Netflix Thinking About Ways To Make Own Punishment Actually Punishment
from the let-us-think-on-it dept
After plenty of people, including the FTC and a judge on the case, noticed that Netflix's class action settlement for delivering movies slower than promised appeared to be more of a promotion to get people to upgrade their accounts than a real punishment, Netflix has now said it will reconsider its side of the agreement, and see about not automatically enrolling everyone who agrees to the settlement in a higher, more costly, service plan after their one month free upgrade is completed. It seems like this is the type of thing they should have thought about before all of this -- and it's not clear why so much "thinking" needs to go into it now.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
First POst
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WHAT?!
WTF!? If I go and rob a bank, can I opt to have my hand slapped as opposed to jail time?
Corporations have too much leeway in this world. If they can be held accountable in the same way a human can - then they should be punished as humans are also.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: WHAT?!
If you want to gripe about something, gripe about THAT. The only people that got CASH from this settlement that injured CONSUMERS ... were the LAWYERS.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: WHAT?!
Because this is a settlement negotiation. The plaintiffs can push this all the way through to judgement if they choose, rather than accept the proposal.
You can ask. And the prosecutor will surely laugh at you and suggest 30 years in prison. Eventually you'll either complete a trial or agree on 7 years in prison and 5 years probabation or something like that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New release hiding
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New release hiding
I love Netflix. If you think they suck try one of the other services like Blockbuster and you'll be running back to good ol Netflix in a hurry...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: New release hiding
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Aren't most class action settlements promotions?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
vicitims of this BS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: vicitims of this BS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
In this case, obviously, they couldn't care less about their clients, except as leverage to get excessive legal fees from Netflix.
Could the presiding judge have thrown out this deal as obviously flawed? Or, since the two parties came to an agreement, was he powerless?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
still haven't got it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Still weak
An easy and relatively simple to implement settlement might have been that every class member could request a DVD of their choice from NetFlix and get to keep it. As a remaining NetFlix subscriber who would be covered under the class, that would have tangible value to me. Bumping me up to have out one more DVD at a time for one month, meh, not worth the computer programming necessary for the company to implement it.
Overall I like NetFlix, but I'm not usually a high volume renter. On the rare occasion that I do have fast turnaround and see my next selections throttled, it does incremently sour my opinion of the company, and still does despite the fact they now admit to doing it (thanks to lawsuits). I'd be less bothered if the system was sophisticated enough to look at long-term trends and was honest about the a 'hold' status, but companies being honest with customers is indeed a rare thing these days.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]