RSSNetFlix Lowers DVD Rental Pricing
By Nate Mook | Published October 25, 2004, 12:02 PM
Five months after raising its standard DVD rental subscription rate to $21.99, NetFlix has backtracked on the decision. Starting November 1, the company will now offer 3-at-a-time DVD movies for $17.99, in a bid to keep competitive with rental offerings from Blockbuster and Wal-Mart.
"Since our price increase in June, some of our members have expressed concerns about the new pricing," NetFlix wrote in an e-mail to subscribers. "We've listened to this feedback and are pleased to inform you that we're lowering the price of your Netflix 3-at-a-time program."
Although NetFlix currently boasts 2.2 million subscribers, the company has recently faced increased competition from rivals. Rental giant Blockbuster also announced last week plans to lower its DVD pricing.
We created a Netflix toolbar for Firefox and IE and I was wondering if I could get some feedback on it.
http://www.firefoxtoolbar.com/netflix
The bar allows you to access areas of your account including your queue, rental activity, and new releases. You can also search for films on Netflix from the search box as well as all of the Google search engines.
No spyware/adware or other garbage on the bar. The FF version is written in XUL so you can see that we didn't include a single line of 'bad guy stuff'
If you are too busy to check it out, no worries.
Thanks for your help.
-Pat
pat@vpop.net
Score: 0
|You can also download them at:
for Firefox: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1098727794/2
for Internet Explorer: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1098727794/1
Score: 0
|I live in Chicago where NetFlix has a warehouse. It used to be that if I returned a video, the following day NetFlix would acknowledge receipt and send out my next video. Thus, I was experiencing two business day return cycles. In the past few weeks, this seems to have changed. Now, NetFlix doesn't send out the new video for a couple of days. I'm wondering if this is a deliberate practice to offset their reduced prices.
Also, last month they sent me a survey inquiring about typical return times. It seems to me that they are trying to throttle some subscribers back from quick swaps.
Score: 0
|I have to agree. Starting a couple months back I noticed an extra 2-3 day turnaround for receiving my movies. I complained about it and NetFlex support advised me nothing had changed. In turn they gave me a one time free rental. They actually attempted to blame it on USPS, which may have actually been the problem, but maybe only once or twice.. not on every return.
Score: 0
|No such delays for me yet. I live an hour from the nearest warehouse, rarely keep DVD more than 1 day, but still get next-day delivery and return credit for most.
Score: 0
|I too have noticed how they have become laxed in their sending out of new rentals. They did the same here as to blame the USPS, but the fact of the matter is that it is they who have been delaying the rentals. I have seen where they have had some of my queued rentals listed on the web as "Shipping Today", and it was saying that for several days!! I called and complained and it didnt change anything.
Instead of improving their service, it just seems as though they just keep getting worse! You would think that with this new competition they have against then, that they would wake up and smell the coffee and get on the ball to do everything possible to keep their customers from going to other providers, but it's like they have become so big, fat and lazy to be bothered. I do know that once they loose a seriously large percentage of their present and possible future customers to their competition, that then is when they would probably finally try to do something to correct the errors of their ways.
I say we get all Netflix customers to complain all at once, giving them the ultimatum to improve their service or we will go with others like Blockbuster who is ready to give us what we want and for less.
Score: 0
|