Dear Nicholas, I messed up. I owe you an explanation. It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing. For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldnt have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do. So here is what we are doing and why. Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies. I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service. So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. Its hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to Qwikster. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name Netflix for streaming. Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated. There are no pricing changes (were done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready. For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you. I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly. Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions. Respectfully yours, -Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments Image Unavailable, Please Login
People are really *****ing for no reason. Sure the split is stupid, but you still get an amazing amount of movies for either $8 or $16 a month. How much do you pay for commercial interrupted by movies that you see on Cable? People think they are owed everything. I am a subscriber and i used to have the Dvd+Streaming. When the change happened, i dropped the DVD since i ever only ordered 3 DVDs over a year. However i probably stream a movie or documentary every day. That is a lot of entertainment for $8.
I think the big thing is how much it went up compared to what it was. In other words percentage. I was paying $11 something, which 6 months ago was $10 something. Now it's up to $17 something, and the we get this email apologizing for it and claiming to fix it but the price is still the same. Plus the sarcasm is completely uncalled for. "
Still, it doesnt change the fact that you STILL get a lot for your money. They might have been better off explaining why they couldnt keep these low prices and be done with it. But people *****ing left and right about something so frivolous as netflix is ridiculous.
Supposedly it went up from $11 to $17 b/c the movie studios are charging Netflix so much more now b/c they see how much money Netflix is making. I agree, $17 for streaming and dvd rental is mad cheap still. The one HUGE problem I see is that these two services are now on different websites. seriously!?!? In an age of simplicity and technology satisfaction, they're really going to split up the websites? Seriously lame, but I'll stick with it for a few months and then make another decision.
