For at least the past hour, Netflix has been down. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge deal since as they note, “Our shipping centers are continuing to send and receive DVDs , so your movies will be processed as usual.” But, increasingly, Netflix is becoming a streaming video service. And while that aspect is up and running on the third-party devices (such as the Xbox 360) that it works on, it’s obviously not working on the web. And given Netflix’s awesome customer service, I bet that means refunds are coming.
As we noted back in August, Netflix sent a message to its subscribers (who were connecting through Xboxes) noting some brief downtime for their streaming service. Along with the message, they were offering a 2% credit to be applied to your next monthly payment if you were affected. You simply had to click on a link to claim the refund (and you could actually do it even if you weren’t affected, if you didn’t mind lying). A couple weeks ago, Netflix sent out the same notice following a similar downtime.
It will be interesting to see what Netflix offers its customers for this downtime, which is obviously much more widespread. As they note on the site right now, “Our engineers are working hard to bring the site back up as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and, again, we apologize for the inconvenience. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-866-636-3079.”
Despite my strong disagreement with their decision to agree to Warner’s 28-day window for renting new DVDs, Netflix remains a company that seems to handle customer service exceptionally well (unlike others). Check out this internal presentation too; great stuff.
[thanks Jeff]