Netflix has decided to overhaul their subscription plans, splitting their disc- and streaming-plans into separate options. For those who use just one or the other, it isn’t such a bad move. The base one-DVD-at-a-time plan is now $7.99/month, and the unlimited streaming plan remains $7.99 a month. But you might see the problem already. If you want to use streaming and have the option of getting a DVD, it is now $15.98 a month – it used to be $9.99.
This is exactly the option my fiancee was given in an email today. Her solution? Drop Netflix entirely. She used to use Netflix a lot before she moved in with me last September, but she didn’t have a DVR at her place and here we have TiVo. So she almost always has something recorded she can watch. (Not to mention I have a frighteningly large DVD/BD collection.) She also recently signed up for a Hulu Plus account, which is only $7.99 for her (she’s in grad school, so she qualifies for the student rate), and she finds Hulu Plus has more of what she wants that Netflix streaming. The initial idea was just to try Hulu Plus out, to see how it was, now it looks like it is the one she’ll be keeping.
Without this price change we probably would’ve kept Netflix out of inertia, since we do use it from time to time (her more than I). But since they made the change and forced her to think about the new plans, it gave her reason to reconsider subscribing at all.
And she’s not alone. It looks like Dave Zatz, over at Zatz Not Funny, was faced with the very same choice – and made the same decision to cancel. It looks like Hulu Plus was also the big winner in his case. Along with Amazon, Apple, and Redbox. And there’s more.
What about you? What do you think about the new Netflix plans and pricing? Has it made you reconsider your options?
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