Who knew I could be so prescient? On Friday, I entitled a post about Netflix “Notflix” — and now it’s true. I just got an email from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Here’s the summary:  By way of course correction from their 60% price increase, they’re changing the name of the DVD service to Qwikster.

Wow. Thanks for letting me know.  I feel so much better now. Here’s the  way Reed says this will work:

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

Wow. I feel so much better now. Now that there are two separate line items, and two separate names, I wouldn’t at all mind paying 60% more. Neither, I’m sure, will the estimated one million people who’ve recently quit your service or downgraded their accounts. Because now you have two names. Sure, we’ll be paying 60% more, but we will be getting 200% as many names.

Hats off to whoever wrote this line for Reed:  “There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!).” Having had to find ways myself now and then to dress up bad news as good, I commend you for the attempt, whoever you are. Yay! No pricing changes (which implies “no further increases”), except, waitaminnit, that means you won’t be undoing that 60% price increase. Well, at least we get to keep the 200% of names. And, actually, you did save me some money — because my account is still canceled.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 at 12:11 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.