Netflix Website Down - Update

Update: Netflix spokesperson Steve Swasey on the outtage: "It's unanticipated and our engineers are working feverishly on it. We regret the inconvenience and appreciate the patience of our members."

The Netflix website has been down for several hours this morning, with the notice: "Our site is temporarily down." The site originally reported an error around 3 hours ago.

Thanks to Amy, Troy, Tedder, Griffith, Alan, John, Kyle, Brian, Ali, Jeb, Bruce, Greg, Paul and others for sending this in.

Comments

[tedder]

heh, might have been faster to thank the people who *didn't* send it in :-)

[andyg8180]

i saw this real early this AM... figured they would get flooded with people saying "teh sitez iz down"

I like turtles...

[AbsolutSpaceGirl]

Here we go again with the mysterious, no-explanation, Netflix site being down.

[Edward R Murrow]

I would say something, but then I would be accused of being a troll.

[Chris]

I am hoping that Netflix is adding certain features they have discussed for a while, such as deleting queues/users, etc.

[Worried In Southern Maryland]

When I first saw that the Netflix site was down, there was a comforting message to the effect of "Don't worry. Despite the temporary interruption, Netflix service centers are still busily sending out DVDs to our millions of happy customers."

Now, I see that original message has been removed, and I wonder if their service center computers are down as well?

The site has been down for more than 3 hours. Originally, I was getting an http1.1 error. Then an internal server error 500.

[Steve]

Anybody get their 'movie received' emails today? Not me...

[Ann Onymous]

Yes, the customer service computers are down too.

[KF]

Yep, I got my movie received e-mail at 7:46 a.m. eastern time.

[hueristix]

Exactly Tedder. Also thanks to Billy, Bob, Billy-Bob, Bob-Janice, and Lee-Billie.

Anyway, did someone finally "hack" netflix? With the stock up 7+%, looks like wall st. doesn't care!

[rhoadarmer]

You can contact their Investor Relations using:

http://ir.netflix.com/contactus.cfm

The page still functions -- although because the stylesheets are served from www.netflix.com (which is down), it looks all goofy.

[prozac]

I no longer get those recieved e-mails? Don't know why...I hope the site comes up soon. It's still down since the morning.

[BoB]

I got an email at 5:39am saying they received a disc back that I never received!!! Another lost rental due to their flimsy labels being pulled off!

Here is my post from the other thread...

"Yep, down here as well. Tried to get in as they sent me an email saying they received my movie back - trouble is, I never received it!

Now I've lost a rental and can't get in to put it back at the top of my queue before they send the next disc in the series!"

[longklaw]

Darn. I'm gonna be mad if I have to wait another day to get my first blu-ray movie from them.

[Paul]

Still down??? Gee wiz!

[tooslow]

I asked this in the previous thread but no answer - does anyone know what's the longest netflix has ever been down in the past?

[rhoadarmer]

I believe they were down for 23hrs on Jul 24, 2007.

[MikeK]

The Netflix website was down for more than 12 hours last summer:

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2007/07/netflix-websi-1.html

- Mike K. / HackingNetflix

[jeremyfranz]

I remember the last time NF site was down for this long they were hemorrhaging users and their stock was failing like a Haitian at Harvard. A quick business news search shows there's something fishy happening again with NF stocks:
"Netflix CEO Hastings Exercises Options"
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5643491.html
And,
Ahead of the Bell: Netflix Target Hiked
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5642967.html

[Sadie]

I just signed up with Netflix yesterday and this is a little disturbing that their site has been down all day...does this happen frequently?

[Todd]

I also noticed this morning that the first time I went to netflix's website it stated "System will be back up at approximately 2:00am PDT:"
But a few seconds later it had changed. I'm assuming that was the "down" message left over from the last time they were down.

[ed murrow hates netflix]

" quick business news search shows there's something fishy happening again with NF stocks:"

not really; look again... it's a regular prearranged stock sale, which the directors set up ahead of time to happen automatically. hastings offloads 2500 shares about once per month, as do most execs in publicly traded companies.

[hueristix]

Todd: Those are the planned outages that piss night owls like me off- but hey gotta do it some time. This is a bit different. Come on guys, I can't do my pilates without Watch Now.

[hueristix]

If those stories are 'fishy' then you just might be a paranoid.

[brian]

sooooo annoying. completely unacceptable if you ask me.

[jimofoz]

It seems the "official" Netflix blog has petered out as well. There hasn't been an entry since Feb 19 and today it happily and erroneously states "Code Green: Netflix and Community are up."

[Worried In Southern Maryland]

Looks like a pretty big meltdown to me. All of Netflix appears to be dead in the water, NOT just their website.

If you look at the Flickr image by linux-works, you can see where the Netflix webmasters have intentionally suppressed the earlier message "not to worry, our distribution centers are still sending and receiving DVDs." That can only mean one thing... no DVDs arriving in my mail box tomorrow and massive coronaries for their IT guys today!

You can see that Flickr photo at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works/2358073969/

[moe hong]

I'm surprised a site with so many users doesn't have at least a status page or a bit more description of what's going on and what's being done to fix it.

Flickr learned from this - ignoring the users and their perceived want/need really turns us all off.

They could exert a tiny amt of effort and reap such a large reward. It's a bad sign when companies start taking their customers for granted.

I'd agree with Hueristix & Ed Murrow, however today's stock price is at a 4 year high and historically speaking NF has coincided 'outages' with their stock fluxuating:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3409417
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/07/24/netflix-is-out-in-more-ways-than-one.aspx
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=NFLX&a=03&b=24&c=2004&d=02&e=24&f=2008&g=m

[ed murrow hates netflix]

"historically speaking NF has coincided 'outages' with their stock fluxuating:"

um, yeah... multiple links reporting about one instance from July 24th, 2007. you need a bit more than that to prove a conspiracy theory.

[illyria]

Give me a break, people, you are being totally pathetic...yeah, so there's trouble with the servers, it'll come back up, big deal. Do you have nothing better to do than sit here and count for how many hours the site has been down?

[lindsay]

I don't understand. How could an outage help stock prices, or why would Netflix want them to drop?

[idogcow]

I will assume there will be no discount applied to our accounts, either despite the malfunction.

[Filmguy]

The following is quoted from CNET blog:

March 24, 2008 11:51 AM PDT
Netflix down for at least five hours
Posted by Greg Sandoval | 2 comments UPDATE 1:01 p.m.PT: To address status of customer information.

Internet movie rental company Netflix suffered a site outage beginning at 7 a.m. PDT Monday, and the company doesn't know when it will have the problem fixed, a Netflix spokesman said.

Customer service personnel told CNET News.com that they were told the site was undergoing routine maintenance when something went wrong, information they then passed on to customers. That is incorrect, according to Steve Swasey, the company's director of corporate communications. He said he couldn't discuss the causes but that it had nothing to do with site maintenance.

"Our engineers have been feverishly working on repairing the problem all morning," Swasey said. "It was an unanticipated, unplanned outage and we apologize to our customers."

Site outages are typically no big deal as any company can suffer one. But a blackout that lasts for more than an hour is rare, and one spanning several hours is rarer still.

Netflix, which has 7 million subscribers, continued to ship DVDs after the outage, but it's unclear whether the problem had affected its entire database, Swasey said. This means it's possible that customers might see some delays in receiving movies. But he added that customers needn't worry about their stored movie picks. No customer information will be lost.

This is one of the few setbacks suffered by Netflix in the past year. Since October, the company's shares have doubled in price. In midday trading, Netflix was trading at about $38.

[jeremyfranz]

Lindsay,
NF wouldn't want the stock price to drop, hence them taking away the option to 'cancel membership' on your NF account page by making the site unavailable today.

[illyria]

BTW, I did receive an email this morning saying that they received my disc.

[eviltimes]

Hey jimofoz, the netflix community moved to Ning.

http://community.netflix.com/

[ed murrow hates netflix]

wow, that is some creative thinking jeremyfranz. maybe they should keep the site down all the time, then their stock would go through the roof!

[jeremyfranz]

Also from Filmguy/CNET,
"This means it's possible that customers might see some delays in receiving movies"
This only works in NF's favor because they will save huge amount money by screwing people this week out of a movie. They'll millions on postage and personal handling. There's no excuse for their servers to be down this long other than it being purposeful.