Am I detecting some problems with Netflix lately?  Not just from from their recent amateurish actions that alienated many of their customers but something even deeper.  As a Netflix power user, I’m beginning to see some troubling things.  Just to clarify though, I’m a subscriber of their DVD’s through the mail program only – I do not care for their streaming service since the latest debacle.  It was a nice add when it was included in the monthly fees but I’m not going to pay for it.  I understand Netflix wants to move here for growth and what they were trying to accomplish but full transparency would have been a better explanation (i.e. the content owners, read Hollywood, wants to charge more for digital content so sorry, we have to pass that on to you… but no, Netflix didn’t say that was the reason.  Dumb, dumb, dumb)

In any case, it used to be that the Netflix queue was super responsive.  That is, when DVD’s are sent back, the queue almost immediately shows that they’re received and the next DVD’s in line are being prepared for shipment.  Once they ship, they move to the part of the queue showing the DVD’s at home and an email arrives in my inbox.  Now, I don’t even get emails until after the fact and sometimes way after.  Additionally, the queue will show that some DVD’s are received and others are not while I know for a fact that they all have been.  They were all mailed back together for example and invariably much later in the day those DVD’s would then show it us received.  This did not happen previously.

Also, the queue ships out of order.  Sometimes DVD #10 gets shipped first and it’s happening with more regularity.  I tend to strategize my queue by placing the most wanted DVD’s or new releases at the top position and it used to work pretty well.  Now it’s a crap shoot.  Then there was a day recently when the queue disappeared altogether and I was told that if I wanted to receive DVD’s quickly I should keep my queue stocked.  Well, it was stocked and lost by the system somehow.  That day nothing shipped out.  But then miraculously the queue came back but seemingly out of order.  Later it resolved itself and things went back to the order I had left them in.

However, these strange events have me wondering if there’s something up with Netflix.  Maybe when they were getting ready to split the service between the streaming Netflix and the ill-fated DVD only business Qwikster they screwed up the system somehow.  Or it was at that point but when they tried to reverse course and bring everything back together.  Any way, it may be nothing but these are things that have not happened before and it just got me wondering if there are bigger problems at Netflix then we know about.  Only time will tell I suppose.