I was all set to post today about Michele Bachmann. She frightens me more and more each day. Then I got home and saw my e-mail from Netflix. Sorry, Michele. You'll have to wait a while.
I've always been a big fan of Netflix and have had the service for years. Netflix took a great idea, executed on it extremely well, and became a tremendous success in the process. I've been so happy with them that I even bought a subscription for my parents as a Christmas present last year.
Late last year, we switched from our 3 DVD's at a time plan to Netflix's unlimited streaming plus 1 DVD at a time plan. Streaming seemed like it would be much more convenient and, admittedly, it also made sense financially since the new plan was $9 / month cheaper. But, I've got to tell you -- the selection of movies available for streaming on Netflix stinks. Just last week, we sat down to try to find a movie to watch. We literally searched the library for 25 minutes. We couldn't find anything worth watching. I finally gave up and went to bed.
Now, I get home and see that Netflix has decided that it's raising the monthly access fee for our plan from $9.99 / month to $15.99 / month. Why? Well, in the words of Steve Swasey, their brilliant VP of Corporate Communications, "$6 more is a remarkable value." Is he kidding me? Paying 60% more each month for the exact same service is better "value?"
Swasey then went on to say that Netflix's streaming service provides more movies than you can watch in a lifetime. That may be true but how many of those titles are actually any good? As a proxy for determining the quality of the movie titles that Netflix makes available for streaming, I just went to the Netflix site and checked out their "Top 100" list. This is Netflix's list of the 100 most popular movies on the site, as measured by request volume. You know how many are available for instant viewing? A grand total of 8. What does that tell you? It tells me that the overwhelming majority of movies that Netflix makes available for streaming on its site are bottom of the barrel, low-quality, and mind-numbing pieces of garbage. They're the films that no one wants to watch.
Looks like I'll saying good-bye to the streaming experiment. I may even say good-bye to Netflix.