In the words of an Oct. 10 Fox News article, “That was Qwik.”
In response to customer complaints, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has retracted his decision to divide Netflix into two companies for each of the two services they provide. Both streaming and mailing DVDs will remain under the Netflix name, but the price increase will remain intact. CHS teenagers who use Netflix are surprised by the increase, but many said they will still continue to use the services the company provides.
“I will still keep using [Netflix] because it’s one of the best ways to watch movies these days,” junior Eric Cho said.
In mid-July, Netflix marketing vice president Jessie Becker suddenly announced a price hike via a blog post and customer-wide email. The monthly price changed from $7.99 for both DVDs and streaming to $7.99 each. As a result, customers posted over 12,500 surprised and angry comments on the Netflix blog.
“I thought it seemed like a bad business move,” junior Mary Lee Lawrence said. “It didn’t make sense to me.”
In light of the backlash from the July price increase, Hastings posted in September another twist in the future of Netflix: a decision to split the company’s two services, DVD by mail and online streaming, into two separate companies. The streaming company would retain the Netflix name, while the new company in charge of DVD by mail would be named Qwikster for its “quick delivery.”
“When [my family] heard of the split we were annoyed and actually decided to stop using Netflix,” sophomore Chrissy Kennedy said.
The announcement of the separation of the two services had not only hurt customers, but it had also hurt the company itself.
According to an Sept. 30 Investors.com article, Netflix’s stock price was 62 percent lower than it was in July, further emphasizing Netflix users’ unhappiness with the new changes.
In response to this, Hastings posted on the Netflix blog Oct. 10 that they were cancelling Qwikster and keeping Netflix as a whole company that provides both streaming and mailing DVDs, but that the monthly price of $15.98 would not be changed.
News sources are still speculating whether this will bring back a majority of Netflix’s original customer base. According to an Oct. 10 Fox News article, the decision has already caused the stock price to increase by about 10 percent.
“I think it was better for [Netflix] economically,” Kennedy said. “People became conscious of the money they were spending and realized it wasn’t worth the money to pay for two different services.”
Six out of ten students surveyed said they would continue to use Netflix despite the changes. Three students said they would not be willing to continue using Netflix, and one is unsure.
“There are so many different places you can get movies,” Lawrence said. “[Netflix] certainly doesn’t have a monopoly.”
In addition to announcing the cancellation of the Qwikster project, Hastings also declared that Netflix will add video game rentals to its offerings.
Only time will tell if the cancellation of Qwikster was the best decision for Netflix in the long run.
