Netflix Profiles
A while back I got an email from Netflix informing me that they were yanking the profiles feature “for our own good.” A bunch of BS, and I told them so using their feedback form (politely, of course).
I prefer Netflix to Blockbuster because although Blockbuster has the advantage of returning the movie to a store and getting a new one then and there, Blockbuster has treated us poorly in the past, and Netflix just seemed to be technically superior and to have better customer service. Profiles wasn’t the killer feature, but it was an important one.
If they had followed through and eliminated profiles on September 1, I would have cancelled my account on August 31 (or whenever my billing period ended). They would have destroyed my perception of technical superiority and customer service in one fell blow.
But, they instead have owned up to the mistake and decided to listen to the supposedly-small percentage of users that find this feature important or invaluable. Kudos to them. They recognize that customer satisfaction is paramount. Some, though not quite all, of my faith has been restored. I’m glad I can stick around with Netflix in good faith.
July 1st, 2008 at 09:31
I much prefer RedBox – talk about technical superiority… I’ve been sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store using free wifi from a nearby coffee shop to to surf the RedBox website and place a movie on hold. I then close the laptop, walk the 20 feet to the redbox machine, swipe my credit card and the movie just pops out.
Having had to work on large distributed systems in the past, this is pretty slick.