Deals.Woot

I understand that some people think the selection has gone downhill, and I can't comment on that, but there's such a ridiculous wealth of good things still on there. Mostly people seem to complain about the movies, and I admit that I mostly watch TV with it, but that's mostly because I can't spare the time to watch movies when there's so many good TV shows to watch instead. The ratio of worthwhile programming to worthless programming is so much higher than on traditional services, which cost several times as much, and go up all the time too.

It's funny I canceled my Discs when the split happened. I wasn't mad I just thought I don't really need Discs. But now I'm thinking about adding them back There are a couple of shows I want to watch that aren't on instant.

I saw it as a bait and switch type of scenario. Video streaming was a feature added to maintain subscription levels, and it came for free as a part of the deal which kept me and (I'm presuming) many others on board as customers.

By splitting it off and raising the price they were not actually adding any value to the plan, simply using it as justification to jack the fee at an unprecedented rate, all the while trying to spin it as a positive thing for consumers, as if Netflix were doing them a favor by increasing fees.

In January 2011 my $16.99 plan got raised to $19.99. In September 2011 it went to $23.98. In less than a year my Netflix subscription went up 41% without adding any features or value. That's what offended me.

Here is why you didn't really care: "I joined after the increase, and only stream". For those of us who had mail and stream it's a different story. They raised the prices on us at first, ok, no big deal, it happens (and gee, why not so that in a recession right?). The second rate change was a complete slap in the face which the community had a huge reaction to. Raise the price to the level where the public gets half the service (mail or streaming) for what they were paying originally for both. For some reason big companies think that during a recession that they'll make more $ by raising prices on items, well, some items are non-essentials, such as netflix (to me). Therefore a lot of people saw this as an ultra greedy move by netflix so they dropped them flat out, which is what I did, I didn't use them enough to really care if I had them or not. Funny thing is if they didn't do that I would have mindlessly continued to pay them for something I didn't really use.

I didn't see it as nuts, but a value per dollar spent. I felt I received $8 per month value in streaming and dvds. When they raised the price, it was no longer worthwhile, so I cut the service. Hell, if they added 1 DVD a month with the streaming, I might go back.

Netflix raised the rates for the promise of something better later down the road, then lost Starz. Would you shop at Wal-Mart if they raised their prices for the promise of better products down the line?