Netflix. Qwikster

My reply to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings:

 

I doubt that anyone at Netflix will get this reply but I'll vent just a bit. Everyone understands that prices go up over time and that every good thing has a limited life span. If Netflix had presented it's case to their subscribers before the two price hikes, it would have been understandable. When I say present, I mean something like this email. Not a press release or blog post.  You may have been 100% justified in raising fees based on content licensing costs and postal rates, but we wouldn't know that. We just knew that Netflix was taking a new direction and wanted to split their two services. In my opinion, your DVD and streaming plans are symbiotic.   Neither can really stand on its own. Splitting them up just doesn't make sense. Your streaming, while convenient, lacks new content and the DVD plan, while containing current movies (well, somewhat current, as they are on a 30 day cooldown), are limited to 4 or 5 a month. They dovetailed nicely, though but not enough to justify the 60% price hike. Apparently, 600,000 other people thought so too. And finally a mea culpa of sorts from CEO Reed Hastings. Didn't really convince me though.The renaming of the DVD plan seems like a weak attempt to distance the Netflix brand from this debacle.

 

So, for now, I'll keep the $8 streaming plan and hope for more current content. We'll see how the Qwikster brand does in the future.