Are You Dumping Netflix?

[lexie2000]

Netflix announced today that they will be increasing their subscription rates. The basic plan will increase 12.5% (from $7.99 to $8.99). The standard plan will increase 18.2% (from $10.99 to 12.99). The top-tier plan will increase 14.3% (from $13.99 to $15.99). We have been considering getting a firestick and dropping Netflix. What say you?

[Summit111]

They are going the route of Apple and pricing themselves out of the market. Amazon Prime Video is similar and I’m on the fence about dropping Netflix.

Summit

[TropikThunder]

Netflix announced today that they will be increasing their subscription rates. The basic plan will increase 12.5% (from $7.99 to $8.99). The standard plan will increase 18.2% (from $10.99 to 12.99). The top-tier plan will increase 14.3% (from $13.99 to $15.99). We have been considering getting a firestick and dropping Netflix. What say you?

I say the sticker shock is much less when described as "Netflix is raising their rates by $2 again". I've had a Firestick before, and they're fine, but it's a receiver, it's not a content provider. You would still have to have a paid subscription to some content provider (Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling, Youtube TV, etc). You can even access your Netflix account via the Firestick.

[TropikThunder]

They are going the route of Apple and pricing themselves out of the market. Amazon Prime Video is similar and I’m on the fence about dropping Netflix.

Summit

Similar if you mean they both are streaming services, but they have very little content overlap (and probably less so over time as exclusive streaming agreements and home-grown programming become more common). It's not like deciding between cable and a dish.

[harvestbook]

Considering Netflix provides us far more than we could watch in a lifetime, and half a year costs about what three of us would spend on one trip to the cinema with snacks, we'll keep it.

We do have Prime as well, but we'd have it for the free shipping and free book a month anyway. I haven't had cable in 20 years.

[staythecourse]

So one is complaining about spending an extra $24 a YEAR on x? Are you that efficient with your purchases that is the lowest hanging fruit in your living expenses? I would think that would be the very top of that tree. There are probably HUNDREDS of things you can do to save that more then $24 per month so you can allocate that to the netflix bump and remain budget neutral.

To be honest, with the amount and quality of programming they have and continue to do I am not sure why they don't charge even more.

Good luck

[DrGoogle2017]

Is this the rate per month? I’m asking because I don’t subscribe to it but one of my kids does, I get Netflix free through her account. But honestly, we don’t watch Netflix, don’t use Prime, so we do t really care one way or another.

[stoptothink]

We and 2 of my other siblings are all on my mother's account; we share a premium account so our cost is going to go up a whopping $.50/month...I think we'll be OK. We are cutting Amazon Prime though, so not worth it at this point.

[H-Town]

Netflix announced today that they will be increasing their subscription rates. The basic plan will increase 12.5% (from $7.99 to $8.99). The standard plan will increase 18.2% (from $10.99 to 12.99). The top-tier plan will increase 14.3% (from $13.99 to $15.99). We have been considering getting a firestick and dropping Netflix. What say you?

No.

It's a small change. Don't you get pay raise at least due to inflation? Why can't Netflix get a raise?

[bmelikia]

I make bigger financial decisions at Taco Bell. . .no, I won't be "dumping" Netflix

[englishgirl]

It depends what use you make of it. I finally signed up for Netflix a few months ago after resisting it for so long. It is more than worth my $8 a month, which I guess will now be $9 a month. So, no, I won't be dumping them. After many years of streaming I can't seem to get back to watching programmed TV and I'm bored of YouTube. We don't have many free streaming services available to us right now, and I can only read for so many hours without going cross eyed. I would talk to my husband but he's enrolled in some college courses and is otherwise engaged. I am making a lot of use of it, so it is still worth it to me. I've tried Hulu and Prime video before and like Netflix best right now - I limit myself to one membership at a time to keep costs down. Every company raises its prices from time to time, so...meh. Inflation happens.

Now, if you are not using it, or have multiple paid streaming options, then you may want to reassess.

[LiterallyIronic]

We dumped it about six months ago. We only picked it up so my wife would have something simple to watch when she was up at night feeding the baby. After the baby started sleeping through the night, we dropped it. I thought we got pretty good value out of it and I could see us possibly picking it up again in the future, but only possibly. I prefer DVDs/Blu-rays for movies, so it would only be for watching TV series. I don't really miss it, though. What I do miss is randomly flipping through TV channels to see what is on.

[randomguy]

No.

It's a small change. Don't you get pay raise at least due to inflation? Why can't Netflix get a raise?

Changes like this are more of a reason for people to look at spending and then to decide if they are getting 150 bucks worth of value still or they are just subscribing because of habit.

[BogleFanGal]

Love netflix - a boglehead-style bargain in entertainment if I ever saw one! But think I'll take the opportunity to downgrade to basic - not that the cost is a big deal, but we have never really used the additional standard benefits at all.

[dknightd]

ha ha dump netflix, or buy netflix. Up to you. I'm not doing either this month

[KyleAAA]

No, I wouldn't dump them if they tripled the price. I get a ton of value out of their service.

[quantAndHold]

Netflix is pretty much all we watch. So...no.

[Frankieg48336]

Netflix announced today that they will be increasing their subscription rates. The basic plan will increase 12.5% (from $7.99 to $8.99). The standard plan will increase 18.2% (from $10.99 to 12.99). The top-tier plan will increase 14.3% (from $13.99 to $15.99). We have been considering getting a firestick and dropping Netflix. What say you?

I switched to Amazon prime 2 years ago and you get a lot more value. Especially with 4k content, shipping, prime reading and tons of apps like Pluto TV and Rubio, Sony crackle for free TV and movies.

[renue74]

All the providers do this. I remember when Playstation VUE was $29. Now it's up to $46.

We have Netflix, Hulu, Playstation VUE, and Prime. We share these with a full time airbnb we own, so that is an "expense," to some extent.

It's like anything else...we'll continue to pay for it until we absolutely get frustrated with it and don't get perceived enjoyment out of it any longer. Remind me to tell you about my $150/month Direct TV bill. (I'll never go back.)

Be a non-Boglehead and go buy some Netflix stock. It has room to run.

[Nate79]

Nope, awesome service even at the measly increase in price.

[benway]

I was thinking about this today. They seem to be really focused on improving and delivering more quality content so I’m inclined to continue at a higher price. I think it’s a good value for our household.

[canderson]

It’s still underpriced by a wide margin.

Netflix and Spotify are two of my favorite things to spend a tiny amount of money on vs return of investment.

[arcticpineapplecorp.]

why would i dump something i get for free? My mom's cable just threw it in her bill and didn't charge extra for it (because they're overcharging her to begin with). Before you say it's stealing, it's not. We checked with netflix and she has a two screen plan so she is one screen and I'm the other. freebie.

[sambb]

Price increase doesnt bother me at all. They could go much higher. Im far more puzzled by People who buy newspapers, and news is free on line. Netflix offers far more value to me than their price increase.

[jhfenton]

Not a chance. As others have said, it's a bargain. It's worth the $13.99 we pay now, and it'll be worth the $15.99 when they get around to raising the price for us. (In our account, the other tiers already show the price increase at $8.99 and $12.99, but our Premium tier still shows $13.99. We're on the Premium tier for both the UHD/4K and those occasions when more than two of us are watching it.)

I particularly value the wide array of non-English programming. I've never had access to so many TV shows and movies in French and Spanish. They have a brilliant strategy. They buy shows from all over the world and dub and sub-title them in a half dozen or more languages. And they do a good job with the dubbing. On the treadmill tonight I started watching "Le Parfum" in French. It is a German crime drama, also dubbed into English, French, Spanish, and Italian with subtitles in German, English, French, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. They did such a good job that it was easy to forget that it was dubbed.

We do not have cable, so what we watch is mostly over the air (via a digital tuner piped into Plex) or Netflix. We have Amazon Prime too, but that is mostly for the shipping. My older son and I have enjoyed "The Man in the High Castle", and I am anxiously waiting the return of "The Expanse" on Amazon Prime after Bezos saved it from extinction.

[Momus]

Be creative. Buy a higher subscription and share with 3 people. Until they block that... Share away...

[mcraepat9]

This is not worth my time to worry about. I will keep Netflix.

[gator15]

It's a couple of dollars so no I want Netflix. In fact, they should probably charge more.

[longleaf]

Because of their dropping of shows I desire to watch, I have already removed Netflix. There is a lot on Prime to discover, and I get more value from the other benefits of Prime to justify paying for it; this would just be another freebie.

[LadyGeek]

Discussions of dishonest behavior or bypassing the law is totally unacceptable.

I removed a post and reply suggesting use of an anonymous file server to view Netflix content. (This is beyond using a VPN.)

[SoonerD]

Netflix announced today that they will be increasing their subscription rates. The basic plan will increase 12.5% (from $7.99 to $8.99). The standard plan will increase 18.2% (from $10.99 to 12.99). The top-tier plan will increase 14.3% (from $13.99 to $15.99). We have been considering getting a firestick and dropping Netflix. What say you?

No.

It's a small change. Don't you get pay raise at least due to inflation? Why can't Netflix get a raise?

i distinctly remember our inhuman resources department telling me raises are based on the cost of labor not on inflation. this they said to justify not giving raises that year. anyway, i guess inflation in h-town was 18% last year?

I wonder if the Netflix employees in h-town will also get an 18% raise since that's the "raise" corporate earned this year?

OP, i would not support a service provider increasing my fee by 18%. i've dropped several companies when their rate of increase was out of line with reasonablness. in every case i never missed them and didnt replace the service.

[Ragnoth]

An extra $2-3 is meaningless to me, and my household gets dozens of hours of use out of the service each month.

I would probably keep it even if it was $20-30 higher.

[investorpeter]

NFLX (the stock) is up 6.5% today likely as a direct result of reporting the subscription price increase so I guess the overall market anticipates very little churn as a result of the increase. Personally, I still find Netflix to be a great bargain, though I do watch less than I used to and all the individual subscriptions do start to add up. I spend a lot more time watching Youtube nowadays. Youtube has a lot of interesting stuff!

[mrspock]

Dumped it ages ago for this new thing called “linear” TV. They even have these people who make schedules of things I can watch, handily group them into themes... saves a ton of time endlessly searching for something to watch. If you want to watch something later? You can do that too, you just “save” it.

It also doesn’t require internet, or cable! You put this round looking thing (with a strange arm thing jutting out) on your house and viola!

I don’t know how I ever lived without it...

[J295]

Keep.

[dalbright]

Yes we are going to in the next month or so once we finish up a few shows we were already watching. Although its only a few dollars increase, they keep bleeding out the material we liked with the Disney/marvel material leaving and many others shows vanishing over time. We will probably rotate back eventually but will be using hulu for a while. Netflix offers no loyalty benefits to entice current customers to maintain a plan in an evolving market place.

[Momus]

Netflix went down so much during one time price hike in 2011. It went from $38 to $10/share, they reversed the price hike immediately after the backlash.

Now we had 2 more price hikes, everyone is happy and wants to throw more money at them, the stock goes up 6% to $350 LMAO. Time has changed. Imagine investing 100k to Netflix in 2011...

[whodidntante]

We should all dump Netflix and tell our friends to dump Netflix to help my hedge fund.

[srt7]

Nope. Those increases don't warrant dropping it.

But the time we spend watching those shows ... now that might warrant dropping Netflix

[bottlecap]

Don't be silly. I'd drop cable first.

JT

[samsoes]

Why can't Netflix get a raise?

They certainly can. But I'm not paying for it.

[Doom&Gloom]

Hardly.

It is difficult to find screaming bargains in this industry any more.

The free market adjusts. Supply & demand. yada yada yada ...

[dustinst22]

No. It's still much cheaper than cable (which I dropped long ago). 20 extra bucks/year? Meh. There are much easier and productive ways to cut expenses than looking to save pennies. Get the big things right and don't sweat the tiny stuff.

[MathWizard]

No. Dumping cable and using Netflix was a much better deal. I'll pay the extra dollars.

[iamlucky13]

No change on our part in response to this, although I'm tempted to get rid of it simply because we don't watch much TV.

i distinctly remember our inhuman resources department telling me raises are based on the cost of labor not on inflation. this they said to justify not giving raises that year. anyway, i guess inflation in h-town was 18% last year?

I wonder if the Netflix employees in h-town will also get an 18% raise since that's the "raise" corporate earned this year?

OP, i would not support a service provider increasing my fee by 18%. i've dropped several companies when their rate of increase was out of line with reasonablness. in every case i never missed them and didnt replace the service.

Labor isn't Netflix's main cost. Their biggest cost is content licensing, which in recent years also now includes producing original content.

The variety of content they offer is one of their critical competitive factors, and expanding that variety is likely going to be where the majority of this price increase is spent.

[z3r0c00l]

Not worried about a minor increase in price. Already saving a fortune, having cancelled cable years ago. Actually will have to check the math; probably made more money on the pop in NFLX stock today than the increase will cost me for a few years.

[28fe6]

The price change doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the shrinking catalog. Every time I want to watch something that isn't a Netflix Original(TM), it isn't even on Netflix anymore. I used to be a big fan of Netflix because it put so much great content but they aren't focusing on expanding their catalog of older content and are focusing instead on there Netflix Originals, some of which are great but that's not what originally attracted me to them. The difference of two dollars is not significant, the issue is whether I want their service at all.

[Iridium]

Netflix went down so much during one time price hike in 2011. It went from $38 to $10/share, they reversed the price hike immediately after the backlash.

Now we had 2 more price hikes, everyone is happy and wants to throw more money at them, the stock goes up 6% to $350 LMAO. Time has changed. Imagine investing 100k to Netflix in 2011...

I believe the 2011 price hike also correlated with when they essentially told everyone they would be all but abandoning DVDs. That was probably an unforced error. I am not surprised that the stock went down that much, I remember at the time thinking that content licensing cost would eat them alive once they could no longer tell contact providers 'if you don't license the content to us, we will just mail a DVD to our customers with first sales doctrine'. They bet the company on the idea that people would discover what to watch based on what was available on Netflix, rather than sign up for a video service based on whether it has everything they wanted to watch. It worked out for them, but if Hulu had launched a bit earlier and had better studio backing, I think it could have easily gone poorly for Netflix.

In contrast, this latest price hike comes without any new business model. The price hike looks like pretty much pure profit, and is small enough that people are unlikely to do more than grumble.

[dustinst22]

In contrast, this latest price hike comes without any new business model. The price hike looks like pretty much pure profit, and is small enough that people are unlikely to do more than grumble.

Producing original content is extremely expensive. The space is getting more and more competitive, and Apple is about to enter the fray, hence Netflix needs to keep their content production high. They've been taking on a lot of debt to produce this content, it doesn't surprise me they're raising rates to be able to keep up with the competition. They're still less expensive than HBO and are a direct competitor.

[carguyny]

I use Starz ($5/mth), Youtube Preium ($10/mth), Hulu ($1/mth) and Amazon Prime Video. Netflix original content was always pretty average to me having subscribed and cancelled a couple of times. Lots of free content/movies on things like Vudu, Sony Crackle, Tubi etc.