Qwikster, we hardly knew ye
Feel that pain in your neck, Insiders? It’s whiplash from the head-spinning actions of Netflix lately. Just three weeks after announcing that it was spinning off its DVD business into a separate entity (and website) under the Qwikster name, Netflix has abruptly changed its mind.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement today on the company’s official blog. From Hastings’ post:
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.
Hastings went on to reiterate in his post that Netflix is “done with price changes.”
The problem with such statements is that Netflix’s customers, angry and confused by all the changes and reversals the company has thrown at them lately, are likely to take anything the company says now with a huge grain of salt.
What do you think about Netflix’s latest move, Insiders? Will the company’s stock, which is down 60% since July, recover from these PR fiascos?
Netflix screws up again, again…
I think they should have gone through with it and people who wanted to pay would have paid and those who didn’t would’nt
I think he has enough money already to live comfortably for quite some time to come
Good move in the long term, the qwikster idea was a badly hatched plan to move people towards streaming and to kill a business that is still in great demand.
If they were gutsy they could buy and integrate redbox into Netflix. Add premium content like Espn and on demand stream premium movies and collect even more money from their subscribers.
Similar to GM, Netflix seems to relish losing Customers? Perhaps Mr. Reed Hastings is not merely greedy, but also Bi-Polar, and possibly cannot help his disregard, and constant up, and down decision making! Hey, I signed up with Blockbuster.com, and Amazon Prime. Don’t trust Netflix any longer…
—GBJ
Has this company ever heard of a focus group?
They could use a little focus.
Netflix is supposed to be a professional company, right? Then they should know to plan out their moves BEFORE announcing them to the public.
Any company stupid enough to not know that their price increase was 60% until it was pointed out to them, isn’t run by the kind of people I want to business with. All of this has shown how little they value their physical DVD customers. I think they will continue to do business in a way that shows they have no commitment to keeping DVD customers.
Kaci – I think they knew it was 60 percent. I think they just assumed we were too stupid to know. I’m not sure which is worse.
I really like Hulu but Netflix has one thing no one else does, it knows what I will like and brings it to me. I have well over a thousand ratings and it knows me well. If I could just cut and paste that to Hulu then I’d be set. Right now Hulu recommends that I watch the mindless stuff others like.
In short until someone gets both content AND a good interface then Netflix is still untouchable. Well, less touchable perhaps. In the future shows can skip networks and even advertising because places like Netflix will know what I will want to see and fund it. That’s their key right now.
I cancelled my account, won’t go back.
Absolutely will not go back!
I think that the whole change the name deal was just a cover up for the price change. now there trying to come back and say that they keeped it simple for the customers! oh. but there stayin with the 60% increase?
I think its a great move. Splitting up a company in order to get people to understand the difference between the two separate services was a bad idea. All they needed to do was explain the situation. If they didn’t start charging for the streaming service, there was no way they could continue to keep acquiring new content.
People are mad, but Netflix is still a better and service compared to cable.
The real question here is why hasn’t the Netflix Board of Directors kicked Hastings out? It’s very obvious that he has no idea what he is doing & has nearly destroyed the company. As long as he is at the helm, consumers have no reason to believe anything the company says. I stayed with the streaming service only, but am just waiting for Amazon to beef up their content so I can move over to their streaming service. I get the DVDs I want from either Redbox or my library system – don’t need Netflix for them…..
I would have cancelled the disc service entirely had it become Quickster so I’m glad they cancelled the plan. Having 2 queues to sort through would have been a deal breaker. The hassle would have outweighed my fleeting interest.
I will say it again… Netflix offers two half-baked services. Before cancelling, I waited 3 months, that’s right… 3 MONTHS, for the movie “I am number 4” to get mailed to me and it was at the top of my Q the whole time. On the streaming side… you get alot of old movies, B movies and documentaries. Most of which are only available for temporary periods of time. So in their infinite wisdom, Netflix decides to have two price increases and charge a total of 85% more for two broken services… all the while thinking no one is smart enough to realize this. Enough said. All the changes and lies and fake apologies… just more salt in the wounds, obviously a bunch of fools running this company.
I rent dvd’s and stream from Netflix. Best deal in town. It is nice to see a company realize a mistake, listen to their customers and respond. I did not want to have to use 2 websites for my rentals and streaming of movies. HP should follow suit and reconsider the killing of the Touchpad. I was looking forward to watching Netflix movies on it. Luckily I found a way to do so.