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Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Consumer Alerts: Netflix Plan Change; Costco Tandoori Wrap

 The email the other day told me that the plan I'm on with Netflix is being discontinued.  They announced that I would save 40%.  But then in the smaller print it said, I'd get ads at that lower price.  

A few short ads.  Few is pretty vague.  So is short.  Anything over 5 seconds is too long for me.  And in the middle of a movie?  That's sacrilege. 

"Designed not to interrupt you during a scene" - So does this mean at the end of the scene, but in the middle of the movie, they will interrupt?  Totally unacceptable.  

My current bill is $11.99 per month.  That's up from $9.99 a month not that long ago. [I looked on line.  Seems they announced the increase in June 2023 and it went into effect in October 2023, best as I can tell.]

That's less than a year ago.  Can we expect annual bumps from now on? 

Compared to going to the theater, Netflix is a great deal.  So great that we find we are spending way too much time watching.  At least we limit to after dinner, generally not starting until 8:30 or 9:30.  And trying to end around 11pm.

But as I think about it, we lose a lot of reading time and a lot of time when we used to talk to each other.  And I have noticed that blogging gets cut back by Netflix.  

So I replied that we did not want ads and were ready to cut loose from Netflix. 

I got another email - My current plan would end September 30.  I replied that our Netflix addiction would end September 30.  Of course, the emails from Netflix were not ones you could reply to and I got notices that they weren't delivered.  

Prices go up because people are willing to suck it up and keep paying.  In this case I need to figure out how to let Netflix know, I don't plan to pay after September.  


Meanwhile, I had to go to Costco to get a repair on one of my hearing aids - which they did and it worked.  But as I gathered some fruits and veggies and fresh salmon, I saw some Tandoori Chicken Wraps.  Looked good and they had a $2 off sign, so I thought we could try them.  

Today, when I looked to see if and how to heat them up, I saw there were no directions.  Just the longest list of ingredients I can remember ever seeing.  



From what I could tell checking a Reddit discussion, you were supposed to eat them cold.  We did.  

Boring!!  (Does it make sense to put exclamation points after boring?  Probably not)  Despite all the ingredients it didn't really taste like anything.  It was mushy. Avoid.  

Back To Netflix 

And if you have Netflix, and you're also unhappy about this, you can go to manage your account and play around until you find the contact button.  Then you have a choice of phone or chat.  

I chose chat, because I can make screenshots of what was said, but I'm pretty sure it was a bot responding.  When, at one point, I asked how many siblings do you have and where are you in the birth order, the response was 

"I'd be happy to answer Netflix-related questions today. Do you have any questions about your account or our service?"

At the end when they asked if I had more questions, I said that they hadn't answered whether they were a bot or human and the answer was "I am a human."  Must be depressing having people think you aren't human all day - assuming that was true.  

Maybe we need to have legislation requiring customers be told whether the chat or voice they are talking to is a human or not.  With consequences if they lie.   

I'd suggest people go into your accounts and tell them you are going to cancel your accounts at the end of September (or whenever your basic service ends).  If enough people do that, perhaps they will reconsider.  And you can always rejoin later if you have severe withdrawal symptoms.  

 

8 comments:

  1. Anything over 5 seconds is too long for me. And in the middle of a movie? That's sacrilege. Talk about first world problems. To the barricades!!!!!

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    1. Oooh. First World Problem. Actually, much of the world lives in the First World these days. When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Thailand in the late 60s, I was truly in a different world, even a different time. But my students grew up to have lives not all that different from the one I live in Anchorage. They have all the modern gadgets and are connected to their friends through Facebook and can order cameras or high tech water bottles through Amazon or local equivalents, and watch movies over Netflix. That's true of a certain part of the population in nearly every country. And yes, there are people in all those countries (some places more, some less) that are struggling, homeless, impoverished. But the First and Second and Third and Fourth worlds all now live in just about every country. It's not about here and there. Every country has great wealth and great poverty now.

      As to "the 5 seconds is too long" - I would totally agree with your criticism if I had been talking about waiting for a page to load or a video to start. I have just about the slowest internet speed in Anchorage (1mbps.) ACS won't even sell that slow a service anymore. I happen to be grandfathered in and I'm stuck with that decidedly NOT first world internet speed. I'm waiting for the fiber optic they promised last summer, and then for this summer, and now it's put off until 2025. But I did live in Thailand and I have a lot of patience and I can breathe deeply and relax while I wait, sometimes up to minutes, for my ACS email to load or for other pages to appear.
      I was referring to interrupting movies with ads. Perhaps Anon you are not much of a movie fan. But people who make movies and who appreciate well made movies do not appreciate having the film maker's work being unceremoniously interrupted by Pizza Hut, or even worse, some scammy medicine man selling fake cures with graphic illustrations of diseased human anatomy. It's bad enough to have those before or after the film, but to stop the film to show such ads totally interrupts the flow of the story, the mood of the film. It's like having an add for Coke embedded in Monet's Water Lillies. Have you watched a YouTube video of a famous musician playing a magical piece being interrupted for a cure for colon problems? If those interruptions don't bother you, I doubt there's much anyone could do to change your mind. You've been captured by modern capitalism's marketing juggernaut, whose sole purpose is to get as much money from all of us as is possible.

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  2. HI Steve. Yes, read about this change coming your way on Netflix and thought to myself: 'No problem; we don't use it.' This, and the fact that Eugene and I both have more than a few cousins over here: Eugene, in N. Ireland and I, in Norway, that we've gotten to know much better.

    And yes, while we have a 38 inch (measured diagonally, of course) Samsung Artframe tv on a wall in our garden (facing) room -- we don't watch much, as we do those things called 'going out'.

    Moving away from the temptation to follow Netflix or whatever is a good thing: We walk more (well, that and NOT owning a car), we meet folks more, we read more. I've taken up my music again. You and I both grew up in that 1st generation stuck to a screen -- what was called the 'boob tube' for obvious reasons. What name describes our mobile phone culture today?

    So, I'll finish my little report from Ireland to mention it's SO WELCOME to see the recent turn of events in the US presidential contest. I, for one, am feeling better about the Old Country these days (as we refer to the USA and Alaska).

    Good on Biden and we're all in for Democracy to have its second chance.

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    1. Thanks. I'm encouraged by your carlessness [auto correct at first turned that into carelessness, good thing I proof read and catch some of the errors] and your explorations of your surroundings and reconnections with long lost relatives. I do want to say that Netflix has given us a lot of great movies - many from countries around the world - that we never would have seen otherwise. It was particularly appreciated during pandemic lockdown. It's expanded my mind many times. But we also have ended up watching things that were not so good when we could have been doing other things. It's a question of slipping into bad habits. A break from Netflix will be good. We can always go back - one month of unlimited viewing will still cost less that two tickets to one showing of one movie at a theater - but with more discipline and more evenings without it.

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    2. Your carlessness and my carelessness. I forgot to fill in my id info and so it says anonymous. It used to be Blogger filled all that stuff in automatically, but that changed. Now I have to do it like everyone else.

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  3. Don't know a thingie about Netflix, but I do get some commercials while watching favorite music vids on Youtube. I will not give in and subscribe to any music service, commercial free or not. There are some great books avaiable for free on the internet and I have numerous books available here in iowa, believe it or not.

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