Netflix To Eliminate Profiles Feature

Donald Burr of Borg writes "One of my favorite features of Netflix, the video-rental-by-mail service, is 'profiles.' Profiles lets you create 'sub-accounts' for your friends/family, so that they can share in the video rental love. Each profile gets his/her own Netflix queue that he/she can manage with their own login/password. You can divide up how many movies get sent to you vs. the other profiles under your account. E.g. if you have a 6-out-at-once plan, you can choose to get 3 movies at a time, and have 3 other profiles each receive 1 movie. Unfortunately, the fun stops September 1, at which point Netflix is, for unknown reasons, going to terminate this feature. Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.' Improvement indeed."

Yes, I received the same notice.

I do not understand what cost savings Netflix would achieve by this reduction in service.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

there's an up-side to this.

lately, I've been THROTTLED (big-time). I just upgraded from a 3 at once plan to almost double that. and for the first few weeks, things came in the mail on schedule and on time.

lately, though, things are being sent from far away centers; when I return discs directly to the PO, only some are showing up the next day at NF (I live in the silicon valley area and its ALWAYS a 1day hop from local to local!).

there are many tricks NF is playing, but the short of it is: if you are a heavy renter, you get penalized.

solution: go away and come back. at least that's what I have read. cancel for a month then re-join. you get a new slate and they stop throttling you (for a while, at least).

lather rinse repeat.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

Well, this feature is what makes Netflix make sense for us. I divide up our plan into two queues - one for me, one for the wife & kids. They get what they want, I get what I want (I have less time to watch, so sometimes I have a movie at home for a week or more) and we don't get in each other's way.

Fundamentally, without this feature, Netflix becomes a pain in the butt to manage for us. Right now, I can be sure that when I send a movie back, I get one of my movies. The same goes for the others.

I'm going to cancel on Aug 31 (and have told them so) if they don't keep this feature.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

Sure it is. Recommendations. I love horror, my wife loves musicals. "Because you liked Saw II, we recommend Chicago". Sheesh, what a bunch of fucktards.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

I would mod you up if I could, I agree wholeheartedly. Not only does it make things more complicated to maintain for 2 people (I can't imagine 3-4) the recommendations are also going to be screwed up (even more so) now.
Sure, it isn't difficult to maintain one queue for multiple people, but it's inconvenient. The entire purpose of Netflix is CONVENIENCE! I don't have to go to a store, I can put movies in a list and drop them in my office's mailbox after I'm done watching. Thus the allure. Now they took away a very convenient feature.
Redbox on the way home is sounding a bit more tempting now, goodbye Netflix.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

I'd imagine a substantial portion of their customers will now pay for two accounts. The rest will make due with one queue for two people. It'll also reduce their maintenance cost. Pretty sleazy, nonetheless.

Actually, from a pure consumer standpoint, this change makes no difference. Netflix already has a pricing model such that, the CHEAPEST plan is 3 DVD / time. If you move from 3 to 4 out at a time, you actually pay more and from 4 to any other number, the price is the same (per DVD at a time).

If you had 6 at a time and choose to go to 3 at a time with 2 accounts, you'll actually save money (mere pennies, though). Since it was a separate login/password for each profile, there's no difference between having a separate account, expect for the "master user" having full view access. For those who allow their children to rent, they will still just use one account and they'll have to spend more time on their end managing their queue and that's an unfortunate hassle.

But I think you're right. I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models. They're probably finding legacy code such that the programmers are like "we want to do this but the way profiles currently work, it's preventing us from doing it without a complete programming change to the profiles system".

Instead of sinking a large cost into fixing profile code, they're probably just going to scrap it all together so they can implement whatever new and shiny features or improve database speeds or whatever.

I thought the feature was awesome, but from a "money" standpoint, I don't see how Netflix is doing this to "screw customers" out of more money, as their current payment plans emphasis 3/time movies over any other. Unless there's some research that says that 3/time people keep their movies longer than 6/time people or something.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Cope

I think profiles are causing a real PITA for the site programmers to maintain code and scrapping it all together will allow faster and more flexible programming models.

My boss' response to that kind of reasoning? backed up by the marketing department, CEO, and customers? "Cope."

Massively degrading the user's experience is not excused by programmer's convenience.

Re:Cope

First you'll have to prove that it's a "massive" degrading of the users experiance.

A manager's next response: "Pardon Me?? You have the burden of proof here, not marketing. If you continue to demonstrate such arrogance, you'll be out of work."

I'm an engineering manager, and agree with the grandparent. We're not in business for the convenience of the engineers. If you can provide a marketing analysis to support your argument, I'll listen. If you can produce a cost/benefit analysis to support your position, I'll listen. If you can produce an ethical/moral/legal justification, I'll listen. If you're whinging because "it's not convenient," all you will do is piss me off.

This seems like a rather poor move, marketing wise. I'm annoyed that I have to move my wife's 200+ movie list over to my main profile, which is never used. But if its simply for the "convenience" of the engineers, I'll be royally pissed.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

The CHEAPEST plan is 2 DVDs a month. =P

Wrong, the cheapest plan is 1 DVD with 2 per month. The cheapest per DVD plan is 3/time.

• 1 at-a-time (2 a month) for $4.99 ($2.50 / movie flat rate)
• 1 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $8.99 ($9/movie/time)
• 2 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $13.99 $7/movie/time
• 3 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $16.99 ($5.67/movie/time)
• 4 at-a-time (Unlimited) for $23.99 ($6/movie/time)
• 5 and up are all $6/movie/time

The 3/time plan use to be $6/movie, but they dropped the price of that plan by $1/movie as a move to bring Blockbuster Online members back as Blockbuster raised their rates (twice) and by some plans, a massive amount (like 66%).

Tossing out the limited number rental, lowest tier plan, the best deal for any Netflix user is 3/time, assuming you pick a plan that allows you to watch the same number of films a week as you plan allows per time. Meaning, 1 movie a time means you'll watch 1 movie a week, 3 movies at a time and you'll watch 3 movies a week. Which I think it probably about what Netflix expects you to watch and will throttle people to this degree.

The difference is very negligible. That would amount to a cost of $1.41 a movie for 3/time and $1.50 per movie for anything above that. (Assuming the watching habits I described) To round out the numbers, it's $1.75 per movie at 2/time and $2.25 per movie at 1/time (based on a standard 28 day / 4-week month which obviously isn't an exact monthly schedule given most months have more than 28 days)

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

I dunno, I'm more inclined to believe they were hit with some kind of patent lawsuit, and just folded. Netflix operates on razor thin margins, so if there was a good chance they would lose the patent suit, it could potentially obliterate that margin.

That's not to say I would put the slimeball tactic outside of the realm of possibilities, but that just seems less likely.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

Yeah, I'd assume that's the main reason -- they want to force people to sign up for additional accounts.

Well, if you gonna do that... you should at least make it easy for people transfer their profile data to a new account. To, you know... encourage people to do it.

NetFlix you are doing it wrong!

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

Exactly. I have over 1000 movies rated under my own profile which is secondary to the main profile of my wife. Now if they do this, not only will we lose ability to maintain separate queues (which is very important, because our tastes are not completely overlapping), I will lose all the ratings which was essential to get new suggestions. New suggestions were one of the main resources for me to find new movies according to my taste.

I am a big fan of Netflix for all the good reasons, but this decision is almost a deal-breaker to me. Give me a fucking chance to get my history and data back.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

Any discomfort will soon be forgotten, and they may even be able to shed themselves of the dead-beat "customers" that cost them more than they make.

I doubt that the customers using this feature are the ones they would like to eliminate from their customer base. I suspect that most of customers using this feature do so (like I do) in order to segregate out my selections and returns from my children's choices. They have a tendency to hang on to movies for a while before they watch them, or they watch them several times before sending them back. I didn't really care about it since it was their queue, not mine. Now it is everyone's queue and I will be sending things back in a shorter period of time. In addition, several of my friends have signed up for netflix for their households once I described this feature to them.

This "downgrade" in service has reminded me to take another look at the market and see what other companies like Blockbuster are doing. If they are offering this service, I will probably send my Roku back and switch services.

Re:Yes, I received the same notice.

God, I hate people like you.

People who say things like, "Well, obviously, company $x is a business, so they can do whatever they want" or "Your boss pays you money to work, so you have to do whatever he says" are invariably idiots.

NetFlix offered this feature. Some people bought the service in part because of this feature. Now it's being taken away. No discounts or temporary account upgrades or anything. Not even a way to migrate the old profiles to a new account. That's pretty sleazy.

As for "dead-beat customers that cost them more than they make", that does not make someone a dead beat. That makes them thrifty.

It is expected that both sides will act rationally. Customers will make the most out of their money, and NetFlix will cut features that cost them money. Calling their customers deadbeats is idiotic. But NetFlix is not handling this very well at all. They are taking something away without offering a thing. Customers are going to be pissed, and they've got a right to be.

Not a good sign

Based on the information coming out on this it doesn't look good. Did they research how much this would piss off the current customers? It is coming off like they don't care. Perhaps the profile feature is causing bigger problems behind the scenes. If it is the later then they should find better programmers to work around the problem(s).

I'm not sure how it improves things...

My family uses it and its only been a positive. I'm betting a bean counter marketing type suggested that it might force me to get separate accounts if I couldnt use the separate queues.

Bad Move

I think they're trying to get people to pay for more than one account. I don't know what features they could be adding that would warrant dropping sub accounts. I have a funny feeling this is going to backfire and they'll lose more people than they gain.

The so-called reason

According to their customer support, this was a feature only used by 1% of subscribers, but was a significant drain on resources, increased maintenance difficulties, and slowed down adding new features. I don't particularly buy most of that, but if the 1% thing is true, then I can see how they'd make that choice. If more of that 1% convert to full subscriptions rather than cancel, it'll be a win for them.

Re:The so-called reason

I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies. Most of the movies she likes, I don't like. Rather than add movies and bump stuff she wants to see off the queue, I could maintain my own queue. The onus was on Netflix to keep up with it. Going forward, it's going to be on us. And the fall-back movies if the one of the ones at the top of or queue can't get shipped is going to be a craps shoot. Maybe she'll get a movie she enjoys, maybe all the ones that come won't interest her at all.

The only thing I didn't like about the separate queues was that only the primary account holder could browse the instant movies. My wife never used the feature, and I avoided rating movies I watched for fear it would distort the movies picked as ones she'd like to see. Which brings up another point...how can multiple family members track movies they like nowadays and have accurate recommended features? "This one's a special case...apparently she like romantic comedies and really bad horror movies!"

First time for everything

I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years. This is the first time they've ever taken a step backwards. And their complete lack justification is very strange.

For your convenience ...

Why? To '...help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.'

Touching. I'm reminded of a sign I once saw on the door of a bank branch, some years ago while I was living in Boston:

For your convenience, this branch will be closed Monday, mm/dd/yy, a legal holiday.

For my convenience. Heartwarming, isn't it, how these folks are always looking out for us.

Lovefilm

That's strange because Lovefilm, the dominant DVD-by-mail company in the UK, has only recently introduced this feature.

Now I get it

I just called Netflix customer service to ask for clarification on how this helps improve the web site. The rep responded that they needed to free up programming space for better features, and that it's really a tiny, tiny percentage of people that use profiles to separate queues. (Slashdot and Gizmodo, the two sites I checked for reactions to this, are apparently chock full of tiny, tiny percentages.)

When I told her that I'm a programmer and I don't understand what it means to free up programming space, she was quiet for a moment and then said, "This is really a decision that they've already made, so it's not like they're going to change their minds."

I'm all for freeing up programming space. Statistics show that programming space will be all used up in the next 10 years if we don't start conserving it.

Re:Does Blockbuster offer profiles?

They do not. The profile is the reason my family switched back to netflix after leaving them for Blockbuster.