Why It Sucks To Be A Good Netflix Customer

I love Netflix. I get up to three movies mailed to me, no late fees, return 'em when I'm done, another one shows up the mail a few days later. For a movie buff like myself, it's great.

That is, until you become too good of a customer.

Under Netflix's business model, they make more money off of people who don't order that many movies a month because they're spending less on postage. For people like me, they have to spend more per month so they don't like me as much.

So, what do they do? It's called "throttling" and they slow the throttle back on active customers.

What does this mean? It means you don't get first dibs on movies when they're released. They go to the less active customers... they want to keep them happy. The really active customers, we're more overhead and they don't make as much off of us, so they don't care if we have to wait.

Below is a screen capture of the top seven movies I have waiting in my Netflix Queue.

Click for larger image

As you can see, six of the seven are not readily available to me. Granted, I currently have 84 movies in my queue, including some Christian films, a lot of film noir, a series of six DVDs from a TV show and a lot of other more obscure films. So, the movies will keep on coming.

But, I can't help but get a little peeved. I've been thinking of cancelling my account and starting a new one in my wife's name. Then, I wouldn't have a history of an active user and wouldn't be "throttled" back because I use the service a lot.

But, in reality, I shouldn't have to.

What happened to the days of actually REWARDING good customers? I used to do nothing but sing Netflix's praises.

Now? Well, I posted this blog entry. 'Nuff said.