Netflix Queue Reordering: Film at 11
If you have Netflix, beware: Last-minute decisions to reorder your queue most likely will be ignored.
Last night, Apple and I watched our nightly episode of 24, season two, disc two. The cliffhanger ending was so good, we decided to go ahead and watch another one. Afterwards it was almost 1:00 a.m., and since we’d just been through half the disc, we decided to fire up a computer and put disc three of 24 at the top of our queue. The next day, Netflix was going to be receiving a movie I returned, so the next 24 would ship out right away. While I was there, I also put disc four in the queue’s second slot.
This morning, I get up and what do I see? Netflix has not shipped disc three of 24, which I put at the top of the queue last night. Nor has Netflix even shipped disc four, which was right beneath it. Instead, they’ve picked the movie that used to be at the top of the queue. This movie was in third place after my reordering, and both discs of 24 show “Availability: Now,” so Netflix can’t have skipped over them because no copies were available.
Worse, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me lately — it’s more like the third or fourth time. Once, I even reordered the queue at 9:00 p.m. the night before Netflix was to ship my next film, and they ignored that, too.
The only thing I can assume is that you need to reorder your queue at least 12 hours in advance of Netflix taking action on it, possibly more. This seems idiotic to me. Don’t most people watch movies in the evenings, after getting home from work? What if, after you watch a film, you change your mind about something in your Netflix queue? What if you really liked the movie and want to get the disc of bonus materials, or watch the sequel? Or if the movie sucked, maybe you want to take the sequel off your list? Whatever the case, you better do it fast, or chances are you’re going to see Netflix act upon your queue as it used to be, not as it is.
I don’t know if this logic applies to every Netflix account, or if this is yet another way for them to punish us because we rent and return things quickly. I can tell you this, though: I’m starting to get sick of being made to feel bad for using a service I pay for.
Categorized as Media, Media/Movies, Rants
“I can tell you this, though: I’m starting to get sick of being made to feel bad for using a service I pay for.”
How very Catholic of them.
Heh, I haven’t told Apple about today’s foul-up yet…she’s going to be annoyed big time.
There seems to be a rash of this attitude in business lately, the whole idea of “Okay, enjoy the service! …Oh, wait…don’t enjoy it that much.” It’s particularly bad with cable and phone companies. Comcast High-Speed Internet has a hidden glass ceiling where, if you download too much, they cancel your account. The limit is unpublished and the company won’t reveal what it is, except to say that basically if you download significantly more than 90% of the other people in your local area, you could get cut.
That makes me wonder, if I live in a community of old fogies who only check their email, would I get ousted for downloading a 500 MB game demo one time?
Didn’t you also have a situation a while back when (I think) the Grand Prix was totaled, and you pretty much ended up doing the majority of legwork that you thought you were paying your insurance company for? So yeah, it seems that most companies hate their customers with a passion. Regardless, this kind of treatment is, to say the least, shabby. Especially when you pay through the nose for a particular “service”. But who needs to be nice to your customers? Consideration? What’s that?
You know, my initial comment was more of a snarky quip than anything (albeit a quip with a grain of truth to it), but more and more “real life” does seem to be like high school, what with secret, unpublished rules that come complete with disproportionate punishments. Who would have thought that place would be preparing us so well for life after school?
Just be careful if you’re ever in a building if a fire breaks out. You don’t want to take the wrong route to safety and be punished for it.