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

41–50 of 165 posts

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#41

Post by wanorris »

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.

We almost never used the DVD service, but the streaming service is our primary way of watching TV -- the kids watch it frequently, we use it to watch with varying frequency, but either way, we rarely watch something on actual cable.

For things that aren't on Netflix, we sometimes use Redbox or Amazon's On Demand rentals, but mostly it doesn't exist for us.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#42

Post by dpark »

matwood wrote: post #30
smoyer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We weren't good at quickly watching the DVDs and returning them anyway plus we saved a buck a month. We were not either, so I would usually rip the DVDs when I got them and then watch it when we had time (also my only dvd player is a 360 and it's so loud...much better to stream over the ATV). After watching I would delete them...honest, I rarely watch a movie twice. Recently that became harder though because of incre…

How do you do your DVD ripping? I like to rip DVDs for my iPad, but was disappointed to learn that HandBrake won't do deCSS on Windows. I'm not keen on paying $50 for a 3rd-party decryptor just so I can watch movies I own on the bus.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#43

Post by Retreads »

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.

We had (and used) both services, but the price hike caused us to reevaluate all of our media expenses. Cancelled all Netflix and our cable. Retained Xbox Live (and internets, of course).

We were more annoyed by the Netflix change than enraged by it, and it was a convenient reason to examine the value vs. expense ratio of what we were buying every month. So while we used both the streaming and DVD services, we didn't use them enough to justify the expense. Same with cable. Now we just watch less TV and play the same amount of video games. Library card and internet usage have increased.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#44

Post by Retreads »

mrcapers wrote: post #32
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.

See also: Angies List.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#45

Post by biff »

The problem with Netflix is the problem with a lot of companies: the customers are taken for granted.

If you have a Netflix account, look at reviews of The Black Tower or The Tudors. For weeks they've been broken -- out-of-sync audio/video on The Black Tower, mislabeled episodes of The Tudors season 2, I guess Whale Wars was also mislabeled (http://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/i74kw/after_a_few_c...). Use the standard form to notify Netflix of the problem or even complain directly into the reviews... you might as well talk to a brick wall. Same thing if you're upset that they constantly wait until right before a series is about to be pulled from instant streaming to post a notice.

None of that would take any significant investment to fix, just a commitment to deliver an excellent customer experience. It's obviously not the reason why the stock price halved itself lately but I feel it demonstrates the sort of lazy arrogance towards the customer experience (as does the Quikster saga) that will ill serve the company when it faces some real competition over the next couple of years.

(I did keep my 2 DVD + streaming plan through the rate increase though.)

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#47

Post by paul9290 »

talmand wrote: post #26
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 $…

What do you mean not completely their fault? It's not their fault at all. What shows up on Netflix Instant is whatever they can get from the content providers. If the content you wish to see is not on Netflix then blame the creators of the content, not Netflix. I would bet that Netflix would be happy to have every commercially-created video content ever made available on their service. In much the same way their bill…

It's partly their fault. They are trying to maintain this cheap $8 a month flat fee, but that's not enough money in their pockets to secure HBO offerings, a better movie selection and for me a better TV selection.

Hulu, YouTube and other streaming sites I won't mention offer me what I seek at no cost(Mac Mini connected to LCD TV). Though when I first started Netflix streaming in Nov. 2010 there were some great offerings (TV shows, super hero cartoon series & movies) though by this summer I just kept seeing more B grade level junk. Thus they lost me as a subscriber and Netflix promoter.

There current bi-polar actions just seem like a company with a once strong brand name is imploding.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#48

Post by SoftwareMaven »

rfairfax wrote: post #25

What's going on at Netflix? If you ask employees, they'll tell you that the culture - often praised for its high performance standards - is a culture of fear. It's a product management-driven organization where PMs aren't afraid to use the poor performance card to remove subordinates who don't go along with their ideas. The emperor has no clothes. In Netflix's case, the emperor is any product manager. It's no wonder…

I would hope Netflix would be a product management driven company. Companies that aren't make far more stupid decisions than companies that are. I'm not sure what that has to do with the rest of your post.

The culture of fear, OTOH, is problematic in the extreme. It doesn't matter what the organization looks like if people are afraid to do and/or show their research for fear of pissing off the powers that be.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#49

Post by SoftwareMaven »

talmand wrote: post #31
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 it…

That's not true. If company A is worth $200M and you split it, (assuming no other factors liked pissed off investors and/or customers) you'll have company A worth $125M and company B worth $75M. There is no reduction in the value of the companies. Investors get five shares in A and three shares in B for every eight shares they held.

The problem here is everybody (customers, investors and pundits) thought it was a horrible idea. They thought the value of two separate companies was half the value of a single company. That is not the normal path when a company spins off a piece of itself.

Re: Netflix kills Qwikster

#50

Post by biff »

biff wrote: post #45

The problem with Netflix is the problem with a lot of companies: the customers are taken for granted. If you have a Netflix account, look at reviews of The Black Tower or The Tudors. For weeks they've been broken -- out-of-sync audio/video on The Black Tower, mislabeled episodes of The Tudors season 2, I guess Whale Wars was also mislabeled ( http://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/i74kw/after_a_few_c... ). Use the…

Ah, looks like they finally fixed The Tudors problem anyway. Good news.
Post reply on HN