I'm on the 3 dvd plan with Netflix, and have been averaging over 10 a month, doing my part to put NFLX out of business. The only time I don't do that many is when I travel, or when Netflix screws me over. For instance i'll watch and mail disks on 3 straight days. Usually it's 2 days before they get them. Somehow sometimes it will be 5 days and then they get all 3 at once, and then send me 3 at once. This happens all too often. It's basically impossible to keep your rentals spaced out evenly with them.
I'm currently putting my more obscure choices to the top of my queue so I can get them watched before making the swap over to Wal Mart after the price hike.
Amazon has bleed billions of dollars to "beat" Barnes and Noble. Netflix doesn't have that kind of money, and won't get it. Plus Amazon could always project and finally reach profitability, it's business model worked. Netflix model is very much in doubt this price increase shows that. Usually better service leads to increased profits. The opposite is true of NFLX. The more distribution they build, the quicker the turnaround time is for more customers, so the harder it is to make money. Basically the better the service, the worse the profitability. Not so with Amazon, they regularly charge more for the same book than B&N, but they have the better service, website, shopping experieince etc. I'm sure Netflix's is better than Wal Mart, but again, that's a bad thing for profitability. You also have to remember that Wal Mart is the Microsoft of retail. They'll run this competing service, maybe as a loss leader, to get you to go to their website, which so far hasn't done much. Plus it helps with their leverage with Hollywood. |
