Member reviews not displaying

[Granddaddy]

Recently I noticed that I can view only 3 member reviews for each movie I look at in detail.

 

I know I used to be able to click a link that followed the last review on a page and see additional member reviews. I called a friend who uses Netflix. That friend saw many more than 3 member reviews for the same movie I was viewing. He also had a link at the bottom of the member reviews taking him to still more reviews. We were both using Internet Explorer 8 yet we had radically different information on the Netflix movie page.

 

I then downloaded and installed Firefox thinking it might be an Internet Explorer issue and that my friend and I were using slightly different updates of IE 8. But Firefox also displays only 3 member reviews for me.

 

I just called Netflix customer service. The very nice person in Oregon told me that the Netflix website is adaptive. He looked at the display from my account and confirmed that Netflix now allows me to see only three member reivews. He emphasized that everyone will see a different view of the Netflix website. The website reconfigures the web pages in a manner customized for you based on your past use and your profile. Thus, every user will see Netflix differently.

 

He suggested I just wait for a time and see if the website returns to a state where it will show me more than three reviews. There is no setting available to change this display.

 

I asked him to pass on to the programmers that this is a terrible implementation of customization. Blocking members from viewing vital information like member reviews seems like a really bad programmer's choice.

[Sock Puppet]

I doubt the CS service person was correct. The implementation of something like that would be extremely inefficient, would waste a lot of server space and processing power, and doesn't make any sense.

Whats more likely to be the case is that the server you are connecting too was being updated or undergoing some sort of maintenance, and the server your friend connected to was different.

Even if you live in the same house you are not necessarily connecting to the same server.

Read the replies here for this story... "What's it Like to Work at Netflix?:"

Most do not speak well of Netflix's Call Centers and some of the replies that are supposedly from actual current or former CSR's make you go hmmmm.

[e manderthal]

Those call center comments... Wow. That's an eye-opener.
No wonder they're so nice to me.

[Sock Puppet]

I know... I believe the comments too, I once worked for a company that did the same things, and heaven forbid you complained, or they found out you were bad mouthing them....

[Knaldskalle]

He looked at the display from my account and confirmed that Netflix now allows me to see only three member reivews. He emphasized that everyone will see a different view of the Netflix website. The website reconfigures the web pages in a manner customized for you based on your past use and your profile. Thus, every user will see Netflix differently.

The CSR was making this up, it's not true and makes no sense. What we do know is that Netflix is working on something "behind the scenes" involving reviews, lists and the Friends features and different aspects have been "wonky" over the last month or two. You may be part of a "test group" where Netflix tests how to display reviews in the future (I could imagine rotating reviews on the front page, for instance), but what you're experiencing is not the norm.

[Aces]

Maybe it has to do with servers being down - the way our reviews disappear / reappear sometimes. A couple of days this week I could only see one page of reviews as though that's all the movies had but today it's back to normal.

[beeswax]

Marylight noticed the same thing earlier this week and started a thread about it.

What I find odd is what I mentioned in my reply to her: On some movie pages I can see all the reviews as I used to see them, and can hit the "next" button to go through pages of reviews. On other films, I can only see the top 3 and the 3 most recent, even though I know there are tons more reviews for those films. This is without changing browsers or computers, and on the same visit to the NF site.

Marylight listed some of the titles in her original post where this display cut-off down to six reviews occurs.

[Sock Puppet]

So nice you had to say it twice :^P

[beeswax]

I apologize for this egregious faux pas. I'm having Ning troubles.

[Aces]

On those movies Marylight listed right now I see just the first page of reviews and when I click the Member Reviews tab I get a message that there are no member reviews. Maybe it's a "test" to see if people look past the first page and after the test Netflix will remove all but page 1 because "the feature is used by so few members" or more than 1 page "confuses members".

[ColSlade1]

Behold the apocalypse of the member review... the end is nigh my friends, the end is nigh.

[thatboy]

The reviews seem to work just fine on films with fewer reviews, but not on films with a large number of reviews. I have no idea why, what the cut-off number is, or what it means.

[Marylight]

Hi Grandaddy:
I had also started a thread about this as mentioned by beeswax.
On some movies (not all) only the first page of reviews is available, although we know there must be a lot. I think anyone could find examples of this clicking randomly, but here are some titles where this problem is present:
Avatar
Elegy
Little Children
Adventureland
Water
The motorcycle diaries
Nowhere in Africa
Layer cake
A very long engagement
Blood Diamond
Crash
American Beauty

There must be thousands of movies that are showing up like this. What really bugs me is that people at customer service who are always very nice and kind, never seem to have any idea about what is going on regarding the website, and thus, give different answers. When I called they said it was a problem they were working on, and will be fixed soon.
What is going on with community, friends, reviews, etc, Netflix? Are we wasting our time writing reviews that will be sent into internet oblivious? Why are glitches taking longer and longer to fix? Can anyone answer with the truth?