- MoviePass of the Skies? JetSmarter Guts Terms After People Pay Years In Advance by Miles to Memories. Buying these sorts of things long term never makes sense, but it’s crazy how quickly they devalued these memberships. One guy bought three years and then a few weeks later had the benefits and payment required completely changed. If a company has a clause preventing customers from making negative comments, chances are something shady is going on.
- China Puts Visa, Mastercard Applications On Hold by PYMNTS. I don’t think these are ever gonna be approved or even looked at.
- Amazon Pay India Users Can Get Cashback Of Rs 1,000 by PYMNTS. Interesting.
- Netflix raises prices to pay for original content by Washington Post. Look I don’t really care about the $2 price hike, but finding content on Netflix is absolutely trash. This post on MarketWatch goes into that issue. I think finding content on the site, it’s not simple to find newly added content and the library always appears smaller than it actually is. Also given they have 58 million domestic subscribers, an extra $2 per subscriber only just barely covers the cost of paying for the Friends (TV sitcom) library to be readded.
Bitorrent is your friend. I’ve saved thousands on books, movies, audiobooks, tv shows over the last decade. It’s shambolic how many subscriptions everyone needs to get access to a few decent shows in a sea of mediocre content. By contrast, original content from Amazon is really top-notch – best deal going as it comes with Prime.
Kinda of Funny they are losing lots of Content and raising prices ( i.e Disney, maybe Fox shows). We get it free with our T-mo Plan and pay an extra $3 for 4K and four simultaneous users.
It is hard to find decent programming on Netflix, in the house it is mainly streamed on Roku’s and the idiotic Netflix app has a keep awake (like old TSR progs) so that it never times out to main menu or power save, but I won’t watch in bed because of having the strobing carousel of Netflixs screen saver (no time out to main menu) has woken me up more times than I like. I use the red digits digital time screensaver with time, temp and baro pressure, which is great for knowing if car windows are going to have frost in the morning.
Agree it is hard to find the good stuff. I try googling articles like “best films on netflix”.
But still worth it. Without Netflix, I never wd have seen great content like Top of the Lake, Bodyguard, River, Rake, Offspring, Happy Valley, Peep Show, The Little Hours, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and the excellent Swedish family dramedy “Bonus Family”. All wonderful.
Actually, most of those are available on Bitorrent for $0.00
It is actually easier to search Netflix (and Prime) on the computer and add it to your list. Which is a PIA for sure and annoying that it can’t be done easily with your remote. It is amazing how much more stuff comes up on the computer you never see on the tv.
Yeah I find the computer better than the app, but it still isn’t great. I used to use a third party app to find shows, but netflix shut that down. It was SO much better than Netflix’s offering.
It does seem like a waste of money to pay so much for Friends
Agreed – I would rather them add a ton of different lessor known show then add Friends back at that cost.
I agree. Bring back all of MASH.
Well, they could skip the last 3-5 years, which were total garbage. MASH only lasted as long as it did because the quality of shows in those days was abysmal and they kept viewers by default.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a big consumer protection change in the future — no more of these “open ended” membership agreements where the company can change anything they want and have it apply retroactively to customers who have already paid.
We laugh in cases like moviepass and jetsmarter because it was clear there was a logical disconnect in the profit strategy but imagine if that happened with bank bonuses “oh we decided it should have been 10 debit card purchases every month for a year rather than just 2 months”… everyone here would be calling the CFPB
I thought the current mission of CFPB is to do nothing? lol
It is not going to be better for us consumer for the time being.
I still want it to be a free membership with service pay: if you don’t use it in a given month you don’t have to pay that month, but as soon as you watch one thing then you get charged the full price. That would make it much more attractive to me (and a bigger money loser for them, I know).
Your monthly rate for that service would be $24.99
I get the dirty end of the stick as usual since I bought a bunch of NetFlix GCs at a discount during Amazon and Staples promos. The result is I have used them to prepay months in advance for my Netflix. I keep telling Netflix not to waste money on in house productions which are usually GIGO. They are very close to loosing me.
That’s another way of saying “I made another stupid move again.” Sounds like history repeating itself for you? There’s a saying about that.
NFLx has nothing else. Their only gig is programming. They have to run fast just to stay in place. Pretty shitty model actually. The fact that they were able to do what they did should show they have no competitive advantage. Someone else could show up. But they are an innovative company. A mail order business getting into content creation and streaming is one huge leap. So people are betting they will continue to be smart and grow.
What?? “their only gig is programming”. I am not sure what that means.. its like saying walmart’s only gig is selling.
Their model is pretty good actually. Recurring subscription is the model every company is trying to emulate (Amazon with prime, apple with apps.. )
Amazon has other things to subsidize their programming. So do other studios. Netflix lives and dies by programming. Sometimes It’s a good thing. When it’s life or death it keeps you focused on staying alive.
But any discussion beyond that comes down to other metrics that are best not discussed here.
Amazon’s cash cow is AWS, a different kind of programming. 😉
I agree with your assessment that it is very difficult to find content on Netflix and that the library is actually a lot bigger than it appears.
But we need to consider 58 million x 2 dollars x 12 months which makes it 1.4 billion dollars. Which is equal to 14 “Friends” PER YEAR. Compare that to HBO (spending 2.5Billion per year on their content).
HBO is better than Netflix. They’re got Real Time with Bill Maher, etc.
True, I’m not very smart.
“Also given they have 58 million domestic subscribers, an extra $2 per subscriber only just barely covers the cost of paying for the friends library to be readded.”
I think a capital ‘F’ would be a good idea there. 😉 At first I was like, “WTF is a ‘friends library’? I’ve never heard of that feature…Oh, he means the TV show ‘Friends’.”
Ha ha, I was thinking the same thing. Like did I miss the Netflix feature to add content and share with friends? Or you buy movie and add it, then you can loan it to your friends? 🙂
Netflix now lets you browse a library of all your friends.. naked.
And what is seen cannot be unseen. That’s it – I’m not turning the TV on!
Let me make it clearer