Posted on 10/10/2011 5:41:23 AM PDT by TSgt
When I canceled my disc delivery, my queue stayed intact. I had to go in and manually delete the titles, so unless they changed something, you should be able to get it back.
“the old-fashioned DVD service”
Is it just me or is the world flying by?
Soon we will be reading about poor kids having to drive Grandma’s hover car.
Say what-???!!!?? Their "customer service" is to call their 800# and to sit on hold till a minimum wage drone picks up and reads from a script. They *HAD* excellent customer service a few years ago, when if you had a non immediate problem or question you could e mail their tech/CS department and get an answer via e mail, within 1-24 hours depending. THAT was convenient and useful. Having no way to contact Netflix save by phone is a PITA. And I will never believe that self serving BS statement Netflix released about their customers "overwhelmingly preferring the personal touch" of phone contact only. Every site I saw that discussed that change (eg Hacking Netflix) was furious about it. (I *think* Blockbuster still allows e mail contact, but I discontinued BB when DH bought a Blu Ray that was netflix enabled...HUGE mistake. The Sony player is OK for older streaming videos, but it times out constantly on HD videos.)
I created a Netflix account as a whim a few months ago but never started my free trial. We just don’t watch that many movies. Then they changed their method where you (apparently) can only download to your TV through a Wii or other device. It costs double to have the movies delivered. I don’t have a Wii, nor do I want to spend the money for one just to watch movies, so my free trial is still in limbo. Is it worth getting in to?
That’s another hard lesson for Netflix:
Having driven off a million customers, many are finding it easy and cost-efficient to get recent movies streaming for $2-5 a pop. Didn’t want to go that route prior, having dropped the flat-rate fee for Netflix disc rental, but for those of us who don’t watch much anyway, not a bad tradeoff to get _everything_ streaming via per-viewing rental.
OK, so Netflix figured out the mistake and is restoring/merging disc rentals again. What’s it gonna cost me now? why, being a once-a-week premium-movie viewer, would I switch back to waiting for a particular disc when I can stream whatever I want from iTunes right now at comparable bottom-line cost?
Agreed I knew netflix (eventually) planned to go to streaming only, and I took for granted that they would have to raise their prices to do so.THAT was no problem. But that snotty little press release, with that ending statement about how easy it is to go to your netflix account and cancel if you disagree with the price hike-??? THAT raised my blood pressure, and I WOULD have happily cancelled except it's not my decision alone and I was outvoted. :-(
The whole point of the lead article is that Netflix discovered the hard way that “cost double to have movies delivered” is a stupid business decision (up to a month ago the two services, network streaming and disc delivery, were a single flat fee).
What works for you depends on you. I have kids, so having instant access to a huge library of children’s videos without worrying about scratched discs or oatmeal in the player is by far worth the $9/month. I don’t watch much myself, so there is plenty of titles available for network streaming. The catalog of old titles is good; the catalog of new titles is improving.
I have an AppleTV, and think it’s GREAT. $99 one-time cost for the player, then ~$9/month for Netflix streaming, and $2-5 for on-demand movies not available on Netflix. Not quite life-changing, but close.
Or maybe it had something to do with their customers screaming their heads off about the LEGALITY of their charging of funds for a suddenly-existent company that the customers NEVER agreed to be charged by.
------
Netflix is getting close to losing us as customers despite the fact we've been with them since almost day one. The multiple price increases almost lost us, and now we were trying to decide whether to drop the streaming or DVD service.
I'm just about ready to see what Hulu Plus is like.
We went from 3 movies at a time (which we are horrible at finding time to watch) to one at a time.
We do a lot of streaming. But we have a big home theater. when it is time to pop popcorn and sit back to watch a big action movie on blue ray, the discs are still the way to go. (for a little while longer at least).
The streaming is a little like the on demand movies on cable, the greatest collection of mediocre movies ever assembled.
I also use Hulu and Crackle.
Haha! I used to spend a fortune on Blockbuster movies back in the late 80s! I sure don't miss “Be kind. Rewind.”!
Not all of those movies are mediocre. We relived our lives in the 80s with all of the great oldies in there, and I was able to watch entire series of cartoons I used to enjoy as a kid.
BluRay is still the best quality media for the money. With a capacity of 25 GB, it can provide over 25 hours of high definition footage, and there’s obviously no latency like over a broadband connection, even with a wireless-N or 1 GBps hardwired router.
Oops! Too late. I dropped the DVD rental last week.
I was getting about 7-8 DVDs per month on the 1-DVD plan.
But, the PO probably is dropping Saturday delivery. And, the area PO processing center (25 miles away) closing and centralizing 150 miles away.
That would probably reduce the deliveries to 4-5 per month for the same cost. That recent Netflix price increase didn’t enhance the situatuation, either.
Now, I just do the streaming, so Netflix has a net loss of about $8/month over what I was paying for the previous 18 months.
From what I have read, they have lost over 1 million subcribers. And many, like me, reduced services. Netflix stocks fell from near $300 to near $100 the last few weeks.
You can bet the stock holders aren’t happy with some of Netflix’s recent decisions.
yah.....the day they announced this plan their stock started a screaming nosedive from $138 a share to the $117 a share it is selling at this morning.....
I’ve never heard of Crackle, I’ll have to check them out.
Hulu is great for shows that I missed on TV and my fiancee deleted from the DVR.
I worked at Blockbuster in college, but we didn’t rent out many VHS anymore.
Funny tangent on that: my boss was also my roommate at the time, and he had this idea to sell these CD/DVD cleaning machines in the store as “CD/DVD Rewinders.”
You can’t possibly imagine the number of inquiries we had into how the rewinder worked, and my roommate, mind you: the boss of this store, kept the charade going for as long as he could. He actually got a woman to buy one and told her to “make sure [you] remember to rewind your movie” as she was leaving.
Yep - when the local rental places went out of business, we stopped renting - period. Paying for a premium TV service with HBO as the one "luxury" keeps us plenty busy as far as choices go. If a "must see" movie hits the theaters, we go (sneak our own drinks and candy in). The rest will eventually hit the TV somewhere down the road - once you get out of the "gotta see it now" mode, you don't really miss anything, you just delay the "pleasure" which is the most cost-effective way to go. I haven't even felt the need to use my subscriber service to pay for the "privilege" of viewing something a bit sooner.
One thing though how come Hulu streams better than Netflix at times.
We have HBO mostly for their series. We LOVE Boardwalk Empire and watch it religiously. We were also HUGE Entourage fans, and I cut my HBO teeth on The Sopranos. Game of Thrones was pretty good too, but it didn’t keep my interest as much as some of the more contemporary stuff.
I never was a “gotta see it now” type person. I always found that those movies with the greatest looking previews were the worst to actually sit through. At one point when I was in high school, going to the movies took a back seat to the mall and the beach for us. Not to mention the $12 - $15 price tag for a ticket is a bit much, IMO.
Kinda the same with us. Except we both have a PC to play on if there is anything good out.
What are you playing right now?
I tried the Battlefield 3 beta but was not fond of it. Looking forward to MW3 and Skyrim, but I have to say I will probably save my money for two copies of SWOTR.
The CEO of Netflix must be on drugs. Total idiot and he probably makes a couple of million $’s a year. Give me a break!
First of all, this thread is like reading my own thoughts and discussions my wife and I have had for the last two months.
We tried Hulu plus and I would not recommend it, especially if you are watching it using an X-box or PS3.
So many of the the current TV offerings are not available on a gaming device and can only be watched on a PC screen. WEAKSAUCE!
Also most of the really good titles aren’t available for mobile devices either.
We cancelled Hulu plus maybe a week after we signed up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.