Netflix props

For over a decade now I've had a subscription to Netflix, and during that entire time till now I've considered it a shining example of a good modern business with some surprising business decisions that really make it easy for the customer even at the risk of being exploited.

Highlights for me:

• Good system of checking out as many DVDs as you want, a certain number at a time and they provide the return envelopes.  The system could not work if you had to pay for return shipping.
• Nicely working queue; you just load it up and let it go, rather than having to go to the video store and hope they have it in stock.   They have an amazingly large stock, much more than you would have been able to find at the local video store.
• No due dates and late fees which I think is an amazing break from standard practice. Eat crow Blockbuster.  Oh, you already did.
• They're very lenient on reporting lost discs without penalty even though it's something that can be abused.  It's probably factored into the overall subscription cost which is the right way to do it IMO. They replace scratched or unplayable discs immediately even before you returned it.
• They are remarkably speedy in turnaround for getting discs delivered.  It's rarely more than a couple of days.  I've tried another similar service once and it was atrocious, like a week or more turnaround.
• Reasonable subscription prices that tailor from the occasional to the avid viewer and what's more trivial to change between plans immediately without extra charges to accommodate changes in free time for example. They have a very nice feature of being able to put your subscription on hold as well.
• They've embraced and even pioneered in a way the online streaming model of video distribution and it works well much to my surprise.  Not only that, it's included with the basic DVD subscription and is unlimited, but they even have a streaming only plan.  I imagine some other companies charging you an additional premium for the privilege.
• I love that the streaming was made available to more devices like disc players, game consoles, and even mobile devices.  Watching from a computer was good enough but the more devices is very welcome.
• I generally like this all-you-can-eat model, even when I'm not really getting my money's worth on some months where I'm busy or traveling.

One of the more recent enhancements that is a cause for celebration has to do with their streaming of TV shows.  It used to be that TV shows were still clumped into seasons and worse individual discs.  So when you want to exhaust a TV show you had to remember to place everything into the queue.  Now with many new titles that I'd been looking at, they dump the entirety of the show into a single package so that the episodes are in order and numbered like 1 to 83 or what have you.  Very nice.  Makes keeping track of what you watched and where you left off very convenient and it's less polluting of your queue.  Some items are still organized by seasons but at least (except for the physical DVDs) they've removed the notion of discs.

Now the potential bad news and it may be the first real blemish on them in my estimation but I'll withhold judgement until it comes about.  They're re-organizing their subscription scheme so that the online viewing and physical discs are separated. The scheme is understandable and well motivated as some people don't watch streaming at all.  I like having both; some movies I prefer to watch in Bluray, others are easily tolerated online.  This will likely mean that my subscription fee will go up again.

Ok, I lied, there are 2 other blemishes to their credit.  First, there is no Linux client for watching streaming movies.  Second, they removed the ability to manage the physical DVD queue from their iPhone app.  That second one boggles my mind.

UPDATE:

Horror of horrors!!!! They're going to split the DVD and streaming into two completely separate websites and accounts, on top of the fee hikes.  The fee hikes I can live with because I was still getting good value and would still consider it good value even with the added delta cost.  But this just completely ruins a few critical aspects of user experience.

• The queue's right now are integrated.  When I search for a title I see the button for adding to the DVD queue AND the streaming queue when available.  The separate sites will require two searches on two sites.
• On my DVD queue, sometimes an item becomes available for streaming and when it does it is obviously displayed (blue play button).  When I see it, I typically add it to the streaming queue and remove it from the DVD queue.  This is now impossible to do without periodically doing a search on each and every title.
• When I DO do a search on a movie I can see off the bat if it is in either of my queues.  I'm not ashamed to admit I keep large queues and often forget.
• I just don't want to manage two lists of movie titles. Yes they are two queues now within netflix but due to the integration I can view them as two halves of the same overall queue.  I have enough accounts to manage, I have no desire to having one needlessly split in two.
• Quickster is a bloody idiotic choice of names for there DVD division.  Netflix was originaly DVD and should have kept it.  At worst, spin off the streaming to StreamFlix or something.

This latest effort to ruin the user experience of their customers is really disheartening.  It's obvious to me that they're setting this up so they can sell off their DVD roots.  I don't trust anyone else to operate it as well and this move may in the end backfire in addition to ruining one of my favorite services.

Update 2011-10-10:

I added my voice to the comments page from the CEOs announcement with the above summary and not surprisingly it was burried in tens of thousands of responses.  I got this email this morning.

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.

Well, I shall view that as good news and a near miss on their part of a great fiasco.  For now I guess it's back to business as usual.