Uh, what?

[jsbowden]

Found in my email this morning:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear Jamie,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

- The Netflix Team

How the fuck is this an improvement? I'm losing functionality and convenience.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I've been wondering.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. The only thing I can think is that it might reduce database demand somehow, if lots of people are piling on every movie they might want to see ever, and getting spare profiles when they hit the per-queue limit. Not exactly a particularly visible improvement to the end user in light of what we have to give up, if so.

I suspect it may actually be that peculiarly corporate form the language in which "improvement ... for all our customers" means "we're going to do this because we want to, and what're you going to do about it, huh?"

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I suspect it may actually be that peculiarly corporate form the language in which "improvement ... for all our customers" means "we're going to do this because we want to, and what're you going to do about it, huh?"

Right.

I'm just glad that I'll almost certainly have my TV Shows profile whittled down to near-nothing by September.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Yeah well, there are three of us, and we use the queues because what I watch, what robeli watches, and that Evan watches don't necessarily overlap, and it insures that we all have something to watch and we don't have to manually fuck with the queue every other day. If it's a load issue, having their user base constantly rearranging their queues isn't going to REDUCE it.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, it makes no sense. I can only hope they're replacing it with something.

[skwidly.livejournal.com]

Seriously...I keep seperate queues for movies and episodic material, because the mood for them seldom overlaps. This is deeply annoying, and (like the rest of you) I can't imagine how this is going to improve my service...

[(Anonymous)]

Bang on. That "to improve our customer's experience, we will now stab them in the eye during every transaction" really burns me.

[belle-canto.livejournal.com]

Agreed! I split my account with my family and I know that each of us has very different viewing habits.