Was Your Streaming Queue Randomly Reordered?

MC writes, "I've been watching a bunch of stuff on my Instant queue today, and I noticed that several hours ago that it was in a different order than how I had set it.  Kind of a pain in the ass as I keep it ordered so I can find things easier.  I know I don't really "need" an Instant queue anymore, but it's still kind of annoying that the site re-ordered my queue randomly like that."

Jack also had a similar experience and has some suggestions, "I spent the better part of two hours organizing my streaming queue last week, carefully sorting through the titles and arranging them by genre and in an order that made sense to me. Then two days ago, without any notice, Netflix pulls close to 30 titles from the 250 I have sorted, places them in Saved Instant with a notice saying "coming soon", then today just dumps them unsorted at the end of my queue.

I am glad that Netflix allows me to save such a large list, but there's no question that the system is in need of serious revision. Getting the titles in any kind of an order if there's more than a hand full is a tedious and needlessly time consuming chore . But to completely ignore the order I took such time to select for them is more than annoying, it's boarder line ignorant.

Netflix needs to reconsider three things. First, the ability to select multiple queues or tags. I'd like to separate the Rashamon's from the Robocop's. Second, they need to change the way the interface for the list works. It could be so much easier if you could change the view between a list or a cover flow to accommodate larger lists. Third,  if they really must pull a title from instant streaming for a short time at least have the decency to put it back were it came from."

Comments

[MattChance]

The queue design has been out of date for many years. There's no excuse for why it's so hard to work with. People with big queues full of titles cringe at the thought of even having to move one of the discs around. It's like trying to open a moderately-sized program in Windows - it's guaranteed to lock up completely.

[Chris Johnert]

This has happened to me twice within the past two weeks. I called Netflix to report the problem Sunday night and was told that everything looked fine on their end and they had no reports of this problem happening to anyone else. They just told me to fix my queue on the site and call back if it happens again.

[Btoy]

I have been having a problem since they first started testing the multiple seasons that every so often all TV shows with multiple seasons get bumped to back of the queue. Happened just a few days ago again. I have a large queue and watch mostly TV shows but queue is full of movies too so I like to keep the shows I am working on at front of queue so they are easier to find. It is really annoying when they aall get bumped to the back and I need to move them to the front again.

[Tom]

Mine seems to re-organize frequently.

I also notice that, when reviewing some new titles on the Netflix website, that they will automatically show up in the cache, even though I did not select them. Maybe that has something to do with the length of time of the hovering.

[NathanH]

This has been a big problem for me lately. The past month or so, there have been little things changing, like 5 or 10 tv shows. But just the other day, about 50-75 movies got dumped down to the bottom of my queue in no discernible order in with my tv shows (which I keep at the end). THis is very frustrating as I keep it sorted so the TV my kids watch shows on doesn't have anything inappropriate near by in the queue. I called customer service a couple weeks ago and te rep sounded very concerned and told me that she would take note of it and tell somebody. Obviously I just made it worse.

[SPLG]

Why don't they just return titles to their previous place in the queue? Problem solved.

[macdude22]

My TV shows have consistently been moving to the back of my queue within 48 hours of moving them to the front (or other location) in my queue. I've taken to using the search functionality or recently watched selection to watch TV shows.

[Eric Winesett]

There's absolutely no need to spend hours organizing your queue. Google "Netflix Queue Sorter." It's a plugin script for FireFox and Safari (at least--maybe others) that has buttons for quickly sorting by genre, title, rating, and other properties. Even if you don't normally us one of the supported browsers it should be worth occasionally opening an alternate to avoid tedious manual sorting.

[Ryan Sullivan]

@Eric Winesett, the issue for me isn't that the website instant que is out of order, but that the instant que from my Wii is out of order.

i separate based on age. sine netflix only allows 1 instant que, i put the kid stuff at the beginning and the more adult stuff (horror, drama...) towards the end of the list.

just about every time i go to my que on my Wii i find kid stuff towards the end of the que. and i don't want my kids going towards that end and accidentally playing saw 5 or something. RIGHT?!?! its just absurd that the current que setup is the way it is right now.

[Bobby Szozda]

Yes, this has happened to me multiple times. I've put TV shows at the top of my queue, and once a week they randomly get sucked down to the bottom. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this (and is anal enough to want their queue in a certain order).

[Shanshu73]

i had this problem yesterday.i had my half my tv shows up on top and half on bottom. then i put all of them back up to the top then i had some sequels together then those were mixed up all over the place.

[Robotskilledyou]

This has become a major pain in the ass lately. Netflix has been resorting my queue for months now, ever since they combined TV shows into one season. The recent re-sort wasn't just TV though, it seemed to take every other title in my queue and throw it to the end of the list. I'm honestly getting fed up.

[twitter.com/tDRMRSR]

I wouldn't need a queue at all as long as they keep "recently watched" for the TV series and then had a category for "movies expiring soon"! I have 300 items on my queue, and with that many, just keeping up with the ones expiring takes all my viewing time.

[Kinbalk]

I actually watched this happened today. Apparently the queue manager keeps setting certain movies as "Coming soon" which takes them out of the queue and puts them in the saved section. The system resets like 5 minutes later and puts all the misplaced movies at the bottom. It's happened to me twice over the last week and I went to go watch a movie at lunch and noticed what I wanted was in the saved section. I hit reload and it was back in the queue but at the bottom.

[Knaldskalle]

@Kinbalk: That exact same thing happened to me earlier today too.

[Ron Moses]

I'd be happy just to have a button that lets me sort the list alphabetically. That alone would save me an enormous amount of time.

[Cubic Z]

Didn't we just have this topic like a week ago?

[Royrapoport]

@Cubic Z, this is the same topic, we just randomly shuffled this topic's place in the overall Hacking Netflix site to the top again, for your convenience.

:)

[Mmeaney87]

This happened to me. I just signed in to Netflix and my instant queue which had over 460 titles in it yesterday now has 29 titles and the majority of those are ones I have already seen and rated. Does anyone know what happened?

[Mmeaney87]

Never mind I just checked again and all the movies are back. Is there a reason they keep messing around with the queues?

[Teresa]

I thought this was just happening to me and it's been driving me a bit crazy. I would find my queue reordered numerous times a day - I stopped fixing it after awhile...

[CJ]

I spent about an hour neatly moving titles about in my queue in a certain order - first alphabetical streaming titles I will re-watch, followed by alphabetical streaming titles I haven't watched yet, followed by alphabetical streaming with DVD titles I haven't watched yet. Three nice little alphabetical groups that make sense to me.

Next day, the order is all jumbled up again.

If Netflix is SERIOUS about moving people to streaming only, then they better free up some programmer resources to FIX the current abysmal customer interface.

[Tonyram057]

My queue is all messed up bad. Do not I repeat DO NOT link your account with anything. NO THIRD PARTY APPS or using sites like FeedFlicks. I linked FeedFlicks with my queue and not everything is mixed up. Now I got to spend time fixing this mess.

This is the problem. Don't use queue managers.

[Marshall]

I don't buy that it's third party apps. Once I eliminated them then someone said that devices count as apps so it could be my Roku or PS3. It's not. The queue shuffles when NOTHING is being used. This has been going on for months but it's only recently become so widespread that it's getting attention.

[Marshall]

I just spoke to Netflix again. If you haven't called yet then it is IMPERATIVE that you do. They are trying to find a common cause that fits everyone. Is it just Roku owners? Is it only TV shows for everyone? stuff like that.

If the person you get doesn't know about it then tell them it's been reported on this site and they can get someone above them to verify that it is indeed a widespread problem.

[Whartonfan]

Yes, this problem has happened to me several times. Like others here, I want the tv shows I'm currently watching at the top of my queue, along with movies that are expiring.

I got so frustrated that I bookmarked all the tv shows in firefox and put them in the order I want -- Netflix can screw around with my queue, but they can't mess up my bookmarks. Of course, I can't access that through my roku, but at least I can find things on the computer.

[John Deitch]

My queue has been randomly reshuffled a number of times in the past two months. At first I thought it had to do with Netflix combining seasons of Television programs. I have know idea now as to what they have done to themselves to screw up a great system. This is a complete pain in the ass. It wouldn't be as bad if I would continually have the option of "Recently Viewed" to choose from but that only shows up as an option of choice in the AM or the first time I fire up my Netflix streaming device/component (PS3). Some programing tard has deleted a code component that reshuffles due to this error in thought, foresight, knowledge or possibly arrogance and by the way you don't have to fix something that doesn't need fixing just to convince your boss your staying productive (Netflix Wanna Be Execs). Anyway, that's my rant. Get it Fixed. Please?

[BigSaltyDookie]

It has been reordering my instant queue a lot lately too. It's VERY annoying because I have over 400 titles in it and I like to keep them grouped together by genre.
I used to add titles via instantwatcher.com, after signing in to the main Netflix website, because that site always showed the newest addition to instant streaming as soon as Netflix added them, but I noticed whenever I'd add titles from that website it would completely scramble my queue. When I do it directly from Netflix it doesn't seem to happen as often. It's VERY annoying when it does though.

[Marshall]

Well I may have to eat my words. I thought I had Feedfliks disabled. Turns out you have to disable it on Netflix's site under the account management option. After disabling it my queue has been set for several days now. Can others go into their account settings and disable queue managers to see if this is the common denominator after all.

[Gnomedenise]

I noticed this happen the other day (when I was reading one of these posts on Hackingnetflix, natch). I don't ever use 3rd party apps to mess with my queue, but I did just check my settings and InstantWatcher is on there. But it has to have been months since I've added anything to my queue from IW, if I ever have.

I'm another queue-organizing-fiend. It's frustrating to have the TV show I'm watching most frequently run down to the bottom of my queue, and randomly new movies I add appear somewhere in the middle.

[B N]

Its been happening very frequently for me..Just now it happened when I finished watching one episode of a TV show and came out to the Roku main menu..it is really frustrating to do all the hard work and get the queue organized just the way you want it and then see it get all messed up like this..whats the point of the queue then?

[Hugo Ramirez]

My queue was once again messed up after being fine for a few days. I just now use Netflix Queue Sorter and sort it by alphabetical order. I had it sorted by movies and shows but it still gets mixed up. Having sorted alphabetically makes it much easy to watch on the website. By the way I had to fix it just now. Thanks goodness for this great script.

[Ron Moses]

I've been having this problem a few times a week, and I'm intrigued by the suggestion that it may be related to Feedfliks, as I do have that app enabled. I've just disabled it, and we'll see what happens.

[Marshall]

I contacted feedfliks and they deny that it's possible. I told him clearly my tests proved that it is indeed them. For several days the queue was fine. I re-enabled Feedfliks and did a manual refresh and viola my queue was scrambled.

I was ready to accept that the shows could be fluttering out of the system and back due to some Netflix error log or bug. That doesn't explain however why Feedfliks instantly scrambled the queue. Remember, instantly. The only thing I can think of is that the shows are somehow listed incorrectly and the devices have been updated to not care. If that were the case then queue managers like Feedfliks could still be reading an older version of the API and therefore culling the shows. Netflix devices then add them back at the end since they were un-numbered. That doesn't explain why sometimes the shows are in different orders that follow a repeating pattern however. I attribute that to Netflix "trying" to fix the problem and failing.

It's a shame, I had paid for Feedfliks and now I can't use it. That's what I get for being generous once in my life.

[Ericchatterjee]

UGH! I have been fighting with this all morning. I'll reorder the queue and then 10 minutes later it's out of order - dozens of titles are affected.

I've had this problem before, but never as bad as today - I've reordered it multiple times this morning!

[Allison Elzie]

My instant queue is all messed up. And it's not just because Netflix is putting all tv seasons under 1 title.

Things are completely changed - I watch Netflix streaming on my blu ray player. I had my own particular order that I wanted to watch certain things. For example I had all the Doctor Who (the old stuff not the new stuff) by date, with the oldest to most recent - and that's all changed.

Things that were on the fourth screen on the blu ray player listing are now on the first. And some of the stuff that I watched most recently was bumped all the way to the end.

I do not like this at all.

[Albokay]

All i know is that I just re moved Futurama to the top of the que and refreshed a couple time with no movement. Then I went to Instant Watcher and added a movie and all of a sudden Futurama moved to 154.

[Kyle Wright]

It is most certainly not due to 3rd party apps, as I've never used one on my Netflix. My instant queue was fine for a few months, but the last couple months it's been messing up. I have it in ABC order and every once in a while about a third of my movies and TV shows would drop to the bottom in a random order. I fixed it a couple times, but not after the most recent one.

Well, today I was in there and still had about 2/3 of them in ABC order. I left a review on a movie and when I came back 5 minutes later, all my movies were completely scrambled. I watch only on my PC, so it's not a Roku problem either. Whatever the problem is, it's extremely annoying.

[nickm]

I noticed it first on titles that came and left watchinstantly, they'd go to the end of the queue--but now it's happening daily, and only on my Blu Ray queue--my online queue is still the same. Wassup??? :)

[nickm]

now my online queue's in aphabetical ordered groups--I haven't found the common ground the ones in a group share yet, not by year or star rating order...?wt...??