How Does Taking Away A Popular Feature 'Improve Netflix'?
from the please-explain dept
I am not currently a Netflix customer, but one of the features of the service that I thought was quite useful (and I know plenty of people who use it actively) was the "profiles" feature that let a single family/household set up separate queues of movies they wanted. So, for example, a husband, wife and kids could each get their own list of movies with separate logins, rather than having to manage a single queue. This made the service a lot more useful for a household. And yet... Netflix is eliminating the feature, and doing so with the bizarre Orwellian explanation:Why? While it may be disappointing to see this feature go away, this change will help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.Can someone explain how eliminating a feature that many people use improves the Netflix website? You see, Netflix, if you're going to remove a feature and say that the website is better because of it, it would actually help if you explained how or why it's better (i.e., you're replacing that feature with something better). To simply say that removing a well-liked feature makes the website better without any further explanation, you're basically calling your customers stupid because you think they'll believe what's clearly bogus.
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Filed Under: benefits, features, households, profiles, queues
Companies: netflix
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Netflix
Their website has become a jumbled mess.
Apparently someone high up over there, THOUGHT about it - and how they could HELP us. So they screwed up the whole interface.
I'm guessing they hired a new officer, and he THOUGHT about helping everyone. Thanks alot.
If they keep screwing up the interface I'm going to cancel my membership.
Thanx Corporate Netflix Trolls. Quit thinking.
Thanx.
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Profiles are [were] good!
I have put my Netflix account on "90-day hold" to evaluate the change but I think I will probably cancel unless they come up with something better to replace profiles.
Actually, one of the reasons that I originally signed up for the more expensive two-at-a-time plan was specifically so that I could use that to give my wife her own profile. Had that option not been available I would definitely have gone with the one-at-a-time plan (we're not big movie watchers)
We were talking this over just last night, as a matter of fact, and said that the reason I went with Netflix was the way they presented recommendations and allowed you to connect with friends and family members to see what they liked and disliked. By removing the profiles they are taking a lot of the value away from those features too because my wife and I have VERY different tastes in movies. She had her own recommendations and I had my own. By merging them the value is severely diluted.
I suppose they figure that people such as myself will get TWO separate accounts on Netflix. ... NOT! ...
I think I'll spend some time learning how to use OnDemand on my Comcast system...
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It's summertime. Turn the TV and video games off and get your fat, lazy asses outside and move around.
Wash your car, paint your house, just do something constructive.
Movies today suck anyway.
Now move!!!
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Re: Step Away ...
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Netflix Troubles
I have called on several occasions to resolve a problem and yet fairly simple and mundane issues cannot be resolved with them. For example, I put my account on hold and later changed my mind. They have no mechanism in place to move your hold date to earlier in time only later. To change the hold you must either cancel and rejoin or go in at a particular point in time and reactivate. Even the customer service people (and I use that term very loosely) cannot move the date to be earlier in time than the date you chose. This makes absolutely no since to me and even seems to be against their best interests in the business to get customers paying again.
Customer service has almost no power to resolve customer issues which is always a bad combination. I have almost never been satisfied by their response when I call in.
And the plan cost is kind of stupid also. For 3 at a time, they charge you $16.99 while is cost $7.00 more for 4 at a time plan. So you average less than $6.00 for 3 at a time and have a relatively huge penalty to get one more per month. When I did do four at a time, they further penalized me by shipping one of my dvds across the country rather than just going to the next item in the queue. The dvd took more well than a week to arrive and I had actually waited so long that I had to report it as lost before it did show up a few days later.
Consequently, it does not surprise me that they are removing useful features that people like. I would rather they remove the Watch Instantly feature which is unreliable except that it deducts a movie from your balance whether you actually get to watch it or not. I have abandoned that feature some time ago. So many other places already give you things to watch online for free and actually seem to care if they work or not.
Thank you for reading.
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Profiles were awesome
We used the profiles to GREATLY improve our satisfaction with the service. I just don't understand how netflix can justify saying removing this awesome feature is an improvement.
I *am* willing to believe that they are hiding a patent lawsuit here, or somethign to that effect. Netflix operates on extremely thin margins, so if someone approached with some (bs) patent and demanded royalties... if netflix thought there was a good chance they would lose that, then they would be making a wise decision to just remove the functionality.
But..clearly thats not what they said is their reason. If they really did remove this awesome feature to improve the service, then they need to fire whoever thought that was a good idea.
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Re: Profiles were awesome
I never used Profiles, myself, but have been a Netflix user for a few years. I am overall pretty happy. When I started, they only had the one shipping depot, and it took a week round trip to get new movies. Now, I get them back in 2 days.
I'll keep using it.
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crazies?
@David - I'm with you, been a member since introduction basically and they've basically only gotten better and continued to add features.
As a young, single person living alone I never had a need for the 'profiles' feature and honestly didn't even know it was an option. I understand that a large percentage of Netflix users are families that would find this feature greatly useful, but I am hard-pressed to believe that they would remove it without plans for an even better replacement feature or major user-interface overhaul.
By the way, for all those people saying they are going to quit...who are you going to go with? Blockbuster? Hate to break it to you, but however bad you think Netflix is, Blockbuster is 1000x WORSE with their online service. Don't believe me? Go sign up and find out!
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Re: crazies?
"however bad you think Netflix is, Blockbuster is 1000x WORSE with their online service."
So you've had Netflix since the beginning, but know that Blockbuster is worse, eh? Thanks for adding to the misinformation.
And just because they don't announce the new feature(s) that will "improve" the site at this time, doesn't mean it won't be something great. What's the point in even talking about canceling your membership before you hear what all the changes are.
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crazies?
@David - I'm with you, been a member since introduction basically and they've basically only gotten better and continued to add features.
As a young, single person living alone I never had a need for the 'profiles' feature and honestly didn't even know it was an option. I understand that a large percentage of Netflix users are families that would find this feature greatly useful, but I am hard-pressed to believe that they would remove it without plans for an even better replacement feature or major user-interface overhaul.
By the way, for all those people saying they are going to quit...who are you going to go with? Blockbuster? Hate to break it to you, but however bad you think Netflix is, Blockbuster is 1000x WORSE with their online service. Don't believe me? Go sign up and find out!
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They didn't say it would make the site better
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Re: They didn't say it would make the site better
A couple years ago, my company had to remove a feature. It sucks, but sometimes it's near impossible to add something new if you have to take into account old cruft. The feature we removed was only used by about 10% of the users, but they were vocal! Same sort of remarks that are here, "what sort of idiot *removes* features?!?" The "idiot" that took over and had to keep things running.
I am a netflix subscriber, and my wife and I used profiles when they came out, but we won't miss them. It's very easy to manage the queue, promote our movies over the kids, etc...
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Re: They didn't say it would make the site better
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Re: Re: They didn't say it would make the site better
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Losing profiles
I will most likely cancel Netflix. I was just about to contact TechDirt about the email, and saw you have already covered it. Multiple profiles/queues make Netflix rock and Netflix would suck with out them.
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If patent problem, who owns the patent?
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Here's an explanation
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Re: Here's an explanation
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In reality, I think we'll have household like accounts again, once they decide households need a bundle of cheap video on demand device for each room in the house.
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This is corporate double-talk for "We're taking away a feature to improve things for us."
Look at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). They re-designed the entire site's interface last year and about 90% of the people hated it. Until recently, they offered the option to use the old design. They finally took that option away and forced the new design on everyone. Immediately, there were protests in the message boards complaining (rightly so) that the new design is ugly and harder to read. The IMDb, true to form, claims that most everyone loves and uses the new design and that it was only a very small percentage of people who still used the old design.
These companies absolutely do not care what the users think. They only listen to some paid expert who tells them what to think and how their web site should be laid out.
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Who's running Marketing at NetFlix?
It allows my kids to manage their movies independently - without squabbles, without my intervention. This is worth gold to me. Before this I almost canceled the service because it was too hard to manage 4 peoples' movie lists on one queue.
Their email gave *no* reason why they were taking away such a key product feature from me, one of their most loyal longtime customers. I called phone support and even talked to a supervisor. They could give no reason for NetFlix taking away product feature from their highest revenue customers.
My only choice is to create 4 separate accounts - which will increase my NetFlix cost by 25%, but then I would have no mechanism to control the content of movies that my kids watch if I do this. If they have their own password to log on, they can change the maturity ratings. The support line had no solution for this.
It seems they have announced a *major* change in their product by taking away the most popular feature, and have not planned for the impact on their most loyal customers.
Yes, the customers that use the multiple queues the most, are the customers on the highest movie plans and therefore are the highest paying customers.
Are they kidding me? Screwing your best customers? Who is running Marketing there?
If you take this feature away, I will not be able to - and am not willing to - manage the arguments and hassle between my kids about the *single* movie queue. The only option they give me is to create separate accounts for +25% and no ability to keep inappropriate content from my kids. I obviously cannot take that route (I value my kids too much).
I haven't decided what I'll do yet. Most likely I will cut back from 7 movies to 3 movies which will be much more manageable with a single queue. I can't believe you haven't briefed your support supervisors on the answers to these questions. NetFlix, your customer focus that you brag about has taken a BIG hit here.
But then again, I'm so pissed that you would take the key feature away from your best customer, I'm thinking that on Sept. 1 I will cancel my $45/mo account completely. I'm just *that* pissed off about being treated poorly.
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Re: Who's running Marketing at NetFlix?
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Re: Who's running Marketing at NetFlix?
maybe you've already answered your question as to "why".
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What Jim Bob said
I wonder if the "consultant" convinced NetFlix that if 1 family had 4 profiles, then taking away this feature would create 4 new user accounts... which overnight, would increase NetFlix's membership by 3 or 4 times.
But, like many things, this sounds good on paper... but they obviously never counted on this kind of backlash... or the fact that many people won't create multiple user accounts for their family.
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I'm glad Netflix profiles are going away
I'm finding that I have to reconcile two queues to figure out what is showing up next. It requires twice as much configuration, and picking a movie that would be fun for both of us from the recommendations list has become a chore.
I was just figuring out how to get rid of the second profile without manually screwing with the queues.
We'll see if they deal with the queues correctly. If they do, I bet most users will be relieved. Maybe not Techdirt readers, but ordinary end users like my in-laws will.
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Re: I'm glad Netflix profiles are going away
> I'm finding that I have to reconcile two
> queues to figure out what is showing up next.
> It requires twice as much configuration, and
> picking a movie that would be fun for both of
> us from the recommendations list has become
> a chore.
So let me get this straight: because you have a hard time using a feature, it's a good thing for that feature to be removed for everyone?
Did it ever occur to you that you don't *have* to use the profile feature if it is such an obstacle for you?
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Simple Solution
With that said, I think a really easy fix that would still provide the main benefit of profiles is to offer family member accounts. Think something like XM radio. You have the primary radio at $x/month and then each add'l receiver for the home at $y/month.
In Netflix's case, make it so that if someone ends up with a 4 movie at a time plan, but has 1 primary and 2 sub accounts that the fees add up to be about the same, but that each sub-account gets charged based on the # of movies out at time. That way, if you have a large family it would be more flexible if you wanted move than 8 totals movies out at a time. As long as the pricing fits, then it's just a new account type that should be easy to implement and since each account is tied to a person it is more straight forward.
Hopefully this provides what the end-user wants without requiring a special interface for profile users (don't use, so I'm making assumptions here).
Freedom
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Two Words
I do not know if they are everywhere yet, but in Colorado they are here. They are outside McDonalds, in Walmarts, grocery stores.
One dollar a night, after 24 nights they are yours LOL, but you can go to their website, see which movies are at whichever Redbox kiosks. Every Tuesday you get new ones, many indi films too. It is great to run to McDonalds at three in the morning and grab a movie and take it back the next day when you are picking up crap from Walmart. Did I say you can drop the movie off at any RedBox location. I hope the rest of you have this option. We are lucky SOB's in Colorado Springs.
I have not purchased a movie in 6 months because of this and Xbox Live, allowing me to watch movies on the xbox through their DL service.
Netflick is a dinosaur.
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RedBox
It wouldn't help everyone, though, because they only offer new or popular titles, not the old great titles. Personally though, if I want an older title, I'll buy it from Amazon for about what netFlix would charge me for it...
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Why?!
Why would you settle for half?
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Re: Why?!
But, I have to ask: if you live close enough to a store to drop the movies off every time, and you're apparently happy enough with the store selection, why do you use the online service at all? Surely half the point of an online DVD service is to increase the selection and to make it unecessary to visit the store to begin with?
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Re: Why?!
Because they have great features like profiles for family members. Now? I don't know, I'm thinking of switching just to take money away from Netflix for this stupid decision. I think they're hoping to get more money out of this as they said, and we need to make sure they don't.
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"Many people use?" Not at all.
"The reason, the post explained, is that it's a little-used feature that some people found complicated: only a percent of Netflix members use it. "
One whole percent = "many people"? In what world?
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Re: "Many people use?" Not at all.
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Re: "Many people use?" Not at all.
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less equals more
> the website better without any further explanation,
> you're basically calling your customers stupid
well of course they have to say they are making the change to make things better. It's the same thing my satellite TV company said when they removed a bunch of HD channels I liked. They can't just say "we want to give you less but have you keep paying the same amount". Sending you a letter like THAT would be assuming you are stupid.
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responce to #31
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NetFlix
It so doesn't make sense to me and I do not understand people.
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Re: NetFlix
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It's simple
1. Not a lot of people were using the feature.
2. It's a complex feature that was expensive to maintain and support.
3. By removing it Netflix can focus on the more popular part of their service.
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Crapflix
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netflix
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Keep Netflix Profiles!
Spread the Word!
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It's very simple...
Whom they then have to piss off again...
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