Profiles going away!?

[Ernie]

Did everyone else get this e-mail from Netflix:

" We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008."

Why?

"While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers."

Okay, how does Profiles going away improve Netflix? Am I the only one in household with multiple people each of whom want a different queue for tracking, rating, reviews, etc. Furthermore, according to the FAQ, there's no way to even transfer a Profile to a new separate account. So that means if you spent time rating tons of movies under one profile, all of that is lost! This seems like a huge disruption of service. In what way is this good? And there's not even any way I can see to match the equivalent functionality once they go away.

This to me is a huge negative change to the service for no visible reason.

Ernie

[peterdorsi]

I am in the same boat, my wife and I have no movie choices in common, she likes her queue to watch what she wants at her own pace. Same with me. This was a MAJOR feature for us.

Instead of removing the functionality completely, I rather see a new solution.

[Tiffany]

This is the same situation for us. This is the sole reason we choose Netflix over Blockbuster. My husband is not happy that all of his ratings are going to be dropped. Unless they give me a great alternative, we are leaving.

[jimbo]

I was constantly juggling my 2 movie a month plan for my wife & I, my 13 year old daughter, and my 8 year old son. When I found out about profiles, I upgraded to 3 movies a month (yes paid more) and set up a queue for each of my children and one for my wife and I. What a wonderful feature! Now that it is going away, I'll certainly downgrade back to 2 a month (bright move Netflix) and keep an eye out for competing options. What is disappointing is generally Netflix has improved features over time. This is one huge step back.

[Jimbo3P0]

How coincidental........My user name is Jimbo3P0, I have a 14 year old daughter and 9 year old son, very apparent to anyone visiting my site until I took down many of the pictures yesterday.......hmmmm. Maybe someone saw my netflix community page and pictures and thought they'd impersonate me with a dummy account to complain? hmmmm......Maybe, maybe not. Just for the record I'm on the 6 movie plan with Netflix and am as happy with them as is likely for a client-customer relationship, have no significant complaints about their service and don't use profiles, therefore will not miss them.

[mpyusko]

I just sent Customer Service a suggestion saying exactly that!

[Brian]

I'm very curious what the cross-grade path is going to be for this.

Can the profile's queue and save queue be merged with the main, or am I going to have to manually enter all that in again?

Are the 4K+ movie ratings I have in the profile going to have to go away, or will they be able to be merged into the main?

If I have to re-rate all of these, I'm not going to be too pleased.

I'm not opposed to this change, and assume we'll get something better in the long run for it, but I'm certainly disappointed by the lack of information on what's going to happen to all all that current data.

Even a "pick profile to survive" would be better than nothing.

[Bryan]

FAQ says you will have to manually merge the queues, and all of your ratings will be lost. There is no way to save anything except for rental history (automatically merged with the main account).

[Brian]

Yeah, I just don't want to believe it.

This isn't the way to eliminate a feature.

[Ernie]

That's the part that bothers me. If it needs to go away, it needs to go away, but there are programmers working at Netflix, and I would think that, as a software person myself, one of the following options would not be too difficult. Yet they are not offering any:

- Easy way to transfer a profile into a new account.
- Easy way to merge accounts -- queues, ratings when possible, etc.
- Exporter to just dump queue and ratings and reviews into some sort of text file or spreadsheet so it's at least saved. Then maybe an importer to bring it back in.
- Just optimize profiles a little so that if you don't have them they don't affect you and slow you down, and if you do have them you pay the price, but the percentage of people who do would probably be fine with that.
- Freeze them without removing them -- no new movies added to queue, but don't remove what's there.

I'm sure there are other options I haven't thought of that would work well, too. It seems like if it's effecting most Netflix employees they'd be able to come up with some way of at least easing the transition rather than just pulling the rug out.

[lelumarie]

Yes. Seriously, yes.

There are other options that will, if they are bent on doing this, make the transition easier and better.

Thanks for naming a few.

[John]

I would highly doubt we're going to get anything better....this is them stripping a feature, not replacing it. I am also very pissed off though, because my wife and I have very different movie tastes and this was one of the big selling points of Netflix. This essentially makes the referral system completely useless, which is something they tout as a major feature. Guess I'll just have to buy another hard drive and get my movies another way.....

[AdamL]

I got this as well. I am really annoyed by this. I love this feature and my wife have used it since the day it came out. We are really thinking about going with blockbuster now. Removing this feature is a bad idea, but failing to provide a migration utility is just idiotic.