[makewavesnotwar]

Netflix seems like its just a dishonest company.

I had been a customer of theirs for years, starting with the DVD rental. After a while they started adding the streaming content which was cool, but then they eventually separated the two services and switched my plan from DVD rentals to exclusively streaming content. All without any action on my part or any consent from me.

Eventually, I quit Netflix because between Prime Video and Hulu, I was covered for my streaming needs and with the exception of a few shows, was unimpressed with Netflix's original content so it was a waste of money for me.

Fast forward to a week ago, I decided to give Netflix another shot. What amazed me is the dark patterns you speak of. Like downloading content for offline viewing.

I was without access to my normal ISP and had to use cellular data so I opted to download a show. 1 episode was 100 MB and I'm on Google Fi so it was basically $1 of data usage which I understood. But then when the episode was over, I stepped away from my phone to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found that the episode had been deleted from my phone, and that the next episode had automatically downloaded without any action on my part incurring another $0.90 of data (not to mention deleting the episode I had intentionally downloaded making the first $1 a waste)

I saw at the top of the download section that there was something called "Smart Download" enabled that claims to do exactly that - delete the last episode and download the next, but it's only supposed to happen on wi-fi which wasn't the case for me. I turned off the feature as it was obviously broken and tried contacting customer service.

The CSR I talked to then told me that the app cannot delete or download material without me clicking a button - which contradicted their description of "Smart Download" that I had just read, and he explained there was no way for them to process a refund or credit to my account because they don't have any way to do that.

This seems like a pretty major problem.

Even when confronted with a direct customer complaint, their response was just to deny, deny, deny rather than taking even minor steps to rectify the issue. This seems mind boggling from a customer service perspective when companies like Amazon will bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. Even Hulu will credit you a free month of service when they goof - they even do it if you try to cancel the service because you can't find anything good to watch. Netflix's service isn't good enough to justify this type of behavior and general apathy. Customer-last seems like a crummy business model.

[yomly]

I can feel your frustration with the service but I'm unconvinced that "download the next ep" is a dark pattern and more that you're a niche that their UX currently isn't catering towards.

I do a lot of cellular/tethering and know some of the pain points but can recognize that the needs are quite different to the regular user who may consume stuff at home then want to take stuff with them on the go.

Normally I see that UX often caters to the lowest common denominator which leaves power users and niche users sidelined.

My personal bug bear on this subject is that YouTube no longer buffers entire videos and holds them there - presumably this saves them lots in traffic costs and additionally allows them to up sell YouTube premium

[makewavesnotwar]

Sorry I didn't see this immediately, I don't think that downloading the next episode is a dark pattern in and of itself. But I do think downloading the next app over mobile when the description explicitly says it wouldn't is questionable. And I think deleting downloads automatically without any good reason is so far removed from assumed functionality of a download to be a borderline dark pattern.

Without the "Smart Download" enabled the episodes persist until I delete them or cancel my service, that's the assumption with a download. Smart download immediately deletes whatever you downloaded as soon as it sees fit - which in my case was erroneously assuming I was on wi-fi. And this was my first download, it's not like it had some storage space restriction to deal with. I had ~16 GB free and it was 100 MB.

The next episode feature aside, it seems weird to say, "Okay, download this one" and then it saying, "Okay, so you meant download it and then delete it".

And to your Youtube point, I think it depends on the use-case. I fully agree with holding the buffer there, but if I'm on mobile data, I might not necessary want it to just load as much as it can as soon as it can because I pay per MB.

[Jommi]

I actually love the smart download option, it allows me to always have the next episode downloaded when I leave the house.

This seems more like a CS fault than anything. Netflix is a huge company and CS agents are outsourced/so far from the actual product team that they operate on guidelines/info that might actually not be true/outdated. I'd say it's just a problem with a huge organization.