Subscribers have been up in arms since Netflix announced a changed pricing structure earlier today that will raise the price for a combined DVD and streaming subscription from $10 to $16 a month. The company is also offering DVD-only and streaming-only subscriptions for $8 a month each, but most people don’t seem to like the prospect of having to chose: Netflix blog has seen more than 4,200 comments, most of which are negative, with a number of customers threatening to cancel.
Countless consumers have also turned to the company’s Facebook page, with negative feedback far outweighing any other kind of response. And on Twitter, the discussion around the plan changes has made “DVDs” an unlikely trending topics in a number of cities. Check out a few highlighted tweets to see how people feel about the company’s plans:
[lt;a href="http://storify.com/jank0/people-really-hate-the-netflix-price-hime" target="blank"gt;View the story "Reactions to the Netflix price hike" on Storify]lt;/agt;What does all of this uproar mean for Netflix? Of course, it’s unlikely that any price increase would be met with thumbs-up by many consumers. However, the intensity of the backlash seems to suggest that Netflix really does have a problem.
Netflix has long enjoyed a lot of good will from its customers, simply due to the breadth of its DVD offering. Consumers tolerated the lack of selection in the company’s streaming catalog because it was seen as a value-add to their existing DVD subscription. Recent hiccups, such as Sony removing titles from the streaming catalog, also didn’t lead to many complaints.
However, with streaming and DVDs effectively being separated from one another and users being forced to pay twice as much, many customers are seemingly losing their patience with Netflix. The company may have to go back and do a better job at explaining these changes — or even unveil some great new streaming catalog additions before the September 1 deadline that will force people to pay more, chose between streaming and DVDs, or cancel altogether.
Image courtesy of Flickr user soukup.
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