Tag Archive for Changes

WTF Netflix? Why Do You Keep Changing Everything?

So a week or so ago I noticed my Instant Queue was gone from the top of my Netflix page. WTF? It was replaced by a horrible scrolling bar called ‘Your List’. Why? Why change things? I hate the damn scrolling bars for the movies, I try and always click through to the sort of old style pages. Now they’ve forced me to use that horrible scrolling bar system by just totally eliminating my instant queue.

I’ve been seriously thinking of trying Amazon Prime, and I think now is the time to do it really.

There’s an old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and that very much applies here to Netflix. Sure I get the whole changing it for the iPad and mobile interfaces and even the TV interface but why not at least give the people who are giving you money a choice at how they want it? You just force these changes upon us.

When it first happened I tweeted about it to the Netflix support or helps or whatever it’s called and apparently they didn’t even know it changed as they told me oh just refresh your browser or login and logout and then it should reappear. Yeah, none of that worked, I’m stuck with the sucky scroll bar for my Instant Queue now. I have 19 things in my queue right now and it takes 7 seconds to scroll to the end to see them all. Can you imagine if I had say 30 things in my queue?  That’s ridiculous.

The PC interface is not a mobile interface, so why do I have to scroll? It’s slow and I hate it.

My Instant Queue list right now is small and I keep deleting things from it as it takes so damn long to scroll through it. What the hell was wrong with having the Instant Queue? it worked just fine, everything was listed right there on the page for you to see and pick what you wanted to watch.

Dear Netflix

I guess you could call this an open letter to Netflix or a list of my gripes and complaints, questions and suggestions.

The service which supposedly would make viewers want to trade in their old DVDs at musicMagpie and take to online movie watching every time. It would do if these points were addressed first

1. I still hate the new user interface, the scrolling just annoys me, can I get the old one back please?

2. What the hell is with the new ‘feature’ of ‘Continue Watching’ at the top of the page now? I didn’t ask for that, nor do I want it! Can I make it go away? How can I continue watching something that I already watched? I finished the movie, but yet it’s there in my ‘Continue Watching’ section. I really HATE this new ‘feature’ and I want it to go away. I’m an adult so I watch R rated movies, (especially the horror movies, love them), but I have kids and I don’t want to see naked boobs or similar on the top of my screen when my kids are around. Many times your continue watching screen grabs aren’t the most flattering. Something needs fixed there as I do let my kids watch Netflix at times and they don’t need to see that just yet as they’re rather young.

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3. What is the deal with the Top 10 for me? It’s a list of things I’ve watched and haven’t watched. I could see if it was a top 10 list of things I’ve watched, my top rated stuff, but it isn’t. I could see if it was a top 10 list of suggestion for me, but it isn’t. I don’t know what the hell it is but I don’t think I’ve ever picked anything from the list.

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4. What the hell is the ‘Based on your search’ thing? I was searching for a movie, I was only searching for that movie because I wanted to watch it. I didn’t want suggestions based on my search, I wanted to watch that particular movie only. I searched for it to see if I could watch it on Instant. If I wanted to find things like what I was searching for then I would search for things like that. I was looking for one particular movie only. Can we make this go away?  Oftentimes you’ll show a ‘based on your search’ for something that I don’t even remember searching for or something that I searched for last year!? What good does that do me?

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5.The whole ‘More Like’ thing? if you’re going to suggest things, please make them at least CLOSE to what it’s supposed to be more like. ‘Analyze That’ is NOTHING AT ALL like River Monsters. How the hell is ‘Eddie and The Cruisers II’ more Like ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’? Sure it stars the same person but it’s nothing ‘like’ it at all.

6. TV Shows out of order, I like TV Shows, many times I’ll find something I’ve never seen and watch it and enjoy it very much. I’ll go and watch TV shows that I missed when they aired.  So why is it so hard to put the TV shows in the order they aired? I’ve run across it several times now with TV shows episodes just totally random ordered. Seriously, it’s not that hard to put them in the order they aired. if you’re not sure go stop over at IMDB and you can get the order they aired in, really simple to do.

7. Missing episodes? Here’s another one about TV Shows. Why put incomplete seasons up? That’s just pointless really it is and all it does is piss people off.

8. FIX your errors! The dumbass recurring n8156-6013 error is still not fixed. Also I don’t like being blamed for the error, you’re little error message sometimes blames me saying it could be my internet connection or something else I did wrong like the time on my computer. My question is how can my internet be down if I’m browsing the Netflix site and seeing the error? The time is correct on my computer, maybe the time on your computer is wrong?! We all know it’s a problem with Netflix and Silverlight, so why don’t you get together with Microsoft and fix the errors once and for all? Netflix blames Microsoft and Microsoft blames Netflix, it’s ridiculous.

9.Speaking of errors and blaming. When you’ve got a problem, don’t blame the customer. The similar error message comes up blaming my internet connection or the time on MY computer when you’ve got an issue with your system. If Netflix is having problems I’ll check Twitter and see many other people are having outages, but yet your error message blames me for the problem. If you’ve got a problem own up to it and don’t blame us.

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10. What happened to the ratings? Yes they’re there on the movie page, but not on the pop out. It just gives Netflix’s best guess for me. What good does that do me? I want to know what other people might think of the movie, I don’t want to know what you think I might think of the movie. FYI: You’re wrong 90% or more of the time anyway as to what you think I’ll rate something, so it really does me no good at all.

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11.Another one about TV Shows for you, what the hell is this new ‘feature’ about automatically starting the next episode? It’s annoying, please make it stop or give us the option to use it or not. If I’m watching TV shows I’ll use the time between them to go to the bathroom, get a drink or snack. The first time this happened it was rather annoying as I come back and the show is just playing away and I had to restart it. What’s the point of that? This is not what I would consider a ‘feature’ or an improvement at all.

12. Here’s a suggestion for you, how about searching by actor? Yes there is the option but it doesn’t exactly work all the time the way it should. Many times I’ll want to see something and forgot the name of the movie or show but I know who starred in it and it would be really nice to be able to search by actor. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it gives me a nice grid of the movies they starred in, other times it gives me a list of a few movies and then a bunch of others that they weren’t in. I don’t care about the movies they weren’t in.

 

Well that’s just a few things off the top of my head….

Don’t get me wrong, I love you Netflix but you really piss me off at times, especially the stupid ass things you do to supposedly ‘improve’ our viewing experience.