Eliminating Netflix Profiles

What real benefit does a profile offer you?

The benefit of hiding Womb Raider, The Bare Wench Project 2 and many other titles from prying eyes.

Booooo. I hadn't heard about that yet. I just recently figured out that by keeping TV shows separate under another profile I could keep two movies and a disc of TV eps on tap without juggling the lineup constantly. I say again - Booooo.

I was pretty disappointed about this. I have the 3 at a time program, with 2 in my profile and 1 for my wife's. She doesn't watch nearly as many films as me, but it was nice that when she sent back The Lodger, etc. (she loves 40's film noir) she knew her next DVD would arrive 2 days later without having to ask me to bump her pick to the top of my queue and hope that Netflix actually sent it next.

Okay, that's going to create more work for you, Tieman. I'm not a member of Netflix, and hadn't thought about the "multiple viewers in a household" issue -- so when you sent one back from a certain profile, it would trigger the next one from that profile?

correct!

Ouch. Even without being a netflix member I'd get behind this crusade. I'd certainly look at the competition that might offer this feature upon (re)joining a mail-order rental organization.

Seems to me like they are tying to force multiple subscriptions on one household.

If so, that's a stupid corporate decision. I suspect it has more to do with technical considerations than business growth.

From the Netflix Blog:
I hope they're being honest about the portion I bolded.

Well, that's stupid. Those smart enough to figure out the multiple profile issue should be allowed to use it. You'd better put "Lawrence of Arabia" on your view list now, it'll soon be discontinued as "too difficult for the majority of our subscribers."

I'm worried this is the underlying reason, which would be a blow to their image as far as I'm concerned.

I hope I'm wrong. I enjoy using Netflix, but if I'm right, I'll probably drop the service. I hate when companies try to pull a fast one on their customers.

I love that post from the product manager. "Our customers are dum-dums so we're punishing all of you, even the smarties."

Email sent.

What a shock - the community forums just happen to be offline now.

I have registered my displeasure as well.

So I just went ahead and combined all three of our profiles (wife, kid's & mine). This is going to suck because now you have to mix up your queue to ensure everyone gets a movie to watch when they come in

The mutliple profiles thing was one of my favorite features with Netflix...and the one I most often have missed since switching to BBOnline.

Now I can look down the street to the Blockbuster store a block away and finally be 100% convinced I made the right choice.

This Tieman guy is right on, I'm in the exact same situation - except my wife doesn't have a penchant for noir. I use the two DVDs in my profile to grind through as many as I can in a month, to get my money's worth. While my wife's single DVD will often sit around for a month.

And that's really been my favorite feature of Netflix, in the short one year I've been a member. Initially, I just managed one profile and tried to ensure a "wife pick" was always at home. But once I was aware of setting up multiple profiles, I was very pleased with the ability to independently manage queues.

This notification was a big disappointment, and I emailed them my feelings.

I'm one of those people who jumped the gun and combined all of his profiles

Huzzah! Democracy in action!

That's actually pretty awesome. Not the keeping profiles thing (which is great) but a company listening and responding to customers. Can we have Netflix run the airlines?

And I agree with RyanC about scratched disks - not overly surprised or disappointed that it happens with this business model but DAMN some people must be trogledytes with these discs.

Glad to see that Netflix listened and acted accordingly. Good on them.

The scratched disks - HATE. I swear, they're going to think I'm damaging these myself with the amount of unplayable disks I send back. The ones that floor me are the actual broken ones - BROKEN! I got a movie that was actually in two pieces, cracked right down the middle (if memory serves, it was All The Pretty Horses). How on earth do you not notice that before you ship?

I've been searching around the Netflix site for far too long, and I can't figure out exactly how to set up multiple profiles. Could anyone help clue my dumb ass in?

When you are logged in, you should see a link for "Your Account" in the upper right corner.

Click through, then in the "Account Information" box mid-screen you should see a link for "Account Profiles."

Click through and there should be a link for "Add Profiles."

Enjoy.

It's happened to us a few times, and it was clear that the mailman slammed the door to our apartment's mailbox on the disc. The envelope was still stuck when we retrieved it. I doubt that Netflix would send out clearly broken discs.

Thanks. This is what I was afraid of: there is no link for "Account Profiles" in the Account Management box. Even did a Find box search for it.

Multiple profiles are why I upgraded from one-at-a-time to three-at-a-time today. So either they're only keeping multiple profiles for those that already have them, or something needs to register in my account to reflect the upgrade. I'm really hoping it's the latter.

If they're not letting people who didn't use the feature initially start it up now, that would be very bad timing on my part, because it was always my plan to put multiple profiles on my account once I moved in with my girlfriend. I will contact customer service and see how that goes before making any hasty judgments.

Let us know what's the result. I was just about to do the same and add my girlfriend to my account.

I just checked one of my co-worker's accounts and bendrix is correct. It appears that creating multiple user profiles has been disabled for anyone who was not previously utilizing them. Interesting approach.

Fuck that noise.

I value the service, but I also have a really nice video rental store nearby. This kind of thing really chafes me. Don't want to overreact, but like I said, this was the plan all along.

My girlfriend pays them $12.99 for two movies.

I pay them $8.99 for one.

Apart, we pay $22; together, we pay $16.99.

But then again, now that I'm moved in, I'm not paying $5 extra just to have two separate accounts.

They're betting that I'll just shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh, well." I'm sure it costs man hours to keep the multiple profiles up and functioning properly. I can even understand not offering it to new members, since it was never offered as a feature to them. But I upgraded my account contingent on having that feature available to me, and might have even just canceled my one movie, riding on my girlfriend's coattails. So I'll call them this afternoon and see what's what.

I subscribed to BBOnline after reading this thread and realizing that one of Netflix's only real advantages has gone up in smoke.

BB wins, because I can dump the movies I watch at the store, as well as in the mailbox. Plus, a few free flicks from the store each month. Had they kept the profiles feature for new subscribers, I'd have gone with Netflix for the convenience of keeping myself and the lady happy.

This is clearly a decision based on maximizing profit per household. I've no idea what the realistic effect of this will really be, but I'd be very unsurprised to see their customers migrate over to BB as a result, whether its in protest, or just because BB now offers a more convincing array of convenience features in comparison.

EDITED TO ADD:

Of course, Netflix's planned digital delivery system might have something to do with this as well - I'd suspect that the system they (and amazon, and many others, I'm sure) are developing will be aimed at families first and foremost, and may replace the need for multiple queues - leaving the notion of online queueing for those of us without the desire/need to spend a chunk of cash on new hardware.

Does anyone just go to their local video rental store anymore? Maybe they don't always have exactly what you're looking for, but I love going with my kids and looking over all of the choices together, and really making a night of it. Feels a little more like an activity than just waiting for a movie to show up in the mailbox.
Damn you kids and your MTV.

Fuck video rental stores. Fuck the lack of product stock. Fuck the messy shelves that haven't been organized in the last century. Fuck the teenagers they hire that couldn't care less about you as a customer. Fuck ridiculous late fees. And fuck stores that decide what is appropriate and what isn't appropriate to carry.

A few years ago I won a free year of rentals from Blockbuster. That year was all the exposure I needed to that clusterfuck of a chain. I'll GLADLY hand over my $20 a month to Netflix to avoid it.

I like going to the store too, but as Tieman colorfully puts it, the selection is usually lacking, the staff is usually incompetent...unless you're going to pick up a new release, or something for the kiddies, you're out of luck.

The number of older films (and this includes films from the '90s at this point) that stores simply don't stock is staggering. If I want to rent the new Apatow comedy, I'll hit the store. If I want to watch the double-disc version of High Noon, I have no choice but to rent online.

Good news, everyone. Profiles return for new users July 15th:

http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962

That page wasn't linked to Help when I was searching initially. They must have put it up just recently.