What Did You Do After the Netflix Price Increase?

Reader FearNo1 suggested a poll to follow up on what you did after the Netflix price increase. I'm curious to see the results of this poll vs. the poll we ran right after the price increase.

Comments

[MattChance]

Everybody whined and complained, but nobody changed their account type.

[Russell Brazil]

I have kept my plan the same, DVD & Streaming. Sons of anarchy season 3 is coming out on DVD next Tuesday. After I work my way through that, I plan on dropping down to the streaming only. I dont use the DVD portion of the plan that much anyways, and can never seem to remember to send back the DVD's

[Anthony Hayes]

I reacted by shooting a man... just because he was snoring too loud. That's typical behavior from me though.

[Xenothaulus]

We switched to streaming only. We only got an average of 4-5 DVDs a month, due to shipping times and some watching delay, but we use streaming every day. Frankly if I want a DVD of something, there is a Redbox right downtown.

[Joestanhope]

There's no option to cover people who downgraded their plans. I stayed with streaming+DVD plan but dropped down to 2 discs.

[Eric]

This is a bit premature considering the price change doesn't go into effect until September 1. My next bill date is August 27, so I'm not sure even that will have the price increase.

The plan in my house is to switch to streaming only and use the savings (in addition to savings from dropping cable) to rent more movies through Amazon. We may occasionally change to a DVD+streaming plan when a new favorite series is released on DVD.

[Cosmicvoid]

I dropped from 3 dvds + streaming to 2 dvds + streaming. I believe it was a penny cheaper then what I was paying before. Not really a big deal in my opinion.

[FearNo1]

I switched to streaming only. I originally had 1 DVD and streaming. Boy do I miss the DVD as there are a few DVDs I want to watch. I may switch next month to DVD only.

[D]

I agree, this is premature. Mine has not changed yet either due to a late billing date in August. I will drop streaming when it happens, but have not yet.

[Anthony Hayes]

I kept the same plan. Last night I watched Demons and Ghost Dog on DVD, then Wire in the Blood and X-Men (animated) on streaming. Good stuff.

[Shanshu73]

i have been on the streaming only plan this month and im ready to go back to both. i ordered up a movie the other night and it was 6$ for 2 $ more i can get at least 4 more in a month.

[Karen Wheless]

I'm still not sure what's going on with my plan - I have the 2-per-month plan which includes 2 hours of streaming. I haven't heard anything about whether this plan will continue as-is or change. It's not listed at all in most of the Netflix account lists, but there's nothing in my account information about a change.

[Lars Barlow]

I think it's strange how I am too cheap to pay anything more than just 1 disk and streaming. The price increase doesn't bother me even a little. But for some reason adding Blu ray for $2 seems like too much. It's like buying a smartphone. I'll spend $200 on the phone but you better not charge me $0.99 of an app!

[ScottZ]

Pretty close to what I expected. I only use Netflix over the winter months and will probably go streaming only (from 1-out+streaming).

[Steve Heigh]

I was on the Streaming Only plan before the price increase, and I still am now.

[Aka Darrell]

I'm procrastinating until I see my September bill.

[Joe Palmer]

Where's the "left my stuff the same" option. Really it's still a great deal if you watch a lot of movies, which I do.

[Alan Thomas]

I'm with Joe. It was a ridiculously cheap deal before, now I don't have to feel quite so guilty, LOL. But then I have no problem powering through discs: I get one, watch it that night, send it the next day, it takes one day for them to receive it and then I've got another one the day after that, rinse, repeat. I also watch Instant stuff, but if I had to choose only one I'd keep the discs because I like to get some use out of my Blu-ray player and 1020p HD set. Plus it would bug me to only be limited to a certain set of choices.

One caveat I should note though is that I don't have cable or satellite, don't play video games, can't even pick up TV shows with an antenna. So Netflix content is the only thing I watch on TV, making it a particularly great deal for me compared to someone who also has those other things (especially if they have a DVR).

[Dave31175]

Having no use for streaming, I switched to Blockbuster Total Access. For the same price I was paying Netflix, I get twice as many DVDs per month, along with blurays of a couple dozen titles Netflix didn't carry on bluray. Bye-bye Netflix. It was a nice 12 years while it lasted.

[BoB]

"Everybody whined and complained, but nobody changed their account type."

Really?! I dropped streaming and went to a DVD only plan. Will save $3 a month now ($36 a year). Thanks NF. I won't consider streaming until they get more depth, leave titles up without pulling them and fix all the outages they currently have.

[ScottZ]

@Joe Palmer
leaving things the same is not an option. If you continue service you will either stream, get DVDs, or both. If you continue to do both their IS an option for that.

[Jason]

I have about 30 days more on the old prices because of when my bill cycle ends. At that time I will switch up to two or three at a time plus streaming. I figure if I'm going to pay almost twice as much for one at a time plus streaming I might as well bump it up so that I get better value for the money retaining my current average cost per disc/movie.

[Niles Donegan]

We dropped streaming. My "student" Amazon Prime account expired, but I was offered a full version Amazon Prime (i.e. with streaming) for $39. $39/12 is less per month than Netflix's price increase. The choice was therefore easy.

[Noor Almtowaq]

Hello everyone,

I have CRACKLE which cost $0 bucks a month which i can get movies like men in black and others like how walmart have the bin for movies under 10 bucks.

I went from 1 DVD + Streaming to Streaming only plan which i can stream disney movies and shows and starz pack plus more....

so i am just paying 7.99

[gir]

While the results are predictable, you cannot dismiss that more than 11% are ending service (cancel or hold). I wouldn't be too surprised if Netflix revenues decrease after the price increase.

If licensing costs are fixed (as I believe they are) a decrease in revenue is a bad thing. It can be the start of a downward spiral of increasing prices and declining customer base. Let's hope not.

[Gnomedenise]

I kept my account the same since I get more than 4 DVDs at a time. The price of my plan is going down.

[Jonathan]

I'm unclear on how (or if) I should respond to the poll. I'm keeping everything the same as it was before (at least for a while). Does that mean that I vote what my current plan is or because I didn't change anything at all, is my vote not applicable to this poll?

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmLnAWBHCDWScq0kJMtCBZdte0GdVwXG2U]

@MattChance |
and who is everybody?

[JohnnyO]

I was all set to drop Blockbuster discs by Mail, but instead stayed with that, and also stayed with Netflix, but dropped to streaming only.

[Robert Naylor]

I kept my same 3 discs out + streaming. I discontinued my cable subscription several months ago and haven't even missed it. As for the price increase, its no big deal to me.

This is standard business practice and, to me, doesn't seem outlandish or excessive. We are all in hard economic times, so as impact goes I think a revenue downturn for NF is possible IF 11% drop their subscription totally AND there is a significant downsizing of accounts. On the flip side, NF is branching out into more international markets, so we will have to see if their logistics prowess leverages them in these markets. All in all, it is service, reliability, and content that will make or break them. They are leading the pack IMO but they will have to keep doing this and excel to keep their customer base strong.

We'll have to see, but I am in for the long haul, unless they raise prices again! jk...maybe?

[RJM35126]

I did nothing and stuck with my 3 at time plus streaming.

Of course, the price increase hasnt started yet.

My big issue is THROTTLING seems to have returned with a HUGE vengence.

New releases simply are not available for a few months unless you get them on MONDAY of the week they come out.

Clearly, they have reduced the number of copies they buy.

To counter this, in the future, I will probably swap back & forth between streaming only & DVD only.

The problem is, when you do that, your other queue disappears so you cant adjust it, see whats available & so forth which is REALLY a pain.

They are pretty much forcing me to swap between accounts and thats a pain.

Im sure the new releases would magically have better availability if I use a different account.

netflix's value proposition continues to DECREASE.

That was the fall of blockbuster.

[RJM35126]

Really, the poll had bad wording.

Many people, did nothing.

That option is not available.

I did nothing, but the only available choice makes it looked like I went out of my way to "subscribe to both".

I did nothing. I maintained what I had.

But thats a no brainer until the price increase starts. 30 days after the price increase is when you should do a new poll.

And remember, the easiest thing for most people is to "do nothing". You cant count that as a vote for subscribing to the price increase.

[Eric]

Has anyone else considered that people who dropped Netflix completely might also stop reading a blog called "Hacking Netflix" and therefore never see this poll?

[SPLG]

I switched to streaming only.

Kind of happy to not have send discs back anymore.

[Walt D in LV]

I agree, it is still too early for this poll. However, I'll definitely be going to DVD Only plan (actually, Blu-ray Only plan), but not until when the price decrease goes into effect. My 3-at-a-time Blu-ray plan was $24, and will go down to just $20.

I don't stream movies, at all. Mostly, if not completely, due to the fact that the quality doesn't nearly compare with Blu-ray, especially when you take into account the uncompressed sound that Blu-ray offers.

So, this Netflix price change is a win-win for me. I save money. They split up DVDs and Streaming into two departments, allowing each department head to concentrate on their own divisions: Getting more titles, improving quality, etc.

[ScottZ]

@gir
11% may be ending service, but 36% are increasing service. It will be interesting to see the net change on revenue.

One could say Netflix was under-priced, is the pricing right now? Time will tell.

[kh99]

I agree with what others said, it would be a more interesting poll if it asked if you were making a change to what you were getting or paying the difference and keeping what you had.

I haven't decided yet, my next billing is 9/2 so I have to decide next week. I think I'll probably end going with streaming only ut buy a month of discs here and there to catch up on stuff.

BTW, signed up for a free month of Amazon Prime just to use the streaming, and was disappointed to find that it only includes a subset of their titles, and the selection is on a par with Netflix (and so really doesn't give me anything extra). It looks like Amazon has a whole lot of B-movies from the 50s padding their title count.

[gir]

I don't think we can conclude that 36% are increasing their service. The "subscribe to both" category includes people that are dropping a disk or two (from 3-out to 2-out for example).

[kh99]

My gut feeling is that a lot more people said they would cancel their plan than really did cancel (because some people feel they're getting back at Netflix just by threatening to cancel), but I don't know what we can say from this poll since I imagine that some people who did cancel wouldn't bother coming to this site any more.

[kh99]

@ScottZ - I agree, I know there are some here who like to say that the people running Netflix are stupid, but my guess is they did research and conducted polls, and so they had a fairly accurate idea ahead of time what the effect of the price changes would be.