photo credit benzinga.com
Netflix customers are MAD. The media giant has been all over the news the last couple of days because of their recent announcement that they were undergoing a price increase of nearly 60%! Customers in the Streaming/DVD plan that currently charges $9.99 a month were emailed this week and informed that starting in September the plans would be offered separately. This means, instead of unlimited streaming content and unlimited DVD’s each month (one out at a time) for $9.99, they will now be charged $7.99 a month for each plan – which comes out to $15.98 a month.
Some Netflix customers called it a slap in the face. Others a betrayal. Many threatened to drop the movie service. By Wednesday afternoon, more than 40,000 people had responded to a post on Netflix’s Facebook page announcing the change, with some saying they would switch to rivals such as Hulu.com’s paid service and to Redbox’s DVD-rental kiosks.
For consumers concerned about their financial bottom line, a price increase this steep is cause for concern. Imagine if all your monthly services took advantage of such huge percentages? I can’t imagine many people would be happy to get an $81 monthly increase from their cable TV provider or a $30 increase from their internet provider – I know I sure wouldn’t!
Netflix has been in aggressive growth-mode over the last several years, expanding their offerings and customer base rapidly. In fact, a recent report showed that nearly 7% of the entire American population subscribes to their services – to the tune of over 23 Million people. That’s a lot of people to anger if they make the wrong move!
So what do you think? Is it fair for Netflix to increase their fees this dramatically? With the cost of doing business and media prices rising, what is a fair increase? How much are you willing to pay for your DVD and streaming TV/Movie content? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
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