Netflix is screwing you
I’ve been a vocal supporter of NetFlix for the last year or so. I can name at least three people who have ended up subscribing to NetFlix only after I helped persuade them of the benefits (especially in this small town, where the nearest video rental place is 25 minutes away). I gave gift subscriptions to friends and family this past Christmas. And anyone who uses the word “Blockbuster” in front of me is usually engaged in a conversation about how silly they are for renting from those fuckers.
But it turns out that all the good will I’ve been showing Netflix is not being returned to me. Or to any of the other “heavy renters.”
It turns out that the more you use Netflix, the more they screw you.
In January of last year, Netflix revised its “terms of use” policy to include this line: “In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service.” And Wired reports [link above] that “The statement specifically warns that heavy renters are more likely to encounter shipping delays and less likely to immediately be sent their top choices.” The Netflix CEO calls this a “fairness algorithm.”
Now, put in those terms, it sounds like the algorithm gives preferential treatment to the typical renter when both a typical and a heavy renter are trying to take out the same movie, which seems fair. Chances are the heavy renter needs less coddling by Netflix than a non-heavy renter, and so the service should be more worried about the satisfaction of the typical renter. I have no problem with that.
But…this “fairness algorithm” isn’t used simply when two people are trying to rent the same movie. It’s also used to slow down rentals. As it says in their terms of use, most renters will have the next movie in the queue set out the day Netflix recieves the previously rented movie, but heavy renters won’t get their next movie sent out for “at least one business day following the return of their previously viewed movie.” What’s more, the movie may be sent from a shipping center that is farther away than necessary in order to slow down the user’s viewing habits.
Something that does that should not be called a “fairness algorithm” because it’s not fair to anyone but Netflix’s investors.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the reason for this. If everyone pays a flat fee, Netflix doesn’t make as much money on heavy renters as it does on more typical renters. From a purely monetary perspective, this is an interesting solution to a legitimate concern.
But it just seems wrong for a company to penalize its best customers. While there’s a good chance that heavy renters aren’t also advocates for the service, there’s also a chance that they are. I write a “.02 review” for every movie I rent; I usually end up recommending it to at least one friend; and I always write about the movie (with a link to Netflix) on my blog. It just doesn’t seem right for me to be penalized simply because I’m using Netflix as often as possible.
And as a commenter wrote on the Blogcritics.org article, “Netflix getting too tricky for its own good,” Netflix should probably do the reverse. Crystal writes
Netflix should send the most desired movies to the quick viewers first. They’ll watch them right away and send them back, and the slower viewers can get the movies in the same week. If you send the movies to the slow viewers first, they will keep them out longer, and the fast viewers will have to wait a week or more to get them. This method would help Netflix keep their costs down, by keeping the number of copies needed down to a minimum, rather than by reducing their postage costs, and it would provide the best customer service for everybody.
The solution that seems to make the most people happy is to drop the concept of “unlimited rentals” and cap the number at whatever is necessary for Netflix to retain its desired profit margins while not screwing customers like me. Tell me I got a cap of 15 movies a month (or whatever the number would be), and then send me those movies as fast as you can. Don’t tell me I get unlimited rentals and then tell me that you’re limiting me through some “fairness algorithm.”
Because that’s just not right.