Posted on 10/10/2011 5:41:23 AM PDT by TSgt
Abandoning a break-up plan it announced last month, Netflix said Monday morning that it had decided to keep its DVD-by-mail and online streaming services together under one name and one Web site.
The company admitted that it had moved too fast when it tried to spin-off the old-fashioned DVD service into a new company called Qwikster.
“We underestimated the appeal of the single web site and a single service,” Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said in a telephone interview. He quickly added: “We greatly underestimated it.”
Mr. Swasey said that the Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings declined an interview request. But in a statement, Mr. Hastings said, “Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect that. There is a difference between moving quickly — which Netflix has done very well for years — and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com ...
>>Facebook, please pickup the white courtesy phone... <<
LOL! True dat!
Already canceled my account with them.
The BluRay discs we were renting sat for weeks not being watched while we kept up with our favorite shows on the DVR.
The instant queue/streaming movies were all oldies or indies. Any of the movies we really wanted to see were DVD/BR only, which was enough to convince the lady of the house to drop it altogether.
netflix is really confused right now...don’t know what to do.
I’ve been using Netflix’s by-mail DVD service for several years. Their customer service is without peer. I wish every company I deal with was as good as Netflix.
But their big downfall seems to be predicting what their customers want. They’ve backtracked on Quixter. ‘Bout time!
Good. That ‘apology’ email and announcement of Quixter was one of the dumbest business executions I have seen in some time. Especially from a group who has been so damn good at customer satisfaction and loyalty previous to 2011.
Hopefully, they recover from there error and move forward without too much damage done.
As you said in your comments, I hope Facebook does the same and readjusts their new formatting. I hardly go there now. It became boring. We can handle some change, but they removed the reason to login regularly. The ability to quickly see a timeline of all the most recent posts from friends and connections. Now it is stale, and it too much work to find relevant posts.
Darn, too late; already went with Blockbuster. I can exchange my mailed in movies with one in their stores too; very convenient.
I cancelled Netflix three weeks ago for the same reasons.
This past Saturday night, we had family over. We had a sudden urge to watch ‘The Blind Side’
Vudu had it for $2.99.
Agreed.
I was very annoyed by the “apology.”
Facebook will now determine what is “news” for you. Again, I’m annoyed. Why not give me the option to see things the “new” way or in chronological order?
NEWtflix
The lady of the house has her television and DVR, and I have my gaming PC. We didn’t think it was necessary to rent videos we’d probably never watch. Besides, Hollywood isn’t churning out anything worth my time anymore.
**Already canceled my account with them.**
Same here. Now if they revoked their price hike, I *might* consider going back. I found that I didn’t use it neatly as much as I thought I would.
As far as getting season 1 of Walking Dead, what is the big deal? Yes, it's a great show, but season 1 is only 6 episodes, and you can buy it now for less than what Netflix jacked their prices to.
The RedBox rental places are halfway decent. I’ve never had a scratched movie from them, but I’ve heard smatterings of it depending on your areal demographics.
I think Blockbuster is following that trend too.
Worst case, get yourself a Roku box (www.roku.com), and you can stream stuff from the Internet like Hulu and YouTube straight to your TV.
Same here! I canceled the mailers after they hiked their prices, and when I checked my usage of the streaming media, I found I rarely, if ever, used it.
Yeah, losing a million customers in a matter of weeks does kind of get a company’s attention.
I had the same issue: would sit on discs for weeks, as streaming provided 90% of what we wanted on a whim, while discs require “ok, I’m ready to watch THAT now”. Had long debated cancelling the discs, but frankly the one thing that kept me signed up for 2-discs-a-month was having two queues totaling some 300 titles - too much effort went into making those lists only to abandon them over a couple bucks a month. When that “couple bucks a month” became much more, saying “enough” was easy.
Now an obnoxious question: if customers who cancelled disc service come back, will their disc queues be restored?
LOL I didn’t use it *neatly* or *nearly* as much. Sheesh, someday I’ll learn to spellcheck.
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