Netflix is shipping again

Netflix has fixed or patched whatever problem it had that shut down its 55 distribution centers this week, and has begun shipping DVDs again.

While the company has not disclosed the nature of the issue that prevented it from operating, it has announced its program to make up for its lapse of service. Netflix customers who were affected by the delay will get a 15 percent credit on the amount of their next monthly bill. New customers still in the free trial will get an additional week before their subscription becomes paid.

Fifteen percent is a token refund, but it seems to be mollifying most Netflix users. For some customers, though, a dashed stay-at-home date night or other event planned around movies by mail can't be fixed by a credit that will top out at $3.75. These users are making their frustrations known on the Neflix blog, in response to a post about the resumption of service, which says, "Millions of our members will receive DVDs on Saturday, in time (we hope) for some weekend movie enjoyment."

See also: Worst Web glitches of 2008, so far.

[mazzthepianoman]

Personally for me a few days of shipping issues with Netflix does not even begin to undermine the positive feelings I have for their service. People should stop being so frustrated and learn to enjoy a little time outside for a change.

[PBMpharmacist]

I cancelled my account as Neflix has been just plain awful through this whole experience. I signed up with Blockbuster online and they shipped a movie within 24 hours

[Kreuzer33]

Thank you Netflix! Good to have you back!

http://kreuzer33.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/netflix-finally-back-to-normal/

[pulladoublefull]

I had absolutely loved Netflix when I first signed up for their service about a year and a half ago, but It seems in the last 6 months my DVDs were always taking a day longer for Netflix to ship or they were never available at my local shipping center so it would take an extra 3-4 days to get a movie. This was the last straw so I downgraded my plan to the minimum amount so I still get unlimited instant watch(which I love, especially for travel) and I switched to BlockBuster and so far I really like BlockBuster(but I liked Netflix this early in our relationship too). I guess I will see what happens but Netflix totally dropped the ball for me.

[benjimen]

Wow... cancelled a membership over something like this? How petty is that? Stuff happens. You'll find Blockbuster fine for mainstream stuff, but vary from that path to far and you'll be missing Netflix -- much better selections when you're looking for films and TV stuff a little off the beaten path. Best of luck to you :)

[pulladoublefull]

For me the outage didn?t make me cancel it was everything that led up to this "technical error" that was frustrating me and this just put me over the edge. Plus now I have both(although netflix is only one DVD at a time). But it was getting to the point where I could only get 3 movies a week max and say that there are 4 weeks in a month that?s over a dollar a movie(3*4=12 movies and my plan is like $16/ month so that is about $1.34/movie). To put this in perspective before I was able to get about 6 movies per week so that would make my total cost per DVD about $0.67. I know it sounds crazy but the other benefit is there is a blockbuster right around the corner from my house. Hopefully this will work better than before.

[jeremy.pickett]

I love netflix, and I hope they can get me the last disc from season 3 of Battlestar as fast as they can :)

With that little snark being said, frankly I really, really, hope they will release a public analysis of what went wrong and why. The reason I would love to see this is simple--failure analysis on incredibly large distributed systems is hard to understand, very difficult to plan for, and even more difficult to recover from.

I just hope netflix can make this a learning experience for us all. In the meantime, I may go out and buy what I can of season 4 just in case :D

[xanpyzz]

This is my favorite service. With the watch instantly - it is still the best. Take a look at what Apple TV and the PS3 service will cost you to use. Netflix always tries to be fair and honest. This did not bother me! No big deal!

[cyberrobert]

I'll let Netflix slide on this one. Every company can run into some problems and have an outage. Other then this outage, I have never had a problem with netflix.

I am a cancer patient in MA, so I watch a lot of movies. I"ve found netflixs service to be excellent. If I mail a moive back on a Monday, then Tuesday afternoon I get an email saying that they received the move, by the evening I get another email saying that my next movie has been shipped and by Wednesday my new movie is in my mailbox. I love the service.

I recently bought the Roku box. Talk about simple, it took me 5 mins to plug it in, and set it up. A few mins later I was watching my first movie. Best $99 I ever spent!

Keep up the good work Netflix!

[geekadoo]

I was sort of annoyed as I ordered some dvds to take on a family beach trip. But when they didn't come, I had to find something else. It was an inconvenience, and we missed a few videos we wanted to watch, but that's life.

By the way, not only are they making the refunds, but my queue says that I currently have the top movies in my queue along with 3 extra dvds coming in the mail right now. I think that they are doing everything they can to make up for their mistake.

They said they were sorry, the said they would do something to make up for it, and then they did a little more than they said they would do. Seems like pretty good customer service to me.

[markdl2000]

I've had Netflix since 2002 I believe, and this is the first time there has ever been a problem as far as I know. For people who cancel their service because of this, it's your loss, and I pray you don't have children. Your lack of patience would make you a scary parent.

[tanweb]

Wow! Some of you people need to get a life. Complaining for spending over a dollar a movie... You watch way too many movies.

I love Netflix... and this hasn't changed my opinion of them what-so-ever. Of course, I'm a much more casual user of their service than some of these other folks.

[xwingsct]

Netflix has been saving me a lot of money from going to the store. Three days outage is not even a big thing for me. But it was nice of them to do that though giving everybody 15% credit.

[AMXP]

I think Netflix did a good job of keeping everyone informed of what was going on. I logged in and was flagged by a message letting me know what was going on. Things are going to happen it's just a part of life. In any event can't wait for Charley Bartlett to arrive by mail!

[feedflixer]

For Netflixers out there who are trying to figure out if they're getting the most of out of their subscription, please take a look at FeedFlix.com which is a free service and super easy to use.