Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > February > 10 > Entry
Uh oh, Netflix
Some frequent users of netflix.com are in a postal huff about the company’s on-the-downlow practice of “throttling” delivery of new and in-high-demand rental DVDs to customers who watch and return their movies more frequently than is healthy for the company’s financials.
I stopped using Netflix about a year ago when I realized the DVDs already on my shelves far outnumbered the hours I had to watch them. The Netflix discs I had sat on top of my top of my TV for several months, unwatched. I was the perfect Netflix customer.
I’m not a business major. Or a business expert. I was once a business reporter, but I was largely feigning interest. However, it seems simple enough to me that the business plan for a company like Netflix would take into account that there would be lethargic, pokey customers like me as well as DVD junkies who would take advantage of an “Unlimited” deal by going through lots of discs every month. To my untrained brain, it would seem that the profit margin would lie somewhere in the balance of those two extremes of customers. But then, I’m not trying to scrape a living competing against Blockbuster.
The Associated Press story lists a few Web sites where customers have gone to complain. It’s not exactly a secret practice: Netflix added information about the practice, according to the article, in their Terms of Agreement last month. But, really — when was the last time you read all the way through the Terms of Agreements of anything? I bought a house without reading all the contracts. My Realtor assured me everything was in order. Sure, my house fell into a sinkhole and I live in an Army surplus tent now, but that’s neither here nor there.
In any case, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (real name? I’ll have to investigate.) digs himself a deeper hole of customer dislike with his quote: “‘unlimited’ doesn’t mean you should expect to get 10,000 a month,” he says. Yes, Mr. Hastings, but you see that’s exactly what “Unlimited” means. Unless the definition changed when I wasn’t looking, it means no limit, dude. And it’s not physically possible to go through 1/50th of that number of DVDs in a month with movies flying back and forth through the U.S. Postal, so I’m not sure where he’s coming from. Don’t they have trained PR people to keep CEOs from saying stupid things like that?
In any case, Netflix is still a good deal for casual movie watchers, but if you’re a film major planning to rush through multiple DVDs a night, you might want to look elsewhere for a rental service, lest you get throttled.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Internet, Movies & DVDs, Shopping
Comments
By Mick
February 21, 2006 11:41 PM | Link to this
Nice article. Wife and I finished a house in May '04. We're about a year behind in movie rentals. Also don't get HBO. We've got about 4 months of HBO shows to go through. Then "recent" releases. Not to mention crap my buddy in Austin tells me to rent. I realize there will be a point Neflix is not worth it. Blockbuster is about $4/pop. When I get down to 8/less/month, I'm dropping it. For now, it's worth it. It's better than my buddy down there going to rent 3 new ones/3 old ones, when the old ones include "WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM" just because Bill Murray was in it. F--, that's a rating, not an explicative. But who knew the old guy from Everybody Loves Raymond ever had hair? In 1979, he did.
Pick your poison. It's better than a movie package (for now). I watch what I want, when I want.