.
Then something changed a few months ago. I could no longer get anything to work. (Firefox and IE) I had often had problems with connections during the peak demand times. That was OK. I'm retired I can watch anytime.
But the new problem made Netflix unavailable anytime with very few exceptions.
When I called tech support the lady led off with recounting recent changes Netflix made (if I recall correctly), then told me to contact my ISP and that I should have known that there would be problems if my DSL is not up to their standards.
I immediately cancelled Netflix and have not regretted it one bit. I do not have a TV and what little I watch anything Hulu is plenty.
Netmilsdad hooked a computer tower up to our tv.
We also have broadband choices which are perfectly adequate for sending large chunks of data around the world and perfectly crappy for watching streaming on demand programs. See my post #78.
Oh, yeah, I’m sure that changing the name will somehow make the remaining Netflix streaming a better value. The streaming catalog is horrible, and the decision to never provide the Roku 1 subtitles was just plain stupid, as well.
If you send me some Spaghetti O seeds I’ll share my Donut seeds.
Yep, Same here a few weeks ago.
Who has a better deal for streaming or DVD by mail?
How good is AmazonPrime?
Its only a dead man walking until Netflix decides to stream everything. It dumb as can be that they have the dvds but won’t stream them, new or old.
I am seriously considering dropping the dvd option: the only reason I have not is because the newer releases do not stream and some issues I might like to see are dvd only. [For a recent example,before the Tudors ended you could stream season 1 and 3 but not 2. Now they are all available, but periodically such a case arises.]
I love the streaming part but have yet to understand why ALL their movies are not streamed.
After reading the posts about where Netflix sends its political contributions, I'm going to check into moving back to Blockbuster.
Yes, but the transition from discs to streaming is best done seamless. Insofar as the streaming library is limited, let me get some back-catalog discs; that's why I kept 2-at-a-time for so long even though I often sat on the disc for a month or more: some stuff just isn't on streaming yet. Get me the content by whatever means necessary.
DVD-by-mail is now, indeed, dead man walking. Unable to do both without hassle, I had to cut the cord on one; bye, 20th Century physical media.
After reading the posts about where Netflix sends its political contributions, I’m going to check into moving back to Blockbuster.
Be careful. Blockbuster is owned by DISH network and Charlie Ergen (CEO) is a huge Hillary donor.
“uses illegial mexicans in their warehouses to pack the DVDs into sleeves to mail them out to you.”
I’m a former Netflix employee. I can personally tell you that Netflix uses legal, verified US residents. Netflix’s union would lose their marbles if they hired illegals.
I believe the opposite is true. It doesn't take much in he way of bandwidth to stream a movie. The technology is cheaply available to consumers in any population center. Many people subscribe to services that provide them with enough bandwidth to stream even VUDU's super-hi-def content at 10mbs, on every television in the house. Hell, you could stream hi def to two televisions using a 3G (not 4G) phone as bandwidth. Bandwidth is cheap and readily available everywhere but the sticks.
***Yep, and that’s why I’m boycotting grocery stores. I’m now growing my own tuna and SpaghettiOs in my backyard.***
ha ha ha ha!!! (thanks for the giggle!)
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