I think they were expecting that their customers are on the internet and would know this stuff. I’d heard about the licensing fees dramatic increase months before the price hike was announced.
I think people just like to whine and complain. All the moves make perfectly good sense, out here in real life prices go up. Also they’ve learned they really have 3 clearly identifiable groups of customers.
They’re responding to a changing market. That market might be changing in a way they can’t survive at all, but their responses make sense if you just take the time to pay attention to the situation they’re in.
It’s a “not what you say but the way you say it” type thing. The CEO has been a smarmy jerk from the beginning and instead of getting some HR expert to write up a smooze to the customers, he puffed up his chest and basically said, “Oh well. If you don’t like this, find something better.”
Well, many people are. There are hundreds of pirate sites. Entertainment is like taxes. When the cost is reasonable, we will pay it. When it becomes unreasonable, we will find the loopholes.
People are finding the loopholes and the loser is Netflix.