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The Real Problem with Netflix

September 30, 2011 •

Con­sumers are enraged at Net­flix’ steep price increases with good rea­son — a 60% increase is hard to take dur­ing a pro­longed reces­sion. As a result well over 1 mil­lion have already can­celled their sub­scrip­tion.

From the consumer’s POV, Net­flix’ lat­est plans to split the offer­ing into two unre­lated ser­vices, Net­flix and Qwik­ster, are utterly ridicu­lous. Infu­ri­at­ing. And per­haps fatal to the company’s longevity.

Net­flix has given its cus­tomers the rea­son — and the moti­va­tion — to look else­where for a bet­ter value.

A Broken Brand Promise

The heavy-handed moves by the com­pany are caus­ing me to rethink how much, if any, I want of Net­flix’ ser­vice in the future. Like mil­lions of other Net­flix sub­scribers who have become dis­en­chanted with the brand.

One of the rea­sons for the furor that’s fuel­ing the con­sumer back­lash is Net­flix’ bro­ken brand promise. We used to believe Net­flix stood as a shin­ing exam­ple of a con­sumer-cen­tered mod­ern cor­po­ra­tion.

Now we real­ize it was just a big myth that we col­lec­tively bought into. Myself included.

Net­flix has squan­dered our trust and lost our loy­alty. They’ve pol­luted their brand. Can they over­come this dam­age?

Setting Up for Streaming Is Not Easy

Net­flix is clearly stak­ing its future on main­stream adop­tion of stream­ing and dig­i­tal down­loads as the pre­ferred way to “con­sume” movies, music, TV episodes, games, etc.

But there’s a lurk­ing prob­lem that no one has acknowl­edged in the furor that’s rag­ing across the blo­gos­phere. And that’s user expe­ri­ence.

If you plan to stream movies to a PC, Mac or an Apple-branded con­sumer device (like Apple TV or iPad), con­fig­ur­ing Net­flix and enter­ing your cre­den­tials are not too dif­fi­cult. It’s easy if you’re using a device that’s equipped with a key­board.

But heaven help you if you’re using a tra­di­tional con­sumer elec­tron­ics device and must enter user cre­den­tials with a remote con­trol device. (You might want to con­sult a teenage geek who’s com­fort­able with remotes as an input device.)

To make things worse, just because you’ve got­ten it work­ing once doesn’t mean your Net­flix con­fig­u­ra­tion will keep work­ing indef­i­nitely. Soft­ware updates by Net­flix and/or your con­sumer elec­tron­ics device man­u­fac­turer can cause the con­fig­u­ra­tion to stop work­ing. So you con­front the user expe­ri­ence issues all over again.

Net­flix doesn’t exert much influ­ence over the con­sumer elec­tron­ics ecosys­tem, so the user expe­ri­ence prob­lems are sys­temic and likely to per­sist…

The Remote Was Not Designed as a Keyboard Substitute

Over the past sev­eral months I’ve wasted hours try­ing to keep Net­flix stream­ing to our flat-screen TV, using Sony PlaySta­tion 3 and the PlaySta­tion net­work as the inter­face to Net­flix. My first attempt to con­fig­ure stream­ing took sev­eral hours (includ­ing sev­eral ses­sions on my Mac to get online help).

After the ini­tial setup it worked just fine — until Sony’s PlaySta­tion net­work was hacked and every­thing had to be reset. Since then I’ve had to reset the con­fig­u­ra­tion more than once. I’m not sure if this is caused by Sony’s fre­quent soft­ware updates or some con­flict between the PlaySta­tion net­work and Net­flix.

Need­less to say, if your inter­face to a con­sumer elec­tron­ics device is a TV remote, hav­ing to enter mul­ti­ple sets of user IDs and pass­words is a non-triv­ial and frus­trat­ing exer­cise. The fact that what­ever you type when enter­ing your pass­word is masked with aster­isks — ******** — increases your chances of wast­ing your time due to typos that occur when you use a remote as an infe­rior key­board sub­sti­tute.

My Netflix Solution on the PS3

To fix the bro­ken Net­flix con­fig­u­ra­tion required con­sult­ing both Net­flix’ and Sony’s sup­port resources online. Not sur­pris­ingly they weren’t coor­di­nated. Net­flix’ site turned out to be dis­tinctly unhelp­ful, and Sony’s site required some real dig­ging to find the solu­tion.

Not to men­tion wait­ing until server main­te­nance was done (dur­ing prime time, I might add).

PlayStation Network Message

The even­tual solu­tion was:

  1. man­u­ally reset the date and time on the PS3
  2. unin­stall the Net­flix app on the PS3
  3. down­load and rein­stall the Net­flix app
  4. re-enter my user ID and pass­word for Net­flix (using the remote, of course).

Oh — and I for­got to men­tion that Sony required me to reset my pass­word to the PlaySta­tion net­work before begin­ning this whole pro­ce­dure — yet another frus­trat­ing bat­tle with the remote as key­board sub­sti­tute.

This may sound sim­ple, but using the remote as an input device for activ­i­ties designed for a key­board meant that these steps took well over an hour — once I under­stood what was required to fix the prob­lem in first place. Find­ing the solu­tion required use of a com­puter.

Net net –

Given the on-going lack of coor­di­na­tion between Net­flix and con­sumer elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies when it comes to user expe­ri­ence, usabil­ity issues like these will prove to be Net­flix’ Achilles heel if their future depends on happy cus­tomers.

Thank­fully, Net­flix has lis­tened to their cus­tomers and responded. Plans for Qwik­ster have been aban­doned — the ser­vice will not be split in two.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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