Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Are You a Netflix Person?

And are you pissed off? Well, join the club. The Net today is full of articles like this one recounting the overwhelmingly negative reaction of hundreds of thousands of Netflix customers, by all accounts among the most loyal of all, to a substantial across-the-board price hike. You can read the actual amount of the price increases--in some cases an up to 60 percent bump, but suffice it to say, people are not happy. About the only "bargain" left is unlimited streaming of the movies and TV shows for $7.99 a month. The minute you add a DVD to this capability, you're talking twice as much. And DVD only options are up too. And with the streaming only option, there's a catch there too. You could safely characterize what's available for streaming as mostly second-rate with an occasional exception. The TV shows available are passable.

I'm as angry as all the rest. Netflix was the one company among the few that I actually have kind words for. Not any more. They look like just any other corporate shark now, the same reaction everybody else is having. I have already changed my plan to streaming only. I'll give it a whirl for some months and see what happens, especially to see if Netflix increases the quality of what it's got available for streaming. If it doesn't improve, I'm gone. And I suspect many are gone already, as we speak.

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