Netflix's Mea Culpa
Posted 10.10.11 by Chris
In September Netflix had its 23 million customers scratching their heads over the company's announcement that it was going to split the company into two — Netflix would continue to stream movies and TV shows but the DVD-by-mail operation would now be called Qwikster.
Huh?
Customers, who were still reeling from the company's decision to raise prices by as much as 60 percent, went berserk. Instead of making up for the price hike, which hit customers in September, the company was seemingly making it harder for its users to rent movies by mail and watch streaming content. Under its Qwikster plan, customers would have to visit two separate websites, manage two separate queues, and get two separate bills.
Maybe it was the million or so customers that left or its stock price tumbling, but the company announced it was abandoning its Qwikster plan.
In an email to customers, the company said:
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.
As movie fans, we are closer to our Netflix queues than some family members. We swallowed the pill of a bigger bill only because when it comes to streaming movies, no one really stands close to Netflix (though Amazon is getting close with its streaming service) but when Netflix announced it was splitting its two services, it nearly had us looking up the last remaining Blockbuster in town.
Here's a sketch Saturday Night Live did of the Netflix debacle. Sadly, it's not far from what really happened.