Netflix Issuing 5% Credit to Subscribers for Downtime

Netflix sent out an e-mail this morning to inform customers of an automatic 5% credit for the 11 hour service outage on Monday.

Here's the e-mail:

Do you think this was the right thing to do? Would you have preferred extra DVD rentals instead?

Thanks to Bucky and Sean for sending this in.

Comments

[prozac]

I'm not sure what 5% of anything will do and who wouldnt love a free rental. With that said NF did'nt have to do anything so I guess this is nice. 5%????

[Nancy T]

I must have my head in the sand, but until this morning I wasn't aware there was an issue. I am a 3 at a time subscriber and have always been pleased with the turnaround of my DVD's, as well as any customer service necessary. I will say I thought about it once yesterday wondering where my new DVD's were but then received the shipment notices. 5% is fine with me, I would have never known anything was wrong unless I received the notice.

[Miriam]

I checked my inbox and didn't receive a credit e-mail.... strange.

[David]

I had all three of my 3 at a time DVD's @ home anyway..so no loss to me..I just could not get in to shop for some used DVD's

[TPOLMike]

I didn't get one, but I didn't have any DVDs that were supposed to get shipped. I would assume the credit is only those customers who were affected, as I was not affected.

[Jeff R.]

I also didn't get an email, but I also was not affected by the outage.

I agree with TPOLMike, these were likely just to those who were affected.

[CJ]

I also didn't get an e-mail, but I think this is a nice gesture on Netflix's part. Though honestly I think it's unnecessary, I understand they won't always be able to be up and computers have problems occasionally.

[Becky]

It's overkill.

But it's nice.

[Adam]

Nice gesture, but since it gets auto-deducted from my account I have to do math and figure out what 5% actually is. Sounds trivial but it's a pain. Not that I got an email -- I assume it's only for people who were due to have movies shipped.

[george]

Nice gesture, but really unnecessary. From a business perspective, you never give away money. Once its in your cold hard wallet, you never let it out.

You make up for it another way. Like Microsoft sending the signed Xbox to the guy when Microsoft messed up.

Or giving an extra DVD rental.

Or putting a "sorry" stickey in their next rental.

[Andy Mason]

I think it is a nice gesture on Netflix's behalf. I would have been happy with an extra rental credit too, or even just a nice email apologizing for the inconvenience.

[Tim]

Is anyone else having issues with the order they're sending movies in their queue? I've had a classic movie at the top of my queue. It says it's available now. So far, I've gotten 6 movies from further down in my queue rather than this movie, including new releases and blu-ray movies. They also seem to be randomizing my queue. I seem to be getting movies 5-7 with regularity. Anyone else seeing issues like this?

[kh]

It's a good gesture, but although I didn't have any DVDs that were showing as shipping on Monday, I think it's clear that mine have been delayed. Of three discs I mailed on Saturday, which would normally have been received Mon. or Tue, two are just showing as received today and one is still not there.

[BoB]

I received the email and I WAS affected. All 3 of my discs were there Monday (included one I never received - assuming the label was ripped off in shipment).

I guess the 5% will be compensation for the 2 lost days. According to NF site, none of my discs will be shipping until today. I see some people had discs shipped yesterday - not me.

[Bruce]

It seems equitable to me. In a straight four week month there are 20 shipping days, so a 5% credit is exactly right. I had three movies that they received on Monday, 2 shipped on Tuesday, one is going out today from the Midwest, so I won't be getting that until Fri/Sat. So far I have not received any e-mail or credit, but as an oft-throttled heavy renter, it wouldn't surprise me if they deemed me unworthy.

[Im Not A Turnip]

I didn't get the email nor do I need or want it. My discs were in the mail on Monday and replacements shipped on Tuesday as usual. No interruption for me.

[THE BLOB]

I think someone pointed this out earlier, but mathematically an 11 hour outage should only be about 1/62, or about 1.6%, so they are giving us more than three times what we deserve at 1/20 = 5%. A 5% refund would only be mathematically justified by a 6 day + outage. Just be thankful that's not what happened, haha!

[THE BLOB]

And technically Netflix isn't giving away money, they are refunding accounts electronically, so they are basically just electronically notifying a banking service that they should acknowledge another four or five dollars is in there. What a world we live in.

[Bruce]

"A 5% refund would only be mathematically justified by a 6 day + outage. Just be thankful that's not what happened, haha!"

Sorry Mr Blob, you're math is a little suspect. While the outage was only for 11 hours, it interrupted an entire shipping day, so if you had a movie that should have gone out that day, it was like Netflix took the whole day off. Second, NF only ships 5 days a week, while your math assumes a 7 day a week schedule.

As I said in an earlier post, assuming a straight 4 week month (even though most months are slightly longer) there are 20 shipping days, which means a 5% refund is exactly right to counter a missed day. Oh, and I just got my e-mail credit notification so I guess NF doesn't hate me.

[Nick]

5% is a good gesture, as others have said. But it really wasnt necessary.
If one would read the posts from yesterday about the outage, and the responses, one would assume that from the peoples attitudes, netflix had canceled everyones membership.
People were going crazy yesterday over the outage. If it really caused that much "pain" to you, you really need to look at your life. Yes I was supposed to have a movie going out yesterday, but things happen. Im amazed that im still only paying 15 bucks a month. And im happy that netflix still provides such an amazing service to begin with.
Yes it was "horrible" as some people put it, but things happen, and as a 5% refund, it seems minimal, but its not the most important thing in my life.
Where are all those people from yesterday calling for the lynching of netflix? What do they have to say now?
At least netflix has the balls to say that something went wrong and apologized for it.

[Blazie]

I really didn't care that it took an extra day to get my movies, but it was great that Netflix did this anyway.

[profpudwick]

I agree with George that Netflix has gone beyond what was needed. I would have mailed an extra disc, not given up revenue. Their gesture is hard core!

Bruce, you missed Mr. Blob's additional innumeracy in his following post, where he identifies 4 or 5 dollars a month as 5 percent of his monthly fee. Let's see,

1 / .05 = 20

and 20 times 4 or 5 dollars is $80 or $100.

Mr. Blob, just what kind of monthly plan do you have?

[keith]

Im having issues with my queue too. Titles 4 and 5 are shipping today instead of 1 and 2. Totally sucks is that 1 and 2 are the last two discs in a big TV show marathon I have been running. Oh well.

[BoB]

Well the NF site just had a MAJOR facelift/update.

I guess we now know the cause of Mondays shutdown - a failed update rollout!!!

[profpudwick]

BoB I had the new site earlier and now I have the old site again.

New site looked great but I was happy with the old one. How do you like the new version?

[Reese]

I think it's funny that it says "Today, Tuesday," even though the email went out today, Wednesday.

Free rental wouldn't work, I'm 2 at a time unlimited. If they gave me three at a time instead, it would still have the same turnaround time. Now, if they gave me 3 at time and wrote my lit paper for me, that could work.

[THE BLOB]

Sorry Bruce, this time you are the one that is wrong. There are certainly more than 20 shipping days because most shipping facilities have shipping on Saturday, and the last time I checked, USPS works on Saturday. Plus, if a movie gets shipped on Friday, you will receive it Saturday instead of Monday. I will give you the whole day lost instead of the 11 hours, though. So if you are asking for a correction, I will grant you that:

24hours/600totalhours = 4%

Still more than what they are giving.

[BoB]

"BoB I had the new site earlier and now I have the old site again.

New site looked great but I was happy with the old one. How do you like the new version?"

I just checked and still have the new site. It looks okay, matches the New Release page (although I liked the "releases this week" feature that is gone - yes I know about the link and have that bookmarked) I wish they left it in the design however.

[THE BLOB]

profpudwick, thanks for the correction, I multiplied by .2 instead of .05. I guess I just confused the dividing by 20 and multiplying by .20. I have too much math at school these days. I guess that's why I'm just a blob and not a professor. Maybe one day. Man, if only we had a 20% refund, then we would be getting somewhere.

[Sirkickyass]

Does anyone else not have movie recommendations anymore since the site went down? It says I have zero recommendations even though I used to have 400+. I know I still have all my ratings...

[Kally]

The message in my e-mail said they were refunding me 10%, not 5%!

[Old Timer Too]

NF's action is an excellent attempt to maintain great customer relations. No one can fault them for taking the initiative to "make things right."

For Tim, who said: "Is anyone else having issues with the order they're sending movies in their queue? I've had a classic movie at the top of my queue. It says it's available now. So far, I've gotten 6 movies from further down in my queue rather than this movie, including new releases and blu-ray movies. They also seem to be randomizing my queue. I seem to be getting movies 5-7 with regularity. Anyone else seeing issues like this?"

Yes, I have had films ship out of order, but nothing remain unshipped more than once when it had an availability of "Now." Let's hope your experience is not a sign that NF is following BB's lead in the shipping out of order category.

I have not had problems with them skipping more than one disc at any time.

[Bruce]

Mr Blob-

Are you also in charge of counting delegates for the Clinton campaign? Netflix runs a DVD rental business(let us consider "watch instantly" a free add-on service). The website is merely a tool to facilitate the primary business. The number of hours the website was down is completely meaningless. On days when shipping was unaffected, no credit has been given for web-outages. Had the site gone down on Sunday or Saturday, we'd have been given apologies, but no credit. We were given a credit because movies were not shipped.

I have never heard of a NF facility that ships or receives on a Saturday, I strongly doubt they exist and in 4 years have seen no evidence of them.

My favorite point in your second post was your claim I was wrong, and then changing your estimate from 1.6% to 4% (the one percentage point difference between my 5% and your 4% stems from the dubious Saturday shipping claim).

Seriously your brass balls claim to truthiness in a statement that acknowledges a massive error on your part is inspirational. I see a long career for you in the halls of government.

[ed murrow hates netflix]

the refund seems to be going over pretty well:

http://consumerist.com/372417/you-love-netflix-and-have-flooded-our-inbox-with-compliments

thankfully not all (or even many) netflix customers are thankless whiners.

[Edward R Murrow]

Pretty generous, although I wonder if there's some sort of legal liability when customers pay for a monthly service then the service isn't available. This would apply to BBO too.

Just to make the math easy, it doesn't mean very much to each individual customer if it costs $1 per day when BBO/Netflix are unavailable. But multiply that $1 times all the customers and it means $7.5 million to Netflix and who knows how many millions to BBO per day. Uh, that ain't chump change.

[NETFLIX MOVIE BURNER]

i agree with most of you ... althought an 11 hour outage isnt that big of a deal and we have ALL had dvd's come to us late .... BUT 5% is like a nothing offer ... kinda like when Best buy offers a buy 2 blu ray movies get 1 free lol

[BuckNeked]

Hey TPOLMike, Do you really talk like that in real life ??

[Ali]

I don't think the refund was really necessary. They have excellent up time, and only two extended outages in 9 years is almost irrelevant.

On another note, I don't like the latest site change. The Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/DVD format drop down is gone and there's no way to tell which format is in a queue position. I'm hoping that's it's just a mistake that will be rectified soon.

[Question]

Kite Runner was supposedly shipped to me on Monday and I have yet to receive it. However, I did receive the two movies that were shipped to me on Tuesday. Anyone else have a problem with missing movies that were shipped on Monday?

[Ron]

Today there is a new look to the website however the selection of Blu-Ray/DVD is gone. What's up with that. Why can't you select your format anymore ?