We have been two at a time Netflixers since way back when. A couple years ago they threw in streaming from the cloud for FREE. At first they limited the amount of time you were allotted by how many DVDs your plan allowed, then they bumped it to unlimited streaming (still FREE.)
Today I received an email from the fine folks at Netflix:
Dear Brian,
We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.
Your current $14.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:
Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 2 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $11.99 a month
From $15 to $20 on September 1 for the same thing, that is a 33% increase. The folks that were in it at 1 DVD and unlimited streaming got zapped for even more, they are going from $10 to $16 or 60%.
Our 2 DVDs were separated into 1 for TV shows and 1 for movies. But we are running out of TV shows we want to watch, Law & Order (The Mother Ship) is the last one and while we are only on Season 8 of 20, #8 is the last one available on DVD. The rest are tied up with exclusive rerun deals with cable TV. So today I went ahead and changed our plan from 2 to 1 DVD at a time and kept the streaming portion. Even with the downgrade in service it will still cost us a buck more when the price goes up in September.
I’m going to see just how much we stream per month, which is mostly me on the laptop watching stuff that wouldn’t appeal to Donna. Maybe we will just drop the streaming altogether and go back to getting 2 DVDs at a time for the $12.
I think if they eased up the price, in what I call The How To Boil Frog Method, it wouldn’t have been too bad and maybe not have inflamed users like me into doing something rash. After all, how much does it cost per month for HBO? $20?