Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, sent out an “apology” today about their poor communication surrounding the relatively recent rate hike. A shitty, shitty apology. For those of you who don’t speak “corporate douchebag”, Tapezilla has painstakingly translated the apology into English and condensed it into a handy, bulleted Cliff’s Notes version:
- we thought we could get away with a 60% rate hike
- turns out we can’t, and had to bullshit something
- it took us two months to put together a story
- we don’t care if you like it; we hate the DVD-by-mail business and everyone that uses it because it isn’t as profitable
- we’re going to kill it, but we’re REALLY going to drag it out, because, again, we hate it and you
- we hate it, we’re going to call it “Quickster”
- we acknowledge the streaming service doesn’t have as many titles as the DVD-by-mail service, and don’t care
- to distract you, we’re going to add videogames to the DVD-by-mail service
- we’re also going to charge you extra
- this way, we can get more people to triple dip! We know that tech savvy people want streaming, but they also have a good chance of playing video games. This way, we can get you to pay for streaming, DVD-by-mail, AND the videogame surcharge. Suck it, nerds.
- all of these changes are going to make it harder to use both sites and manage both accounts, but we don’t care because it helps US.
- Andy Rendich is both stupid and my bitch, because we somehow tricked him into going down with the DVD-by-mail ship. LOL!
- Almost all members think this is a bad idea, but, again, WE DON’T CARE. I KNOW BEST.
- Additional Streaming content” is “coming in the next few months”, but we won’t say how much, what it is, or when it’s coming, because it’s underwhelming. Adding GOOD stuff would eat into profits, and let’s not forget what this is all about, dummies.
- We will work hard to trick you into giving us money, just as soon as people start forgetting how badly we fucked them over the last couple months.
How is this guy employed at all, let alone CEO? Isn’t there a board or some handlers that can stop him from doing stupid shit like not only posting this on the Netflix blog, but emailing it to every customer to make sure he pissed everyone off?
Netflix has lost about half their stock price and reduced their membership forecast by a million people since the hike. The fervor had JUST died down, and this tool rips the scab off the wound. I *know* it’s not true, but it’s like he has a login directly to the blog and email marketing system and unilaterally decided to send this out today. The truth is probably much sadder; that all the decision makers at the company agreed that the hike and this communication were good ideas.
I’ll be interested to see how the video game thing pans out, because I’m a giant whore and if the service is better than Gamefly (e.g. you actually GET games in your queue reliably and in a timely fashion) and costs less, I’ll pay them for it.
For now, I’m going to finish this post up, reduce my Netflix account, and wish that ol’ Reed be relegated to the same circle of hell reserved for people that ruin things that should be great. He can sit next to George Lucas.
