Sunday, November 6, 2011

Netflix Dwindles


Netflix has become one of the most popular online movie companies in the nation throughout the last few years. Up until July of this year (2011), Netflix had kept their customers happy relativelty complain-free. However, their recent changes have led to a spike in discontent among millions of Netflix users. A Twitter user named Steve Harrison expressed his concern: "Netflix does more flip-flopping than a fish on a hot dock." Their first mistake was discontinuing free streaming video services to households that paid for its DVD-by-mail service. This alone raised monthly prices for some customers by over 60%. At the same time as this increase of price, quality of service did not change or improve. Why would a customer be willing to pay more for the same service? Two months later in September, Netflix announced another major change. It would be splitting its DVD and streaming services into two companies: Netflix and Qwikster. Now customers would have to deal with two companies rather than one when managing queues and paying bills. Seeing how upset customers were with the new addition of Qwikster and watching as stocks dropped by over 60%, Netflix decided to revoke their original decision and break off ties with Qwikster. Some customers approved of the decision, while others were still irritated with how many new decisions Netflix has made and how much the company has changed.  Kyle Wegner, a 26-year-old in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said he was going to quit using the company until he heard about the 180-degree-turn. Another less satisfied investor stated: "They're being really reactionary at this point, and that's not very comforting." Netflix needs to make some descisions fast and stick with them or they could loose millions of customers in only weeks.

-Morgan C. 

1 comment:

Aditya said...

Netflix needs to decide what is best for them in terms of the number of users and amount of profit, as well as what keeps the users happy. If their previous system was working, why did they decide to change?