Is NetFlix getting too flaky to do business with?

[kestrell]

I changed my membership to just streaming a month or so ago, before the changes in plans went into action, and yet NetFlix jus sent me a DVD. This morning I received an e-mail saying tha if they don't get their DVD back within seven days, I'm being charged $14.95.

So, on top of getting flaky self-justifying e-mails, I'm financially liable for their mistake? Due to my low bullshit threshhold, I think I'll be cancelling this membership completely.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

The flaky self-justification was a little rich for me. I believe that CEO is being paid ridic sums monthly to make decisions like "I don't know how to write this letter."

OTOH, Netflix's phone service is famous for Getting Right On It. (ANd here's the number 1-866-716-0414. It was hidden by some AJAX, which is probably reason enough to chuck it all in.)

For the six weeks when I was too pissed off to handle Netflix, I floundered around the streaming services and was dismayed at how many of them were totally Flash-based. Given Apple's attitude towards Flash (which may very well be driven by accessibility issues) this may not bode well.

[kestrell]

I'm sorry, I missed the cause of your being pissed off for six weeks--who was the silly culprit?

Also, I'm still not entirely clear on Apple's attitude toward flash...?

Just because I think it will amuse you, I'll mention that, later in the LJ version of the thread from this post, I mentioned tha I'm reading Neal Stephenson's _Reamde_ (I didn't scan it, it showed up on Bookshare), and a friend asked how my screen reader pronounced the title. Jaws pronounces the title like "reamed," although the S on my ebook reader pronounces it more like "ream-dee." However, Jaws pronounces reamed like re-aimed.

[jesse_the_k]

Culprit was Netflix streaming not having captions which was pissing me off greatly. I only found one place with caps — Hulu — and the idea of needing to hook up with several streaming providers was getting on my last nerve. So I decided to forget streaming in its entirety, let the beta testers figure it out for once, and continue to get DVDs with captions!

Flash is from Adobe. Adobe and Apple were childhood sweethearts (desktop publishing carried Macs through the lean years). For the past while Apple has been disdaining Flash; it isn't supported on the iPhone; Safari doesn't ship with a Flash plugin (but one can of course get one at the Adobe site). All I know about Flash is that I can't make it bigger with my standard techniques. There's been loose talk about Adobe including accessibility hooks in Flash and the Flash application builder, AIR. I can well imagine that Adobe has fallen down on those hooks, and Apple can point to that as one more reason they don't want to support Flash. I'm talking out my ass, though. Oh! I found a source of actually informed writing on the topic: John Gruber at Daring Fireball:
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash
Will read and report back if it's useful in anyway

Google tells me to pronounce Stephenson's new book as "Read Me"; was that evident to you?

[jesse_the_k]

Ho! Gruber delivers on the chasm between Apple and Adobe: [context is that Steve Jobs' time outside Apple was at NeXT computing; Mac OS X was built from the NeXT operating system]

begin quote  NeXT’s operating system graphics system was built entirely around Display Postscript, a technology NeXT licensed from Adobe. A former NeXT developer told me the terms were such that the source code for Display Postscript never left Adobe’s campus — to work on the code, NeXT engineers had to go to Adobe and work in an isolated room with no outside network access. There are people at Apple who remember this arrangement vividly, and not fondly.  quote ends

[kestrell]

I think Google may be over-correcting: "readme" is the name of the usual fine which provides information, but "reamde" is the name of the computer virus which is the MacGuffen in Stephenson's book, and it's an intentional misspelling of "read me." Thus, I'm pronouncing it "reamde."