In a recent blog post Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has copped to the mistake of increasing the price of a Netflix membership by as much as 60%.
“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation,” he says in the post. Though he admits he handled the annoucement of the price change wrong, he says he would not change it.
Hastings uses this blog post to alert users that Netflix is furthering the separation of their streaming and mail DVD service by treating them as separate businesses all together. The streaming side of the business will retain the Netflix name, whereas the DVD mailing service will now be called “Qwikster.” Customers who choose to keep both services will now see two charges on their credit card that will total what they currently pay.
“So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to ‘Qwikster’.”
If anything, as a Netflix customer (or now Netflix and Qwikster) this new separation of services adds to the confusion and will make it easier to drop one if not both services.
The full blog post can be found here.
