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.
IMDB's MyMovies section has been down most of the day too. Could they be connected??
Posted by:Alex | March 24, 2008 at 05:00 PM
Why would Netflix want the website to be down...ever? Conspiracies aside, it's bad for everyone, including the people on the other end of the outage. Newsflash: Websites go down, it happens. If this is the worst thing that happens today, you're doing pretty well, really.
Posted by:anonymous chickens | March 24, 2008 at 05:01 PM
Honestly people, would it really matter if you knew exactly what the issue was that cause their site to be down? How would that change anything? If they tell you its because say a natural disaster caused damage to the building or the powers out or someone goofed, etc what are you going to do to fix it? That's why I don't understand why its such a big deal. Does the power or water company tell you why their system is down when they have issues? Dont you think there are more important things going on in the world such as kids being kidnapped and harmed or forced into bad situations or global warming or people starving everyday, etc etc etc.
Posted by: | March 24, 2008 at 05:02 PM
Mailed some movies back Thursday. Was waiting for replacements to be mailed out today, but have no receive any kind of notice there were ever received.
I agree that we deserve some kind of compensation. We are paying for a service that is not being received.
Posted by:Pdfosa | March 24, 2008 at 05:04 PM
> "I have been a customer for years and they have never been down this long"
They were down for 18 hours back in July due to a database problem. Happened (coincidentally) the same day that several other popular websites in the area also went down due to power outage.
Posted by: | March 24, 2008 at 05:08 PM
How is it that you deserve compensation? You are paying for a service that is working, but the website is not functional. For part of a day. What would you think is fair? Let's do a little math: If you're on a $16.99 plan and the website is down for 12 hours, (this is calculated on a 30-day average month without tax, because who knows where everyone is located) that is about fifty-six cents a DAY for the month...so, what, twenty-eight cents for half the day it's down? You're right, everyone "deserves" that.
Posted by:anonymous chickens | March 24, 2008 at 05:10 PM
The site being down is not what is so bad ... if the mail centers are up and running (which there is NO REASON why they wouldn't be) then I'd not care. But there is no way to tell if they are operational or not ...
Posted by:82ninja | March 24, 2008 at 05:14 PM
This is a total guess, but seeing as the whole thing must be run off a database, if that got messed up there'd be no reason to have the site up.
82ninja, just curious - do you relabel the envelopes if they have a different address? I've put two in the same envelope for that same reason. I've thought about relabeling but haven't.
Posted by:kh | March 24, 2008 at 05:17 PM
...and if it is a database issue, then that would be a reason that the mail centers wouldn't operate either.
Posted by:kh | March 24, 2008 at 05:19 PM
kh, my distribution center is Santa Ana California, and that's where I'm sending a disc that came from Maine. Last year I did use the return envelope that came with a disc from Richmond Virginia, but it went to Santa Ana CA anyway. I think the mail people just toss all the red Netflix envelopes in same big bin and don't run them through any machine sorting.
Posted by:profpudwick | March 24, 2008 at 05:21 PM
My local PO tosses them in a bin. They get stuck in the sorting machines.
Posted by:eviltimes | March 24, 2008 at 05:28 PM
kh,
I tend to horde a several "Manchester Envelopes" and send back some discs two to a envelope. This way if I get one from CA or CT or anywhere else I just use a spare envelope. I figure populate my localish area with the movie :)
Never thought about relabeling ... but I will do that if I run out of spares for fun ...
I mean as long as stuff gets shipped today I could sare less if the website is down ... if it is indeed a DB is down ... best guess would be a 2 day delay for any shipments so they can catch up.
Posted by:82ninja | March 24, 2008 at 05:37 PM
Logan at the Netflix community came up with this at C/Net:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9901944-7.html?tag=nefd.top
Posted by:eviltimes | March 24, 2008 at 05:47 PM
I just joined and my kids love the instant play kids section, but we've been without it all day- hopefully it will be back up soon.
I'm in the IT sector for a large company and we have redundancy, power backup, disaster recovery....etc and if we were out, we'd be out for less than 1 hr...
being out now for more than 8 hrs is not only ridiculous, it's flat out not acceptable
Posted by:charles | March 24, 2008 at 05:56 PM
82ninja, I'm with ya, I have 2 that maybe would have gone out today, and 3 that I put in the mail today (and usually get there the next day), so I hope there's won't be much of a delay. Thinking about it more, I could well be wrong about the mail centers, it all depends on how they have their system set up. I could imagine a system that allows individual centers to operate independently if necessary, so who knows.
I never thought of building up a supply of Manchester envelopes (I also live in Maine). But I only restarted my membership a few eweks ago and haven't even seen any other return addresses yet.
profpudwick is probably right, they probably most of the time they go to the nearest center no matter what the envelope says.
Posted by:kh | March 24, 2008 at 05:59 PM
Check out Netflix.com's placeholder's source code:
Our site is temporarily down. !-- but not to worry, our distribution
centers are still sending and receiving DVDs. -- We're !-- also -- working hard to get
the site up as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for
your patience. You can contact Netflix Customer Service at 1-888-638-3549.
I take that to mean they are not shipping DVDs today (though they recieved one of mine this AM).
-Tom
Posted by:Netflix site source | March 24, 2008 at 06:13 PM
Several websites including the Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle and others are running a story on the national shutdown of Netflix today. It has been down all day with that same little banner.
--------------------------------
Tech problems knock out Netflix site, bog down distribution hubs
Associated Press - March 24, 2008 5:34 PM ET
LOS GATOS, Calif. (AP) - Online DVD rental leader Netflix Inc. has suffered a technology breakdown that's preventing its millions of subscribers from making requests on its Web site.
The outage also could mean some customers will have to wait longer for their next rental.
Company spokesman Steve Swasey says the trouble knocked out Netflix's Web site beginning at about 7 a.m. PDT Monday. The site remains down at this hour.
The problems also has hobbled some Netflix distribution centers. Swasey says the breakdown means that DVDs that normally would be mailed tonight might not be shipped until tomorrow.
Netflix is based in Los Gatos.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
---------------------------
http://www.kmph.com/global/story.asp?s=8062135&ClientType=Printable
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/sns-ap-netflix-outage,1,2512559.story
Posted by:Marc | March 24, 2008 at 06:31 PM
Those of us who use the online viewing feature to watch movies at home - something we pay for in our service plans - are being denied a service. So, it does not matter much for the mail-in feature if a 1-2 delay takes place, but if you planned to watch a movie today using the online feature you are being denied a service.
On the other hand, I am sure we signed away any right to compensation in the small print when we signed up so all we can hope is that they are paying people to fix the problem and bring the website online.
Posted by:Marc | March 24, 2008 at 06:41 PM
It is all my fault. I am so sorry.
Last night I submitted 3 (three!) reviews to Netflix. That was the only time I've ever submitted more than 2 in one day.
And then this morning-- the site is down.
Coincidence? I don't think so!
Posted by:profpudwick | March 24, 2008 at 07:18 PM
Some of the people complaining are why I sometimes HATE the internet. If you have nothing better to do than worry about the 56 cents you MAY be losing to Netflix today, then I'm glad I'm not you. I have books, games, friends....other things to do than worry about my Netflix movie. I personally have found Netflix to be a reliable, great service, and I've been a member since the early days. So I'll cut them some slack.
Posted by:Anonymouse | March 24, 2008 at 07:26 PM
"that is about fifty-six cents a DAY for the month...so, what, twenty-eight cents for half the day it's down? You're right, everyone "deserves" that."
Then I want my 28 cents!
BTW, still down as of 6:30 Central so my 28 cents is counting!!!
Posted by:BoB | March 24, 2008 at 07:27 PM
Books, games, friends? Gosh, I wish I had some friends. I hope Netflix comes back up soon. My best friends are on The Office.
Posted by:profpudwick | March 24, 2008 at 07:30 PM
We've been Netflix members for ages. Love the service and unless the all-day outages become bi-weekly events I'll continue to be a loyal Netflix user. I've had to use networked computers to do job since the late 80s and I'm AMAZED at how little downtime Neflix has. I work for a company now, only two IT guys, both truly genius and seriously underpaid ad we *still* sometimes have downtime. Kudos to any IT team doing half as well as Netflix.
Posted by:Furry Canine | March 24, 2008 at 07:42 PM
from a technical perspective i'd love to see how this happened... I'd think with the source of your business operating directly from the internet it would be a very highly redundant group of datacenters that are planted in various places across the world.
how on earth they could go completely down is amazing to me. I would think some jobs are going to get lost because of an outage like this.
i feel for whoever is responsible for their uptime. yeesh
Posted by:dom | March 24, 2008 at 07:44 PM
The head of their IT department must be a LEO ... we all had crappy days today ...
http://www.californiapsychics.com/horoscope/Leo+Horoscope/daily/today.aspx?email=1
leo July 23-August 22 Monday, Mar 24, 2008 Someone you care about might be requiring a little of your attention today (your NETFLIX customers). And you shouldn't be afraid to give your time and make some sacrifices on behalf of others right now. So just try to ignore any minor annoyances and focus on what's truly important today (like getting the service back online).
Oh well ... I love it when it works ... and I won't even consider cancelling.
Posted by:Diluvia | March 24, 2008 at 07:52 PM