Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix kills Qwikster

allthingsd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 165 posts

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#31

Post by talmand »

mcculley wrote: post #11

This seems like a perfect example of a company that is too focused on what Wall Street thinks and not being able to deal with the bigger picture and plan for the long term.

I disagree, I think they had a long-term goal in mind without considering the short-term consequences. I'm not a Wall Street guy and I could have told them their stock would tumble immediately. Why? That's easy, if you split off a significant amount of your business to a second company then the company is worth less the exact amount you are splitting off. For example, $200 million company splits off $75 million of its company to a second company. Original company is now worth $125 million instantly. Wall Street does not react well to that unless you can show such exponential growth that you'll make it up in a quarter or two.

With their stock tumbling because of the price hike then anyone with any common sense would have known that this would increase the speed of the fall. In fact, the conspiracy theorist in me suggests that this was pushed in an effort to build cash by shorting the stock.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#32

Post by mrcapers »

uptown wrote: post #5

While this rights the ship, Netflix made the colossal mistake of rocking the recurring-billing boat. Smart businesses know that when you've got a customer setup for recurring monthly billing, there's a certain percentage of these customers who will continue to pay even though they're not actively using the service. Part of it is laziness of figuring out how to cancel. Another part is the thought that they may someday…

Some businesses downright abuse this and make it damn hard to cancel. One that immediately comes to mind is Boingo.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#33

Post by CognitiveLens »

talmand wrote: post #28
uptown wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if Netflix is smart, they'll figure out how to leverage their pervasive device-integration to offer one-off non-subscription-based rentals. Price it aggressively enough to compete with Amazon and Apple ... and after re-earning the trust of these customers, make the case to convert them to subscribers by showing them the financials. Simple emails with messages like: "For $2 more than you spent last month, you coul…

I'd rather they keep the one price for everything plan. Once you start having tiered prices for different levels of service you are well on your way to the current cable TV situation we have now.

One of the strongest criticisms of current cable TV is that their selections are not fine-grained enough (e.g. I don't want to pay for HGTV and ten other useless channels just to watch the Discovery Channel). I don't think the one-size-fits-all approach works well with entertainment media.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#34

Post by dpark »

talmand wrote: post #28
uptown wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if Netflix is smart, they'll figure out how to leverage their pervasive device-integration to offer one-off non-subscription-based rentals. Price it aggressively enough to compete with Amazon and Apple ... and after re-earning the trust of these customers, make the case to convert them to subscribers by showing them the financials. Simple emails with messages like: "For $2 more than you spent last month, you coul…

I'd rather they keep the one price for everything plan. Once you start having tiered prices for different levels of service you are well on your way to the current cable TV situation we have now.

I think Netflix needs to add tiered pricing for streaming anyway. They need pay-per-view, or something similar, and they'll probably add it at some point. It's the only way they'll get new releases. Once they build that infrastructure, there's no reason not to sell their standard catalog as pay-per-view to people who don't want to pay the subscription fee, so long as they don't price it to cannibalize their subscriptions.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#36

Post by mhb »

smoyer wrote: post #19
uptown wrote: post #5

While this rights the ship, Netflix made the colossal mistake of rocking the recurring-billing boat. Smart businesses know that when you've got a customer setup for recurring monthly billing, there's a certain percentage of these customers who will continue to pay even though they're not actively using the service. Part of it is laziness of figuring out how to cancel. Another part is the thought that they may someday…

We switched to the streaming-only plan before our billing cycle and have been happy ... We weren't good at quickly watching the DVDs and returning them anyway plus we saved a buck a month. How did other HNers respond to the price hike? I would expect this group to be dominated by streamers anyway.

I canceled the streaming and kept the DVD plan since I could never find anything worthwhile streaming. Then I signed up for Amazon Prime which is cheaper, has roughly equivalent streaming content and the nice shipping.

I don't see how Netflix streaming is a good deal unless there is a significant increase in the quality of available content and that doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#37

Post by blhack »

The tone on this one is quite a bit different: http://blog.netflix.com/2011/10/dvds-will-be-staying-at-netf...

The email that came a few weeks ago actually had me stop what I was doing and read it (I was walking in to grab coffee, and I stopped outside to finish the email).

That message was full of excitement, and started with a proper "Dear Customers: I screwed up".

Why haven't I gotten an email this morning saying something similar? This time you really did screw up. This time, I cancalled my service

(And there is about 0 chance that I'm re-instating it)

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#38

Post by illumin8 »

paul9290 wrote: post #12

At my friends today I checked the Netflix streaming catalog on her Roku. I was wondering if they were offering any better content, but nope it's still the same B grade level junk I canceled the service two months ago for. I know their content problem is not completely their fault, though if they offered higher priced plans I'm sure their content selection would improve. Different price points should be offered from $…

They have a pretty good catalog of TV shows - Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Office, etc. Their movie content is pretty poor, but that is mostly the fault of Hollywood executives and their golf buddies at HBO/Time/Warner.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#39

Post by dpark »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #33
talmand wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather they keep the one price for everything plan. Once you start having tiered prices for different levels of service you are well on your way to the current cable TV situation we have now.

One of the strongest criticisms of current cable TV is that their selections are not fine-grained enough (e.g. I don't want to pay for HGTV and ten other useless channels just to watch the Discovery Channel). I don't think the one-size-fits-all approach works well with entertainment media.

The solution to that seems (to me) to be to charge, e.g., $50/month flat, and pay the content owners based on usage. So if you don't watch HGTV, they don't get your money. This would allow access to all the programming without requiring that you pay for what you don't use.
Post reply on HN