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March 25, 2008

Did you notice a slowdown in your service this week? I did: I have the 2nd-lowest service level, 1-movie-at-a-time, unlimited per month for $9. I mailed back my previous movie last Thursday. With my local USPS service, this usually means that Netflix will receive it by Friday. But, apparently either Netflix or the Post Office had the day off for Good Friday. And since Saturdays are not "work" days for Netflix either (I have not ever received a delivery notice from Netflix on a Saturday or Sunday), therefore I expected that I'd receive notice of receipt early Monday 3/24/2008 and later that day a "sent" notice for my next movie.

Instead, I received the notice of receipt in the late evening of 3/24, presumably after Netflix was back up and operating, and didn't receive notice of next movie mailed until Tuesday. Yuck--that's three and a half days later than I had anticipated. So if you saw a similar lag in service, you're not alone.

Later in the day on Tuesday 3/25/2008, however, Netflix sent its customers an email with a letter of apology about the outage, plus an automatic compenstation (a percentage off the monthly fee). Here is the text of the email:

We're Sorry Your DVD Was Delayed

Dear Customer,

As you may have heard, our shipping system was unexpectedly down for most of Monday. We should have shipped you a DVD but were unable to. Your DVD was shipped today, Tuesday, March 25th, instead.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We will issue a 5% credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. The credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement.

Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1 (888) 638-3549.

-The Netflix Team

For more information, visit this external link:

January 2008

Netflix has given its customers (except at the lowest service level) unlimited online viewing for free! Previously, customers could view for free 1 hour per month per subscription dollar per month, but they have now increased this to unlimited online viewing for their ~6,000 online movie and TV titles.

Here is the text of the email they sent to their customers:

Dear Customer,

As part of your current Netflix subscription, you have the option to watch some movies and TV episodes from the Netflix library instantly on your PC at no additional charge. Now, we've made it unlimited!

So watch instantly on your PC when you want, and as often as you want. Select from our separate, smaller library of over 6,000 familiar movies and TV episodes available to watch instantly.

- Your friends at Netflix

For more information, visit this external link: