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It's not just the tone of the email or the new name that bugs people - it's the complete separation of their sites, pretending that the DVD-by-mail site can't c

It's not just the tone of the email or the new name that bugs people - it's the complete separation of their sites, pretending that the DVD-by-mail site can't communicate with the streaming-only site, etc. People are annoyed that their ratings/suggestions won't carry over to the new site, and that the streaming-site won't let them add a movie to their DVD-by-mail queue when they search for a title and find it's not available on streaming (or vice versa, the DVD-by-mail site won't tell them when they could be watching a title via streaming). You have to fix that to fix the customer response.

jeffool 15y ago
I wonder if allowing an API that lets users import and export their ratings would help. Maybe even allow non-paying members to sign up just to rate and suggest films, and constantly entice viewers with a "watch now with a Netflix subscription!" logo in the corner. They could easily try to take share from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and be "the website for movies". Every time someone makes a post on Facebook or Twitter it could be "_____ rates <film> !"
Tloewald 15y ago
Agreed. In the end this is all about Netflix and not about its customers. If any of this had anything positive to offer customers it could have been spun better, but it doesn't. I think netflix is actually in deep trouble. It's lost Starz, and could be losing other valuable rights, it's changing its business model in a way tha damages its own stickiness, and it raised its prices in a recession for reasons that make no sense to customers.
- ShawnJG 15y ago
  Not to mention that a lot of there growth was due to the fact that they had a fiercely loyal cust base that proselytized endlessly for them. I remember getting an email from them years ago that said in essence, "We've upgraded our systems and are now more efficient. because of this your plan will be reduced by xyz." Better service and cheaper, i thought they had me for life...until recently.
  - nooneelse 15y ago
    > Not to mention that a lot of there growth was due to the fact that they had a fiercely loyal cust base that proselytized endlessly for them. Yeah, that was me a week ago. Now, I just dread explaining to my other half that we will need to manage two movie queues.
    - qjz 15y ago
      We have four queues, DVD + streaming (for a family of four). We may ditch DVDs altogether, and switch to 2 separate streaming-only accounts. Maybe this is what Netflix is hoping will happen.
jobu 15y ago
Actually, this is might be a great area for a third party to get involved. Inveni (http://www.inveni.com/ http://www.inveni.com/) already works with Netflix, IMDB, etc as a recommendation engine. It would be a pretty short step for them to start managing your Netflix/Qwickster queues.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  Back in June Netflix announced that they would be phasing out access to the DVD queue/movies in the API by the end of this year: http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/06/upcoming-changes-to-open-api-program.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/06/upcoming-changes-to-open... Would be interesting to see if they have any plans to add that back, but otherwise, this type of solution sounds like it might not be possible.

jeffool 15y ago

I wonder if allowing an API that lets users import and export their ratings would help. Maybe even allow non-paying members to sign up just to rate and suggest films, and constantly entice viewers with a "watch now with a Netflix subscription!" logo in the corner. They could easily try to take share from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and be "the website for movies". Every time someone makes a post on Facebook or Twitter it could be "_____ rates <film> !"

Tloewald 15y ago

Agreed. In the end this is all about Netflix and not about its customers. If any of this had anything positive to offer customers it could have been spun better, but it doesn't. I think netflix is actually in deep trouble. It's lost Starz, and could be losing other valuable rights, it's changing its business model in a way tha damages its own stickiness, and it raised its prices in a recession for reasons that make no sense to customers.

ShawnJG 15y ago
Not to mention that a lot of there growth was due to the fact that they had a fiercely loyal cust base that proselytized endlessly for them. I remember getting an email from them years ago that said in essence, "We've upgraded our systems and are now more efficient. because of this your plan will be reduced by xyz." Better service and cheaper, i thought they had me for life...until recently.
- nooneelse 15y ago
  > Not to mention that a lot of there growth was due to the fact that they had a fiercely loyal cust base that proselytized endlessly for them. Yeah, that was me a week ago. Now, I just dread explaining to my other half that we will need to manage two movie queues.
  - qjz 15y ago
    We have four queues, DVD + streaming (for a family of four). We may ditch DVDs altogether, and switch to 2 separate streaming-only accounts. Maybe this is what Netflix is hoping will happen.

jobu 15y ago

Actually, this is might be a great area for a third party to get involved. Inveni (http://www.inveni.com/ http://www.inveni.com/) already works with Netflix, IMDB, etc as a recommendation engine. It would be a pretty short step for them to start managing your Netflix/Qwickster queues.

brown9-2 15y ago
Back in June Netflix announced that they would be phasing out access to the DVD queue/movies in the API by the end of this year: http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/06/upcoming-changes-to-open-api-program.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/06/upcoming-changes-to-open... Would be interesting to see if they have any plans to add that back, but otherwise, this type of solution sounds like it might not be possible.