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The content diaspora to other services has made Netflix tremendously less appealing; just par for the course as Netflix tries their hardest to lose me as a cust

The content diaspora to other services has made Netflix tremendously less appealing; just par for the course as Netflix tries their hardest to lose me as a customer. I just had a support chat with them Friday because my kid has been in the hospital for several weeks after being hit by a car. Since they haven’t been home, Netflix has decided they’re no longer part of the household and we have to manually reauthenticate every two weeks or chip in another $8/mo for their own account. (I asked them point blank, “is it the official position of Netflix that a hospitalized patient is no longer part of a household?” and they just said “the policy applies to all devices”.) I’ve been using Netflix since it was a mail-order DVD rental service…but at this point they’ve sold me on their new most popular plan: cancelling.

ajoseps 3y ago
that’s an awful situation. i hope your kid recovers soon
- cgearhart 3y ago
  Thank you. It’s been tough, but I remain optimistic. They’ve already progressed far beyond worst case expectations and continue to impress me every day.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
This kind of situation should really be gaining more attention from Netflix leadership and management. They're burning so much good-will and being assholes in the process. The most frustrating part is that there's no accountability by company leadership towards paying customers. To which I'm sure someone would reply "they only have to be accountable to shareholders", which is utterly insane.
- cgearhart 3y ago
  I don’t mind them operating as a business and I’m happy to pay for a service that is providing me value. But I am unwilling to put my own time and effort into patching the shortcomings of whatever dumb heuristic they’ve implemented as “household” detection. I have _slightly_ more important things to be doing right now, and as we’ve already noted in this thread: Netflix isn’t the only game in town anymore…
kelnos 3y ago
What a mess. They should be training their support people better, and giving them more escape hatches to properly handle situations like yours. Even if there are some assholes out there who would lie and make up a hospitalized kid to abuse it, overall the loss of goodwill here (and the loss of your subscription) sounds much worse for their bottom line. Hope your kid is doing ok, or at least will be doing ok.
- cgearhart 3y ago
  It was very, very clear that they’ve outsourced support and their reps have no authority to help. I was either chatting with a very good GPT bot or a very bot-like human with no authority or agency who will be replaced by a good-enough GPT in short order. I think it would be easy enough for them to…I dunno, ask me for a doctors note? (That’s what everyone else who needs to confirm this situation has asked for.) But that wouldn’t “scale” <eyeroll>. Thanks for the well-wishes; my kid impresses me every day. Maybe less Netflix will be a silver lining. :-)

ajoseps 3y ago

that’s an awful situation. i hope your kid recovers soon

cgearhart 3y ago
Thank you. It’s been tough, but I remain optimistic. They’ve already progressed far beyond worst case expectations and continue to impress me every day.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

This kind of situation should really be gaining more attention from Netflix leadership and management. They're burning so much good-will and being assholes in the process. The most frustrating part is that there's no accountability by company leadership towards paying customers. To which I'm sure someone would reply "they only have to be accountable to shareholders", which is utterly insane.

cgearhart 3y ago
I don’t mind them operating as a business and I’m happy to pay for a service that is providing me value. But I am unwilling to put my own time and effort into patching the shortcomings of whatever dumb heuristic they’ve implemented as “household” detection. I have _slightly_ more important things to be doing right now, and as we’ve already noted in this thread: Netflix isn’t the only game in town anymore…

kelnos 3y ago

What a mess. They should be training their support people better, and giving them more escape hatches to properly handle situations like yours. Even if there are some assholes out there who would lie and make up a hospitalized kid to abuse it, overall the loss of goodwill here (and the loss of your subscription) sounds much worse for their bottom line. Hope your kid is doing ok, or at least will be doing ok.

cgearhart 3y ago
It was very, very clear that they’ve outsourced support and their reps have no authority to help. I was either chatting with a very good GPT bot or a very bot-like human with no authority or agency who will be replaced by a good-enough GPT in short order. I think it would be easy enough for them to…I dunno, ask me for a doctors note? (That’s what everyone else who needs to confirm this situation has asked for.) But that wouldn’t “scale” <eyeroll>. Thanks for the well-wishes; my kid impresses me every day. Maybe less Netflix will be a silver lining. :-)