CEO Reed Hastings turned Netflix into the country’s largest movie subscription service, but lately he can’t seem to get things right. After publicly announcing plans to spin off Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service as a new company called Qwikster, Hastings has completely backpedaled. DVDs will now stay at Netflix.com. The Qwikster.com domain now leads straight to Netflix.
“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,” said Hastings in a blog post. “This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster. While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.”
The reason for this reversal seems to be customer backlash, and we know why. While there isn’t really a problem with splitting off DVD rentals into a separate Website, Hastings made it clear that he planned to separate everything: users of DVD-by-mail and streaming would now have two separate bills each month, two separate logins, two separate queues–even movie ratings would be completely separate between the sites. There’s really no reason why Netflix wouldn’t connect up as many services as possible to make the experience seamless. It seems, when users demanded this ease of use, Netflix decided to abandon Qwikster all together.
What were Netflix’s plans for Qwikster and why did it abandon the idea so quickly? With snap decisions like these, the company is starting to resemble HP.
2 thumbs up for this move.
Still screwing its customers for 60% more! Don’t miss the big picture!! They are screwing you! So what if the FINALLY made a right move.. they know that this will raise the stock price BEFORE earnings ( which suck.. why do you think they gave up on the idea?) THAT is going to sink their stock price!! They probably are going to get out and sell their shares before it crashes ( HELLO>> INSIDER TRADING!!!!).
I think most of the damage has already been done. The price increase, and then the threat of separating the services made people open their eyes and start looking for replacements.
The management seems incompetent and the streaming selection is dissapointing…they better fix it.
There is too much uncertainty about what netflix is going to do next so this backpedaling while wise is not going to improve their situation. I’ve been a loyal customer for almost 8 years (I signed up back when you could get 8+ dvds at a time), and for the first time I’ve been considering alternatives. It gets old after awhile when 90% of the time you look for something on streaming it says disc only. It’s time for a new underdog in my opinion.
Im wondering about the Game thing too. Gamefly is so slow and theres a netflix shipping facility a few towns over from us, so our dvds got pretty much a one day turnaround which is nice.
Smart move. Glad that Reed Hastings actually paid attention to the press and consumers. Netflix’s stock has tanked big time since they decided to split up the DVD/Streaming package, and only tanked more with the announcement of Qwixter. They are making too many bad decisions one after the other.
They need to focus on getting more content onto their streaming service and improving picture quality. Then people might be willing to pay more for the service. You can’t just split things up and force people to pay more for your product.
As their stock indicated, consumer have the true power here. They can simply leave Netflix. And they have.
Yeah. Thank God Netflix decided to not be retarded. Oh wait, their rates are ridiculous. Strike that.
I wonder if they are still adding console games by mail?
duh that was dumb to begin with!