Netflix Angers Thousands of Customers With Price Hike

Netflix sure sent a majority of the internet into a frenzy with their latest announcement yesterday. I haven’t gotten my email with the annoucment yet, but my co-worker did.  On their Facebook page they confirmed the email my friend showed me with the following announcement…

“We are separating our unlimited streaming plan from our DVD plan offerings. The streaming-only plan will remain at $7.99, while we now offer DVD-only plans starting at $7.99. Additional details regarding changes to our plans can be found on our blog: http://bit.ly/NetflxBlog”

So, essentially what this means is the current plan that I have (where I can get Blu-Ray Discs one at a time with unlimited streaming), will now actually be 2 different plans.  One for the streaming and one for the one disc at a time.  So instead of the $11.74 I was paying every month back in December, I’m now going to be paying $17.98 for the exact same plan.  So while $6.00 a month in the scale of my entire budget isn’t really a big deal, that is around a 65% increase in price in the last 8 months!

Now, I understand that the prices have increased significantly for Netflix from the studios in Hollywood, so I would definitely expect a price hike to help offset that cost.  My issue is with the fact that there is much less available on the streaming service than there is on the physical DVD service.  There is no way that the separate service should be the same price, when the titles and selection are so much less in the streaming then on the DVD version.  On the other hand, if the streaming service can start getting much better titles, including new releases, then I will happily pay more than double!  To pay $8/month for streaming only with the current selection I think is a bit much.

Increase the selection, and THEN increase the price, so people can see the value.  Also explain the reason behind the price increase!  You can explain that the costs from the Hollywood studios have increased so significantly that in order to offer the best titles, we have to increase the price.  I think being upfront about it will gain you a lot more respect then just saying, hey we are making them different plans, and here’s the prices for each (oh and by the way, to get what you already have is going to be double if you currently use streaming and DVD’s) just doesn’t sit well with people.

So, while like many of my friends, I am not UPSET about the change.  I would gladly pay much more for streaming if I saw value (newer and more titles available), I just think they went about the change and the announcement in the completely wrong way.  Good luck Netflix, I’ve been a customer since my husband and I won a few months free on a game show back in 2001.  I’m sure we’ll select the streaming only option now, since I’ve been hanging onto the same disc for the last month or so, but manily because my daughter loves to watch all the Land Before

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