Netflix becoming Qwikster

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C

Chibibar

Gared said:
See, I'm really torn. Hulu+ just ain't doin' for me these days. I like that they have some selection of some of the old shows - the Donna Reed show was good, I kind of like the McHale's Navy series (though there's only so much of that I can stand), I still like Green Acres and Miami Vice, though sadly Mr. Ed didn't stand up to the test of time; but they don't have enough selection, and their movie selection especially suffers. Really, half of your comedy selection is from pre-1970 and your newer than 40 year old selection is built on such blockbusters as Watermelon Heist and Phat Beach, plus all of the straight to video National Lampoon's movies? Um, no thanks.

So, last night I headed back to the Netflix site - something I swore I would never do - to see if, maybe, I qualified for a free trial (they're available to all new and "some" returning customers, according to their ToS). No dice. A lot of my complaints about Netflix were about the quality of their streaming service, I had everything from audio level mismatch problems, to movies that were missing their sound track altogether, to mislabeled movies (for at least 2 months the classic Rat Pack version of The Italian Job was really the new one), to piss poor streaming performance where it would play for 20 minutes and then buffer for 5 or 10 minutes, every 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I didn't have any trouble with any other continuous connection programs (MMOs, etc.), and had gone from being able to flawlessly run both WoW and Netflix, usually while running 10 to 15 Chrome tabs at the same time to barely being able to run just Netflix.

You'd figure a company that's taken such a beating in public relations, that's lost 1.5M customers at last count, whose stock price has fallen almost 66% in 3 months (and is still falling) would want to maybe, I don't know, throw former customers who are considering coming back a bone and letting us check (for free) to see if the problems that made us leave have been fixed. No dice. And, since unlike Hulu (who refunds you for your unused subscription time as soon as you cancel) or Amazon Prime (who lets you continue using the remainder of your monthly billing cycle after you cancel), Netflix doesn't let you keep using the service and doesn't give you a refund, I'm hard pressed to pay $8 to a bunch of chuckleheads who seem to have trouble differentiating between their asses and their elbows, to see if they've managed to fix any of their tech issues or have just pissed their money down the drain for the past 3 months.
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That is what I was thinking. Netflix should totally give like a month free (or 2 weeks free) for canceled account who resign up.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Adblock plus for firefox has even removed about 99% of in-video advertising as well, I've found... even from sticky wickets like youtube, failblog, southparkstudios and such. Haven't tried it on hulu because... well, because I just torrent whatever show I want to watch :p

Interestingly enough, adblock plus for CHROME does not catch the failblog video ads.
 
strawman

strawman

Espy said:
Give me netflix over Hulu Plus anyday. I don't need to watch the same damn Ford ad twice every 5 minutes.
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That's the main reason I refuse to pay for hulu. I'm not going to pay someone to advertise to me - I'm paying specifically to avoid advertising!
 
strawman

strawman

If Hulu gave me a compelling reason to completely ditch my TV - no commercials, and the shows become available at the same time (or before) their normal network slot, then I'd probably sign up in a heartbeat. The quality isn't as good as broadcast HD, but getting rid of commercials and not having to wait for a day or a week to see a show everyone else already watched would be worth it, not to mention the side benefit of being able to watch it anywhere, pause it, etc.
 
Espy

Espy

I'm okay with limited commercials if it helps keep the cost down. Give me a minute in the middle of commercials or at the beginning. Just not 12 damn commercials, half of which are for the same thing, every single show.
 
Gared

Gared

Espy said:
I'm okay with limited commercials if it helps keep the cost down. Give me a minute in the middle of commercials or at the beginning. Just not 12 damn commercials, half of which are for the same thing, every single show.
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I refuse to ever buy those damn Newton's Fruit Thins for this exact reason.

Edit: The bastards won... I couldn't pass up a chance to watch The Wonder Years.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
There are a few good choices in there:
Ghostbusters 2
and uh... Oh just go look on Hulu, the free offerings are much better there.

Ooooh, Final Fantasy Advent Children... I know it's not good, but...

Wow, some of these are worse than terrible. "The Kung-Fu Mummy"? It's got a 1.4 rating on IMDB. That's pure Obscurus Lupa Presents fuel right there.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Like I said: vast majority. Ghostbusters 2 and Advent Children were probably two of those exceptions. And while I might have a soft spot for GB2, it's not exactly on par with the first.
 
Espy

Espy

You know, why the freaking hell doesn't Amazon Prime stream to my PS3??? Stupid Amazon. Get yo shit together.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I'm guessing some clause in the byzantine content contracts between the various partners. MS and Sony had separate digital content deals with a lot of the studios already, and I'm guessing that they don't play so nice with Amazon's deals with the same people.

We do need to remember that Netflix essentially pulled a fast one in their original deals; they didn't mislead anyone, but they apparently really played down the potential of streaming versus DVD rentals.
 
strawman

strawman

Netflix had about 20 million US subscribers as of the end of 2010. They raised prices across 20 million users, and lost less than 1 million of them. I'd say they came out ahead.
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

stienman, get your logic out of here. I just want to act like I know more about business than a highly successful company that employs dudes who know way more about business than I do.
 
Allen who is Quiet

Allen who is Quiet

That's better. Now then.


It's my extremely professional opinion that, in light of this recent news, netflix is, and pardon my use of sophisticated business terms here, completely fucked.
 
Shakey

Shakey

It's not just subscribers and earnings that are dropping. CNET
Although Netflix's share price had been declining prior to that news, its shares are plummeting now. As of this writing, Netflix is trading at just $77.16, down more than 35 percent compared to yesterday's closing price of $118.84. In the last three months alone, Netflix shares are down nearly 73 percent.
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They're not completely fucked, but this isn't good for them.
 
Gared

Gared

I still think they'd have lost fewer subscribers if their PR department (assuming they even have a PR department) had done some better spin control on the initial price change announcement. I know I would have been much less pissed off if, back in July, they'd come out and said "You know guys, we understand that you have several choices for streaming video providers, and we appreciate your loyalty to us. The studios are starting to jack up prices on us, pressuring us for a higher cut of the profits, and we've been doing a lot of work to increase our service areas. That being said, we're going to have to raise prices." But instead, they came out and said "Dear valued customer, we have a new price plan guaranteed to save you money. Now you only have to pay $7.99 a month to have access to half of the plan you currently pay $9.99 a month for. Oh, but if you want the other half, you'll have to pay an additional $8.99 a month. Enjoy your new low-cost membership."

Of course, their disastrous plan to split off the DVD service and the half-assed apology by the CEO really didn't help them any.
 
C

Chibibar

Gared said:
I still think they'd have lost fewer subscribers if their PR department (assuming they even have a PR department) had done some better spin control on the initial price change announcement. I know I would have been much less pissed off if, back in July, they'd come out and said "You know guys, we understand that you have several choices for streaming video providers, and we appreciate your loyalty to us. The studios are starting to jack up prices on us, pressuring us for a higher cut of the profits, and we've been doing a lot of work to increase our service areas. That being said, we're going to have to raise prices." But instead, they came out and said "Dear valued customer, we have a new price plan guaranteed to save you money. Now you only have to pay $7.99 a month to have access to half of the plan you currently pay $9.99 a month for. Oh, but if you want the other half, you'll have to pay an additional $8.99 a month. Enjoy your new low-cost membership."

Of course, their disastrous plan to split off the DVD service and the half-assed apology by the CEO really didn't help them any.
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The CEO was pretty much on something cause that was the biggest pile of F*up I have seen.

Yea. I wouldn't be as pissed on the service if they hike it due to cost. heck most people would have gone with that.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Gared said:
I still think they'd have lost fewer subscribers if their PR department (assuming they even have a PR department) had done some better spin control on the initial price change announcement. I know I would have been much less pissed off if, back in July, they'd come out and said "You know guys, we understand that you have several choices for streaming video providers, and we appreciate your loyalty to us. The studios are starting to jack up prices on us, pressuring us for a higher cut of the profits, and we've been doing a lot of work to increase our service areas. That being said, we're going to have to raise prices." But instead, they came out and said "Dear valued customer, we have a new price plan guaranteed to save you money. Now you only have to pay $7.99 a month to have access to half of the plan you currently pay $9.99 a month for. Oh, but if you want the other half, you'll have to pay an additional $8.99 a month. Enjoy your new low-cost membership."

Of course, their disastrous plan to split off the DVD service and the half-assed apology by the CEO really didn't help them any.
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If they had passed the blame to the content providers, said providers would have wanted higher rates when the contract was up. It was a lose-lose proposition.
 
Gared

Gared

Except that, from what I read around the net, said providers really do want higher rates when contract renewal time comes around, and that really is a big part of why they wanted to raise their rates - so, all they really did was stave off their membership finding out why they were raising rates. I could understand it if they just wanted to raise their rates so their execs could buy bigger private jets, or more bling for their mistresses, but hiding the fact that your providers are pressuring you for more money is kind of stupid.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

stienman said:
Netflix had about 20 million US subscribers as of the end of 2010. They raised prices across 20 million users, and lost less than 1 million of them. I'd say they came out ahead.
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But how many of those remaining dropped half their service rather than pay up for streaming and mail-in individually? I have a feeling that's where a lot of the money is slipping away. We dropped the mail-in service when the price change happened and it was the same for numerous people in this thread and another forum I go to.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

stienman said:
Netflix had about 20 million US subscribers as of the end of 2010. They raised prices across 20 million users, and lost less than 1 million of them. I'd say they came out ahead.
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Losing 1/20th of your customer base (in net numbers, mind) is never a great thing. That, and they're expecting to lose at least another net million customers by the end of the next quarter. Yeah, the price hike saved their profit margins, but unless the flow stops, they could be in serious trouble.
 
Gared

Gared

Quotemander Prime said:
But how many of those remaining dropped half their service rather than pay up for streaming and mail-in individually? I have a feeling that's where a lot of the money is slipping away. We dropped the mail-in service when the price change happened and it was the same for numerous people in this thread and another forum I go to.
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I don't know, they were talking about losing 810k unique subscribers - so I don't know if they're counting people who just dropped the DVD by mail portion, or people who completely canceled their accounts and left Netflix.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Gared said:
I don't know, they were talking about losing 810k unique subscribers - so I don't know if they're counting people who just dropped the DVD by mail portion, or people who completely canceled their accounts and left Netflix.
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In the call, they talk about "unique" as just someone who has an active Netflix subscription of some kind or another. Also, don't forget that the way they're describing is in net, according to their press release. So they likely lost more than 800k subscribers of one level or another, it was just offset by newly acquired customers.
 
C

Chibibar

Yea. I wonder what does "unique customer" means? if it means that a person with DVD and/or streaming = 1 unique, then they are in trouble. but if a person with both = 2 unique it is not AS bad, but still bad since they are still losing people/subs. (we drop our DVD but kept the streaming)
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Chibibar said:
Yea. I wonder what does "unique customer" means? if it means that a person with DVD and/or streaming = 1 unique, then they are in trouble. but if a person with both = 2 unique it is not AS bad, but still bad since they are still losing people/subs. (we drop our DVD but kept the streaming)
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They're pretty clear about it, guys. "Unique subscriber" means and/or. Losing a unique subscriber means that person shuts down all of their Netflix accounts and is no longer a current customer.

Going forward, since they're keeping the budget buckets separate, they're going to focus on individual subscription numbers by delivery system. Which sounds a little shady to me, even though the overlying logic makes sense.
 
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