Netflix Cancels Qwikster

Posted by on October 10th, 2011   Filed under: Industry News, Technology
Source: Netflix Blog

Things have been rough for Netflix over the past few months. As if the price changes hadn’t sent enough customers into outrage, a few weeks ago the company announced a split between their streaming service and their DVD service, which would become a separate site called Qwikster. Unfortunately, the new site would not feature any integration with the old one, meaning customers would be paying two separate bills, managing two separate queues, and generally face more inconvenience. Clearly, the people at Netflix have heard all of the complaints since CEO Reed Hastings issued a statement today stating that they have pulled the plug on Qwikster and the company will remain as is. After losing more than one million customers, will this decision help win Netflix some much needed support?

Judging by the comments on the Netflix website, there seem to be just as many complaints about this news as there are compliments. Certainly I can see how this decision to set things back highlights the company’s lack of foresight in attempting to split their services to begin with. On the other hand, they are trying to give customers what they want, which is a step in the right direction. Looking at the bigger picture, the competition for movie viewing services has grown quite a bit (read Matt’s article on the subject here) and Netflix is busy playing damage control now. Does this announcement help to restore your faith in the company? Which service do you currently rely on the most for viewing content?



  • Brendan

    As someone who still subscribes to both their disc and streaming services, I’m glad they’re not splitting them completely apart. I still haven’t found a comparable way of renting blu-ray discs that offers selection, price & convenience on par with Netflix. I also use the streaming service a lot too, though I’ve found I tend to stream TV shows more than movies. Streaming TV is much easier than renting the physical discs. I stream movies too, but neither service offers all of what I want by themselves.

    But these decisions made by CEO Hastings don’t instill a lot of confidence in the direction Netflix is going. How much time and money were spent on this whole Quixter debacle?

  • Goon

    It’s probably embarrassing and will make people not trust that they know what they’re doing… but the flipside is maybe people will be happy that they listen to their customers when they are dissatisfied.

  • Falsk

    They lost a LOT of customers with the Qwikster announcement. I think it was projected, like, a little over a million subscribers. I doubt this new move will cause them to lose as much as they would have if they continued forward KNOWING how opposed their customers were. It certainly took a lot of balls to say, “Hey, we goofed” … and you gotta respect that … as for the future of the company, well… they certainly put themselves in a bad position and all their competitors are loving that…

  • Primal

    I actually stopped my Netflix account a week before the Qwikster announcement just because I knew I wouldn’t have time to use it in the next few months. I was looking forward to the new service, though, when I would come back to Netflix. Oh well, their dvd-by-mail still owns and is the reason why I’ll keep on sticking to them for now.

    All I care about is myself and how much entertainment I can get from them. I don’t freakin care about all the bullshit around it.