Don’t believe me? Check out the email I got from them this morning regarding their outage this past Sunday:
So, in an effort to appease me they thought it best to offer me a 3% credit. On the PORTION of my bill that is for streaming, although my CURRENT plan isn’t broken down into to “streaming” and “DVD only”. No, I have a plan (until September 1st at least) that is $19.99 per month and not broken down into parts. So either this is a generic letter sent hastily out to all customers, or Netflix is so strapped for cash that they can only afford to give me $0.24 as opposed to $0.60 for my “inconvenience”.
But here’s the best part: they try to put a value on my time. And not just any piece of my time, but my family time. I wanted to watch a video with my children at that time, and couldn’t.
Now, I know someone out there is going to say to me ‘Hey, knucklehead, instead of watching a video you could have gone outside and done something else, or perhaps just talked with your children.” And to you I would say “good point”, followed by “perhaps I should just cancel my Netflix membership altogether”, which is not what Netflix would want the majority of their customer to realize. No, I am certain that Netflix would not want people to know there is life without their service.
To Netflix, my family time was worth $0.24, but to me it was worth a lot more. Do you know what I would pay $0.24 for?
An explanation.
That’s right, if Netflix had sent me an email that said “sorry” along with an explanation of what happened, how it happened, and what steps they would take to ensure it doesn’t happen again, they could have kept their 3% offer.
I don’t want my money back. I want my time back. I want the chance to watch that video, with my children, at that precise moment in time. I am certain Netflix regrets being down, but I don’t want their 3% credit, what I want are assurances that they are taking steps to avoid this situation from happening again.
Today I am “downgrading” my service plan with Netflix to the streaming plus 1 DVD, saving my family about $50 a year. It may not sound like much, but I am going to take that $50 and apply it towards an Amazon Prime membership. That way, as Amazon starts to offer more and more titles, and eventually puts Netflix out of business anyway, I will be able to enjoy movies AND free shipping on stuff I am already buying.
So, in a way, I guess this is my “thank you” to Netflix, for forcing me to understand more about all of the options available for my streaming needs. Without the outage, and your unfeeling offer of a 3% credit, I would have never known that I could be spending my money a bit more wisely.
Now to head over to Amazon and pick out some good books to read to my children.
It’s wierd how Netflix has very quickly devolved into a marketer’s nightmare. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that they were sitting pretty while blockbuster went out of business? (side note: how great was blockbuster?)
That letter they sent you is ridic, but to tell you the truth, I think most people will not bother to figure out the monetary value of that percentage.
I have AP too, but not really sure why it would put ‘flix out of business? You mean because of the on-demand video?
Claire,
I think AP will eventually dominate because AP has billions of dollars to use to negotiate a contract with all the major movie studios, while Crapflix doesn’t and will eventually price itself out. Keep in mind I was a math major, not an economist…
That’s $0.24 more than I got. In fact, I still haven’t received any notification from them regarding the impending plan changes. I’ve been *very* pro-Netflix up to this point, but they’re just not handling this situation well.
Colleen,
Did you try logging in at that time? I reset my password maybe six times, so perhaps the email went out to the accounts where they could clearly tell were trying to access the service. Or perhaps yours is “in the mail” and should arrive later today.
Or maybe they just don’t care about you. I suppose that is possible as well, given the way they have acted up until this point.
I tried accessing my queue from 2 different Roku devices with no luck. I *was* able to log into my account on the website, so maybe that canceled out any inconvenience from not being able to watch a movie, y’know, on my TV.
I’m more bothered about the lack of notification regarding the plan changes. I shouldn’t have to find out about something like that on Fark.
I think you’re being a little harsh. Netflix isn’t pricing your time with your family at 24 cents. It’s pricing the amount of time that it’s service was unavailable at 24 cents. I do agree it’s a little ridiculous to offer a rebate of that amount but whatever. To say that it’s their fault you didn’t have a DR plan for your time is pushing it.
Chris,
They would have been better off keeping their money and simply giving me an explanation.
We did have a DR plan…we read some books…and talked with each other…turns out the woman sitting next to me is my wife! Who knew?
I agree about keeping the money. I’m the same way. However, we’re in the minority so I understand them not broadcasting a response. I did check the Netflix tech blog to see if anything was up there but nothing was. That would have been nice.
The 24 cent thing still baffles me. They’re probably paying more in costs to get the money out.
Scale it up. Say you were earning $500 a day from a website hosted for $50 a month. If that hosting goes down, you may get your $50 back but it won’t compensate you for the lost revenue.
Beware the cheapest link
Good decision.
Today’s business does not consider the value of the customer and their time. It is just making money from us.
Why should we bother about that? just go ahead and design our own plan if it does not fit in. 🙂