Netflix Day 19

Netflix price increase, to stay or not stay…. That is the question.  According to a company  press release (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-to-offer-new-unlimited-dvd-plans-and-will-separate-streaming-and-dvd-plans-in-the-us-2011-07-12?siteid=nbsh) we should expect big changes from Netflix come Sept 1 for existing members.  To say some customers are unhappy with this change is an understatement and I have to say that I certainly can sympathize with their feelings.  From the outside looking in it does seem like Netflix is raising prices to increase profits. In Aug of 2010, stocks of Netflix were about $100/share and as of this publishing time they were trading at $282.  I mean if they have been profitable all along why rock the boat?  It seems to me that if they were turning a profit at $100/share, $282/share is sitting pretty nice.  But that is purely speculation and we have no official word from the company as to why they are doing this. I’ve read message boards, FB pages, comments on web articles and the general consensus seems to be that  people that are fairly ticked about this; so ticked in fact that they have canceled their subscriptions. Now I’ve felt strongly about things in the past that I have taken similar measures but for this situation I don’t feel it warrants that level of action.  The whole point of my family switching from DirecTV to Netflix was to save money and customize our TV watching experience (less crap for the kids to watch and NO commercials).  That is exactly what Netflix offers, at a substantially reduced price.  If I were a new DirecTV customer their basic package includes 150 channels (who really watches all those channels like C-SPAN?) will run me $60.99/month BEFORE high def or DVR services.  Keep in mind that is only the basic package, prices increase from there up to $114.99/month. Yikes!  And those are for the shows they want you to see!  As a new customer of Netflix, at the new rate of $7.99/month for unlimited streaming and $7.99/month for 1 DVD at a time ($11.99/month for 2 DVDs at a time) I could expect to pay a total of $15.98/month. So for a savings of over $530/year I get exactly what I want; save money and customize our TV watching experience.  In my opinion even the higher price of Netflix is better than anything from DirecTV.