| In my 3 or so years as a Netflix subscriber I have noticed an extremely disturbing trend of Netflix killing useful features simply because they aren't good for the business. I can think of 2 off the top of my head: - You used to be able to easily access a page of latest release DVDs. They killed this page because "too many people were using it" - and they had a pretty audacious blog post assuring that now it is a better customer experience claiming "it caused contention to ship" - although I never had a problem and sorely missed the feature when it was gone - You used to be able to see the top 50 streaming movies. It almost always had the top new hollywood blockbusters which I really wanted to see. This feature vanished one day with no explanation that I could find. The new site redesign is also a good example, making it harder and harder to find the movies you actually want to watch. For these reasons alone I was a relatively happy customer but I would never have invested in them as a company due to their lack of customer focus. This latest price fiasco was the nail in the coffin. I cancelled my membership. For the price of the streaming plan, I will just watch one or two movies a month on Amazon Instant Video with a much bigger selection and much stronger customer focus. All the nice features which Netflix killed for no reason are featured prominently on the Amazon web page for starters. |
It's almost like an insurance company -- they want you to buy their plan, but not actually use it! (Why, then they'd have to pay out to the movie studios!)