In 1997, there was this new thing--instead of going down to the local Blockbuster on a Friday night and hoping they had something in stock that you could stand to watch, now you could hit a Web site, give them a list of every movie that interested you, and they'd mail it to you. Better yet, if it turned out that your appendix burst just as John Hurt started convulsing in _Alien_ (whoa, wouldn't that have been freaky?), you wouldn't have to take the movie back without finishing it, even assuming you remembered to take it back to avoid the late fees. Just keep it until you're able to watch it!
We didn't jump on the bandwagon right away; we'd gone down the laserdisc path, and it wasn't quite obvious yet that it was going to be just as much a dead end as the first wave of LDs had been. But once we did, it was everything everybody said it was and more. Between the selection and the convenience, I think it's been ten years at least since I've been inside a DVD rental store--I live out in the middle of nowhere, so it's a bit of a trek to get to town anyway, especially if I have to do it twice, and just try and fit it in around my work schedule (when I have one). When they added streaming, that was extra awesome with a side of awesome sauce. Suddenly I didn't necessarily have to wait for a disc that they only had one or two copies of (or they'd lost the last one!), I could stream it. And yeah, the new house has crappy bandwidth, so streaming isn't as viable an option here as it was at the old place, and yeah, they don't have anywhere near the selection for streaming that they do for DVDs, but it was still an option that I could take advantage of if I felt I needed it. The integration between my DVD queue and the Watch Instantly queue is a HUGE feature here; if I'm feeling in the mood for some instant gratification, a quick glance down my DVD queue tells me exactly what's available for streaming.
Sure, there have been hassles along the way. We, along with a lot of other people, got bit by Netflix's throttling of more-active users. Plan prices have bounced around a lot. But solid features, the integration of services, lingering goodwill, and a fair amount of inertia, have kept us satisfied Netflix customers for well north of a decade.
But we just noticed this week that Netflix had raised our plan rates without telling us, and split out the streaming from the DVD rentals, so streaming is no longer a free add-on to the service. To be clear, we've been expecting this move for a while, and we understand it. It's the total lack of warning and not giving us a chance to choose for ourselves which plan we wanted going forward that hacks me off. We made the necessary decision to cut the streaming service, but fully intended to reinstate it when the bandwidth out here makes it attractive again.
Then today, we found out that the split of services on our bill was only a preliminary move, and that Netflix is spinning off its DVD rental service, completely severing its integration with the streaming service, and renaming it to "Qwikster". Now there will be two different Web sites, two different bills, and I won't be able to skim down my DVD queue to see what looks good to watch right now.
Or, rather, there will be for other folks. I'll be keeping my "Qwikster" account for now, as my queue represents a fairly significant investment of energy and research, but when bandwidth improves, I'll have an entirely open mind as to what service to go with, and I'll be looking more closely at other DVD services out there now, too.
And judging from the reaction on Netflix's forums (and on Wall Street), I am not alone in deciding that the goodwill has eroded enough that inertia's not really a compelling argument for staying anymore.
So, well done, Netflix. In just about a month, you've taken a company whose name was synonymous with the service it provided ("I Netflixed _Avatar_ this weekend. Talk about overrated!") and shot it in the head.
The Oatmeal sums it up pretty well: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/netflix
/Ranting Swede
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