Will Netflix Recover?
AndrewSmither
This is a follow up post to my last blog on Netflix when they first announced the new pricing back in July. You can read it here.
Netflix has publicly apologized for the way they handled their price change. After losing 600,000 customers and their stocks dropped 50% they received quite the wake up call. However, the way they apologized in my opinion was not very good. I first received an e-mail that quite frankly looked like spam, especially with the wording of the e-mail and the announcement at the end of the company splitting. The name alone for the new DVD only company made me question if it was legitimate or not. However, the biggest eye brow raiser is the fact that nothing is changing; if anything, it is worse. The CEO apologize for miscommunicating the way they handled the price changes, but if nothing is changing, what was miscommunicated? By Netflix splitting into two companies – Netflix will become streaming only whereas Qwikster will be the new DVD only. The 9.99 price for each service will remain the same. By splitting the company into two separate companies they are only justifying the fact that a combo deal of the two services will no longer be available. They are also trying to boost Qwikster by adding video games to the DVDs.
All in all I think this is a bad move for the company. I would have at least brought back the combo plan at a discounted price to appease some angry customers. As far as the video game additions to Qwikster, I understand it is a good move but a bit late. Redbox has offered video games for awhile and with a strong online based service like Gamefly that mails game rentals to your house, I question the successfulness of a company (Qwikster) with such a rough start. To me, if Netflix really wanted to add games, it would have made sense for them to try to acquire Gamefly. For awhile I wondered if Gamefly was owned by Netflix because their website layout is so similar.
Are you still a Netflix customer? Are you questioning the future of the company? If you were the CEO, how would you have handled things differently?
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