I haven’t commented on the whole Netflix price increase or the follow-up news they would split their company in two, keeping the name Netflix for their Instant video, streaming side and open the doors for a new company named Qwikster for their DVD mailing service. However, now that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has wised up and realized what every Netflix customer realized immediately — That Qwikster was an AWFUL idea — I have to say something.
While Hastings’ recent bout with rash decision making may have been bad for the company’s stock price and opened the door for Blockbuster to open up a few new smear campaigns, he continues to listen to customers and is making the right decisions. In an email all Netflix customers (myself included) received today Hastings delivered the following statement:
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.
While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.
We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS.
We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.
First for the price increase. I never had a problem with this primarily because I was on the 3 DVD plan that included streaming for free. I am now on the 2 DVD plan with streaming and I pay the same price I was paying before. The fact anyone got outraged at the fact Netflix had to charge for their streaming content was baffling to me, you should feel lucky they didn’t treat it the same way studios and companies treat new technology and media such as DVDs and Blu-rays, which are massively over-priced, not to mention how much it costs for a player once any new technology rolls around.
With Netflix streaming media all you had to do was have a computer, buy a cheap Roku player or connect through your web-enabled television, iPad, iPod, iPhone, Android phone, Playstation 3 or Xbox. The options were endless and they weren’t expensive. Free movies! Woo hoo! Come on, be realistic.
As for the idea to split the company into two pieces, that was asinine. The idea they ever thought forcing customers to have two accounts, two passwords and two separate queues when the two features already worked seamlessly together was baffling to say the least. If anything, the Qwikster decision was going to cause me to cancel my service more than the price increase as I am slowly finding an appreciation for Amazon’s Instant Video service as they have what appears to be a larger and better selection than Netflix has right now for streaming purposes and it runs straight through my Roku player as well.
The fact Hastings actually listened to his customers, including the 27,779 comments on his Qwikster announcement post, is a sign of a company not afraid to go back on decisions they felt were right, but later learned the customer wasn’t happy. Not to mention, now they didn’t have to change a thing. How easy is that?
I can just imagine the boardroom meeting and Hastings saying, “What a second? You mean those millions upon millions of subscribers are actually happy with the service and don’t want things to change? Just leave it alone and people will be happy?” Yeah, quite the revelation.
