Netflix Removes "Saved" Titles from Instant Queue

Update: Reader Jason discovered that you can use Feedfliks to recover your "Saved" titles from youor instant queue, but it might not work for long.

Netflix removed the "Saved" titles section from the Instant Queue (the DVD queue still has a "Saved" section). I was unable to get a response from Netflix or confirm if it was a bug, but I'm guessing that it didn't make sense to list streaming titles that were no longer available. A number of customers wrote in about this, and many wished there had been some warning so they could have noted the titles in the "Saved" section.

Scott notes that "I used this section to add movies to my dvd queue which I didn't get to watch instantly."

Stacy writes, "This move has me wondering if they did it so that I CAN'T use that list as a shopping list to find the movies on other sources (cable,Amazon, etc). As if I'll notice a shrinking instant queue less than a growing saved queue."

EF adds, "I had over 200 films there, and now I have no idea what was there. The worst part is that I'd taken them out of the DVD queue tomake room for other movies, since it seemed redundant. I wish they'd atleast warn us when they plan to do things like this."

Mike writes, "With the movie in my Instant Saved section, it will pop back up into my Instant que when it is relicensed. I don't have to go looking for it again to see if it has become available. For example, "Radio" is available until 9/23 and then it will disappear from my Instant queue entirely. If it gets relicensed in a month or six months, I will never know about it without a Saved section in the Instant que. Removing the Saved section from Instant is a really bad idea and I don't understand why they would do it. I wonder if they are trying to hide the movies they are losing."

Thanks to Claes, Jeff, Scott, Stacy, EF, Ben, Mike, and everyone else for sending this in.

Comments

[Bob]

Titles used to reappear in my queue because they were saved, but but no more, the Netflix bastards.

[Thomas Miller]

I just checked my Instant queue and the saved titles are now gone. This is really disappointing that they would take away this feature. I too left a lot of movies in there that I would like to see reappear into my queue when they become available again. I'm calling them to complain about this!

[Thomas Miller]

Just got off the phone with NetSUX and they did confirm that they removed that feature as of 9-15-11 and it won't be coming back. I got some type of BS answer as to why they removed it. I asked if I could get a copy of the saved queue, so I know what to search for when they become available again, and they said once it was removed, there is no way to retrieve the list. I have been a big supporter of NetSUX for a long time, even backing them up after the rate hike, but if they keep removing features, how do they expect to keep their customers around? While this is not a deal breaker for me, it sure is leading down the road to look for other options. Come on NETSUX, stop charging more and taking away features!!!

[Jeremy Johnson]

Wow, this is terrible news. Like most people, I relied on this feature heavily. Now what? Keep my own queue on a spreadsheet? Utter bullshit. I also noted a while back that when DVDs in your queue appeared in Instant Watch, they will no longer automatically populate your Instant Watch queue. My practice for quite some time has been if I saw the PLAY button appear in my DVD queue, I would just delete that movie from the DVD queue because it was already in my IW queue. Since we were not warned about the change, I lost a bunch of movies from both queues.

[ClydesMP]

Honestly. What next? Netflix is really headed down hill. I guess lack of competition has that effect. Some of the decisions they are making are just totally asinine.

I've seen movies expire one week and be back up within a week after new contracts were signed, not to mention TV series as well. At one time shows like Buffy and Angel expired, but were renewed within a day or two. So doing this makes no sense at all.

Honestly, as some others have said, I can see that they don't want you looking for the movie elsewhere, or looking for it on DVD on their own site since their DVD library is quickly disintegrating. (It's getting damn near impossible to rent a complete series of many shows on DVD and I've just about quit trying)

Frankly, I buy a lot of movies on DVD and blu ray and have Amazon instant prime because of the two day shipping. And their selection may not be large but it is growing. So I don't really see the point is in carrying the streaming on Netflix anymore. The Netflix cheer leading about how great it is anyway starts in 5...4...3...2...1...

[Robert Emmerich]

I guess this answers what I wrote two days ago -- (sorry for reposting but I like the ironic foreshadowing) --

Fourth - has anybody at NF explained how, quoting from the article - "but we believe this split will help us make our services better for subscribers". What has been done to make services better for subscribers? I check this website nearly every day but nothing comes to mind as an improvement to go along with the split and price increase.

[MattChance]

This is great news for me, being that I thought my titles were safe in that area of the queue. Much like the rest of your readers, I used it to offload my DVD queue into, since members of Netflix are still forced to work under a limit while paying for unlimited service.

You guys better go download your queues right away - now we know they are subject to deletion at any time. Just a few weeks ago, I took someone's advice, and copy and pasted by DVD queue into a spreadsheet (somehow it retains formatting!). Strongly wish I'd done this with my saved queue, but who could have expected this idiocy.

[Ernest Aguayo]

Wow, this is so frustrating. I also lost several dozens of titles and have no way of figuring out what they were to re-add to my DVD queue.

How can they not see this is a terrible customer experience? Their recent decisions really have me scratching my head. I think that theory mentioned above has merit: with no "Saved" section in Streaming, you won't notice as easily when their Streaming selection dwindles, especially Starz in a few months.

[Mark Van Dyke]

It is worse than some people realize because if you've added something to streaming rather than queue it in the DVD queue and then it stops being available for streaming before you've watched it, it will quietly disappear from your queue entirely.

The section that tells you that the movie is available for streaming until mm-dd-yyyy doesn't always inform you when a movie is going away. I've seen movies drop off with no prior notification. I've seen titles drop off into the saved list for a few hours or a few days and then come back up after a fix to it or whatever. I guess now that will not happen and I will lose the movie from my queue because Netflix needed to do fix something with the movie (like sound, or another glitch).

When a title that is listed in the DVD queue becomes available to stream, that title is duplicated in the streaming queue. I understand that moving a title that is no longer available for streaming to the end of the DVD queue might not be desirable for everyone, but for me it would make more sense. I could either delete it if I did not want it on DVD, or keep it at the bottom of my queue until it came back around for streaming.

Less community, less functionality, and more cost is not a good business idea. What Netflix is doing is pushing all of what they consider to be "extra services" onto 3rd party software developers. When you begin to force your customers off to outside sources to do anything relating to your own services, you put your customer base at risk. You can no longer control what is said (positive or negative), what is done, what is developed, and what is promoted (your service or another).

The Netflix heads are acting like they are squeezing the last bit of juice out of an old orange, getting all they can out of it before they move on to a different piece of fruit. What they will leave behind is the dry husk of a once great service, with the peels and dead seeds of customers and lower echelon employees on a weathered heap.

Sad, that.

[BoB]

Wow, without any warning huh?! I dropped streaming last month so I don't know but I see the DVD saved section is still there - for now.

I run Firefox with the screengrab addon so I grabbed a copy of my DVD queue just in case.

Not sure what NF is thinking/doing. I now get streaming stuff from Amazon Prime, Roku, DirecTV VOD, free Hulu and other type service, premium movie channels and...

IF I really need to get a DVD, then I have 7 Redboxes within 5 minutes. Otherwise I can wait until they come out on TV. We are thinking of dropping NF altogether at the end of this month.

[JohnnyO]

Wow. Just one foot-in-mouth move after another. If I were working at a competitor to Netflix, I would be chuckling all month at their missteps.

[worrywort]

Prior to the removal, I was maxed out at 500+ titles, and now I'm at 405. However, Today when I go to add more stuff I get the error "[title] could not be added to your Instant Queue, because you have reached the queue limit of 500 movies. If you wish to add this movie, you must first remove movies from your queue."

UHH

[eviltimes]

More proof that NF sux.

[Rigelkitty]

I think I agree with "Mike".

Netflix has enough bad press about losing Starz already. Announcing the removal of the Saved Instant Queue would just draw further attention to the Starz fiasco, as the Saved IQ would be a huge spotlight on the quantifiable degradation of their streaming library.

NF must have figured the bad PR that quietly disappearing the Saved IQ far in advance would cause would be less than the bad PR of large chunks of queued streaming content suddenly falling out of everyone's queues into the purgatory of the Saved list, possibly never to return.

The lesser of two evils.

[SPLG]

This is standard operating procedure under the Netflix philosophy. Always a very passive aggressive stance towards customers.

Doesn't seem likely to change even though their stock took a huge battering for the price changes...

[Partardo Detarpufarski]

I have been a management consultant for a long time. Companies make inadvertent mistakes from time to time. But it almost seems like Netflix is trying to alienate its' customer base and devalue its' brand. Don't know why they would do that, but that's how it seems. Especially bad timing, what with the rise of other options open to their subscribers.

[Westofrome]

I wonder if they will still repopulate the queue with previously queued titles that become available again, even if you can't see the Saved queue? It looks like I had one "saved" title added to the end of the queue in the last few days, but I'm not sure exactly when.

[Adrianco]

The underlying data for the saved portion of the instant queue is still there in the Netflix API (for now at least).

I just checked using the old Instant Queue Add for Netflix iPhone App I wrote, and the Instant Queue section lists (with blue font for the titles) the saved items. Clicking on them in the app opens the DVD page for that title if you want to save to DVD queue one at a time.

I've been meaning to update the app for a while, I will see if I can figure out an easier way to archive the saved items.

[Jason]

I just checked my queue from feedflix and it still shows my saved queue. Last sync was this morning and my saved queue hasn't shown of netflix site for 2 or 3 days now. So there is hope as the titles may still be there and they just removed the code that renders the info to your browser. How long the data remains intact is another story. Unless there is something I'm not aware of in how feedflix handles syncing. And also if anyone who doesn't already have their account linked to feedflix if it will pull over the apparently gone saved queue or not.

Now as far as having the saved section, it was a handy way of storing titles that expired I had no time to watch. But all that means is now for those titles I have to maintain an offline list of just like I do for my disc queue overflow. No increased annoyance for me but it sure would be nice to simply have no queue limits. Most titles I miss seeing are on disc too so with no limit I'd have no offline list to keep.

Now if any ya'll are still reading the good news is they probably are working on overhauling the whole design of the service from queues to all these other features they have removed. It seems to me the whole system broke down and like a clunker car you go new instead of fix the old broken crap. So hopefully not too long from now we will have a whole new and better way of doing all this stuff.

[gir]

I've been an avid fan of NetFlix for years, but in the past year my opinion has been changing, and this is the last straw. I now want another company to come in and clean NetFlix's clock.

Go Amazon!

[worrywort]

Thanks for the feedflix, by brute force I got my lost titles recovered!

[AliceCh78]

I called them this morning for the second time trying to get them to send me my saved movies. The rep was very nice and said he hated that they took it away too, but he couldn't get me my saved data. I said that I knew it was still there, all he had to do was talk to an engineer, because the queue was counting those saved titles towards my 500. He put me on hold for a while and told me when he came back that there was no way.

Being as it is 2 days away from my Sept bill date, I decided in the moment to just go ahead and cancel my instant watching account anyway. I've been too busy lately to watch much movies and with the fall tv season underway, the price increase, the disappearing movies, the lack of selection, and then the final straw being the saved queue feature going away, I didn't see the value anymore. It certainly isn't worth an entire $7.99 for me when I've watched like 2 movies in the past month.

I DID go to feedfliks for the very first time today and they were able to pull in my instant saved queue!! So I'll be saving that list to a spreadsheet. At least it isn't gone for good. If you have never used feedfliks before, I'd recommend importing it TODAY though, because the rep said that engineering was working on fixing the bug of saved titles counting towards the 500. My guess is that means they are working on deleting them permanently from the backend.

[D]

Netflix, are you seeing this? Not one positive comment. NOT ONE.

[Jason]

I recommend the following options for saving your saved queue and do it asap before the data is lost forever. Go to feedflix, link account if it isn't already, view the instant queue from there, save the complete page as a file, or copy and paste titles to a document file of any type, or bookmark the titles, or keep the titles pages open as tabs.

[TheRobertBarry]

I am very, very close to dropping Netflix altogether. I already have Amazon Prime, and while it's library is not nearly as good as Netflix, nor is the user experience, I believe it is the best hope for subscription streaming. Netflix is becoming more and more disappointing. If you look at FeeFlix or Instant Watcher, there are very few exciting titles on the horizon, and doing stuff like eliminating saved queues just makes me want to leave. One more negative move and my 8 year Netflix subscription may be over.

[Kymberlie R. McGuire]

As someone that last 250 movies in the deletion, huge props to Jason for the Feedflicks tip. I just saved the page so that all the time I spent putting into saving my queue doesn't go to waste.

I've been a Netflix member for over seven years and didn't even mind the price hike too much (though I did drop my plan from three discs to one and that was just so I wouldn't lose my disc queue), but this is such poor customer service, that I'm thinking of dropping to streaming only or finding a new service. Bad move, Netflix.

[RJM35126]

I wish they would show which movies in my q are starz so i can watch them if I want.

[Jason]

Not the most ideal way of doing it but you can compare your queue to the category for stars content. It's all I can think of to know what items in the queue are from stars.

[Stephen Zerio]

OK,trying to figure out why I can watch a streaming series ("Breaking Bad") on my computer, but not on the TV (i use a WII connection.) Several items in my instant queue are lost for TV but are available on pc. Doesn't streaming mean both?

[D]

I found my "SAVED" instant Queue on my android app NetQ. Funny thing is that it says it's retrieving the queue each time I access it. Netflix is lying when they say it's lost in cyberspace.
I'm saving my queue and leaving Netflix as they've forgotten who their company is built on. Anyone else want to start a company like this now would be a great time. Lots of people are jumping off this sinking ship.