broadwayblue

Just received this email:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear broadwayblue,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Pretty sucky improvement in my opinion.

Neeperando

Absolutely absurd. I sent them an e-mail complaining. Some others places I've seen people say that they called and the CSRs said that they are getting rid of it because it slows the website down too much considering the number of people that use it (about 1%).

bobert3

I'm going to Netflix.com right now to complain about this. This has worked great for my wife and me. She gets her movies, and I get mine. And to make it worst, I have to merge the two queues together, no way, they should do that for me.

broadwayblue

I sent them an email as well, blasting them for this terrible idea. Doubt it will do anythying, but I truly wonder how this will benefit anyone.

Numanoid

Never used 'em.

BravesMG

This is really stupid, I'm starting to loathe Netflix lately. They've sent me just about everything possible other than stuff at the top of my queue for no reason, their BD selection is starting to suck again, and they're taking away the one thing that my wife liked about the site. I'm actually debating going back to the damn video store, Hollywood Video seems to have really stocked up on BD titles when I was in there looking for PV HD-DVDs.

funkyryno

My wife and I are not happy about this. It's much easier for us to have separate queues.

If Blockbuster offered profiles, we'd jump ship.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I'm going to write a letter to my congressman!!! Then I'm going to get Mr. Whiskers, my cat, to help me write a letter to the newspaper. I bet they run a huge story on this bait and switch/theft of services operation. How dare they remove features I use!!!

I've never use the feature before but I remember you used to be able to make custom lists of movies, which I had to do since I wanted more movies than the queue supported. It looks like they made the lists have a max of 10 movies now which is dumb if they're going to remove profiles. At least give people another way to keep a list of movies longer than 10.

Gerry P.

What a joke. I have a seperate queue where I keep titles with an "unknown" status. It's nearly 200 entries long and won't fit into my main queue.

As a customer, it's sure hard not to have a love/hate relationship with Netflix.

Chrisedge

So how did this work? (I have Netflix) Wife and I always had same queue...Would it ship one from "profile one" and one from "profile two"?

Numanoid

How the heck can you have a queue with hundreds of titles?

It would take years just to get through that queue, and that's provided you don't add anymore. I think some of you guys are using the queue when you should be simply using the normal catalog instead.

Tracer Bullet

I have over 300 titles in my queue. When I hear about something I want to see, I add it. What the hell is the catalog?

DavidTalk

How can the feature be bogging down the site if they claim only 1% of people are using it ? And for the people who DO use it, it is a critical feature. If you are a NetFlix user and didn't know about this feature, then you either live alone, or don't rely on DVD's for your spare time entertainment the way some do. If you are a member of a household family, I'd be very surprised if you didn't know about this feature.
I personally thought virtually all multi-member households used this feature. The idea that I now have to stagger one gigantic list to rotate documentary, home theater, kids, and something I can watch with my wife is beyond tedious. If I don't stay on my toes, I'll end up with 3 documentaries and nothing for anyone else, or Spy Kids 1, 2 and 3 and nothing for the grown ups. Queues aren't a feature under NetFlix. For me, Netflix IS queues of movies.
By the way, for people who's minds are blown by the concept of this unheard of feature. Suppose you have 5-at-a-time. You can break it up so 1 is documentary, 1 is romance/comedy, 2 are home theater (spectacle), and 1 is kids'.
The way I see it, its a way for NetFlix to get one household to actually register multiple accounts. They see queues as doing you too much of a favor. Now my kids' need an account, my wife needs an account. etc. THIS JUST BLOWS. I am considering cancellation.
Have a happy Thursday.

An4h0ny

??

i get through everything pretty quickly

making a huge queue is half the fun of nflix, imo

broadwayblue

http://www.petitiononline.com/netflix0/petition.html

Gerry P.

I'm guessing you haven't seen many movies.

...and what is "the normal catalog?" Is it a feature Netflix provides?

Ginwen

Yeah wondering that too. The way netflix works for me is I put things a queue, and it sends me the first one available. My wife and I use separate queues, if I'm watching more I get two, if she's watching more I switch it so she gets two. Going to be more of a pain managing one queue, but I'll manage.

Numanoid

Guess again. I average 5-6 Netflix movies a week. Still, at that rate, I can only go through a queue of 300 movies in one year. And that's without adding new ones along the way. Yeah, it's called their database. Simply rearranging it and calling it your queue seems kind of silly. Those movies are still going to be in the database when you dwindle your current queue down to, oh, a hundred or so.

clckworang

I'm another one who has hundreds of movies in my queue. Like Gerry P. said, you hear of some obscure movie that you might be interested in and you toss it in, knowing that you might forget about it later. When you think you might be in the mood for a title like that, you movie it to the top. I thought that was how Netflix worked.

And I'm not filling my queue with the idea that I'm going to watch all those movies in a year. I'm putting them in my queue with the idea that at some point in my lifetime I would like to see that particular movie. I don't understand what's so strange about doing that, especially when you take into account that a lot of TV shows have 6 discs to a season.

As for this profile thing, I guess that because I'm a single guy I have never heard of this option, but it sounds like something that could have cleared out some clutter.

An4h0ny

Mikael79

I signed the petition, even though I don't have Netflix anymore. I know that these online petitions have worked in the past, and I'll all about helping out other DVD fanatics.

aJOHNymous

Never used the feature myself, though I completely understand how it can be useful to those with a larger household than 2 people.

Netflix service has been pretty sketchy for me lately so this comes as no real surprise. I'm still gonna stick with them for awhile because of the one day turnaround versus BB's 2-3 day.

That said, I can't help but laugh at the comments to this issue over at hackingnetflix. Those guys are losing their fucking minds:

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2008/0...x-elimina.html

EdTheRipper

Same for me. I tend to populate my list using the new release list. Not everything is must see immediately so those stay at the bottom of the queue. Eventually they'll either work their way to the top or they'll be passed over as I add stuff.

mndtrp

I've always wanted to use the profile feature to have separate queues, one for tv shows, one for new movies, one for old movies. Since my ratings didn't go between profiles, it wasn't useful. I simply manage my queue myself, which isn't too difficult, even with 500 movies.

I'm hoping the come up with some way to have multiple queues. If they don't, it isn't going to break my heart any.

HyperWeather

This is definitely something I will miss. I didn't usee this feature all the time but since I am constantly hitting the limit I set up a few other queues to hold overflow of things I'm not really sure when I will get around to watching, or when this forum is having a contest (like the horror challenge) I set up a queue just for that so I don't clutter up my main one and can designate how many I want to get for that and how many of my regular movies I watch.