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Remember that sad tale I told about the death of Netflix DVD rentals? It had you bawling, right? Well, it looks like I was not quite 100% accurate. (Update: Maybe I was not wrong. Higher prices for DVDs might be an additional step to kill them.) Luckily, after today’s announcements, you probably are not mad at me. You are mad at Netflix. The company unveiled new pricing plans for streaming and DVD rentals. So far, I have yet to see a single person happy with the changes.
DVD Rentals
The main pricing plans for Netflix were simple. It was $7.99 per month for unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows and an additional $2 per month for DVDs by mail. This is no longer the case. Now, DVDs and streaming are split into two entirely different plans. If you want one disc sent out at a time, it is now $7.99 per month. Two out at a time is $11.99 per month. This does not include streaming. Netflix is trying to make this look like an incredible deal, stating that these are their lowest prices ever for unlimited DVDs. Unfortunately, no one else is looking at it from that perspective.
Streaming
Unlimited streaming is not getting any changes. It is still $7.99 per month to get unlimited movies and TV shows, but this does not include any DVDs whatsoever. Any Netflix customers that were not paying the extra $2 for DVDs probably do not a problem with the streaming monthly charge for obvious reasons.
DVD Rentals + Streaming
And we arrive at the grand finale. Originally just $9.99 per month for both unlimited DVD rentals and streaming, since they are now in two separate plans, both are now a cool $15.98 total. You might think the company would lower the price for the combined plan down to $12 or $13, but no. Put simply, Netflix now costs an extra $6 per month. The new pricing goes into effect on September 1st for existing customers.
As you can imagine, this is not receiving good feedback. Readers of the blog post detailing the changes liked the most popular comment in the thread over 1,600 2,000 times. That comment is a flat-out complaint. I suspect that if we all get out enough pitchforks and torches, Netflix will eventually back down on this decision.
With competing services like Hulu Plus charging just $7.99 per month for the full product, it is hard to justify sticking with Netflix. Unless you consume a very large sum of content, iTunes individual rentals are now likely more affordable. But hey, if you are not happy:
As always, our members can easily choose to change or cancel their unlimited streaming plan, unlimited DVD plan, or both by visiting Your Account.
Thanks Netflix, I will deliberate doing just that.
The change is that streaming is now: 1 concurrent stream at a time period. I used to get 2, this is horrible, with 2 rokus, and only able to use at a time… streaming got worse.
Wow, do you have a screen gab or a page that says this information? I totally missed this. So I’m guessing I can’t stream a movie on my smart phone while someone else is using it on Boxee Box or PS3? Damn.
I didn’t hear anything about this either. Links?
This would really piss me off if I hadn’t already boycotted Netflix over their stupid pop-up ads.
They have popup ads? When did that happen? I thought only Hulu had advertisements, which sucks since it’s there for paid subscribers too.
I canceled Netflix altogether. There’s another way to watch streaming TV online. Look at the TVDevo website. There are no limitations to what can be watched online and there is tons to watch.