perfidy

Despite our catchy moniker (Moniker... that's also how my Bay State neighors pronounce the name of GeekLethal's wife...), the Ministry of Minor Perfidy doesn't report much on actual acts of minor perfidy. That is because we are much busier behind the scenes actually perpetrating such, and preventing others, but the details of that we shall save for another time.

But it has recently come to our attention via Loyal Reader #0016, EDog, that Netflix are committing an actual act of petty betrayal. You see, they have structured their business so that their very best customers lose them money. When people use their service a lot, say returning 15 movies a month, the shipping costs eat up all the profit.

So Netflix did what any good perfidian would, and rigged the system. Now, heavy users are automatically bumped to the back of the line for access to the most popular titles, and the company will delay shipments in general for a day or few so as to put an involuntary cap on account activity.

That would be all well and good, I suppose, had the company put that in their policies from the start. But instead, people paying $18 a month for ostensibly unlimited rentals were getting in return shoddy service and prevarication if they liked the service too much. Although Neftlix now mentions this in their terms of use, I would have expected more (why? Because I'm stupid) from a company that has tried so hard to democratize and distribute their business model.