I'm rather sorry to say I'll soon become a part of the churn which has been debated recently at Netflix. (Fool.com had some criticisms of how they calculate churn). It seems to be a company headed down hill quickly. I say that because when a company's customer service begins to fail they quickly will loose out to the big name stores who are already circling and looking for a kill.

Here's the problem: It's been over two weeks since we returned our last movie. Since then they have been sending movies, supposedly to our correct address, and getting them back. I wrote customer service and got back a snotty little sniveling note telling me I don't know how to use the postal system.

(My email to Netflix)
I appreciate that you consider your subscribers to be imbeciles of the lowest order. I've used and liked Netflix for several years. For many more years I've used the postal service to get mail in the rural parts of America. This is not a problem with our address, with our regular carrier, or with a substitute carrier. Every day we receive significant quantities of mail to this address with no problem. The Post Office has confirmed the address is correct. Unfortunately we are not getting movies from Netflix. When I contacted you for assistance I get the response that you really don't care to pursue what the problem might be. We've now been waiting for a movie for about two weeks. Obviously this makes Netflix a very expensive option as well as terribly inconvenient if it is more than two weeks between when we return one movie and hopefully get the next (which we still have not).

If this is the kind of customer service your customers can expect I'll quickly change my word of mouth recommendations and suggest people being using one of the many competitive services who are more willing to assist customers in resolving problems. Instead I'm left compounding frustration upon non-service and insulting customer disservice.

A previously satisfied customer,
Joshua

On Jul 30, 2004, at 9:04 PM, Netflix Customer Service wrote:

Hello Joshua,

Thank you for contacting Netflix.com customer support!

We appreciate you letting us know that you never received the movie, yet it was checked back into our warehouse. It is the policy of the USPS to return mail that is undeliverable. The most common reasons are: the mail was damaged in processing and the label was illegible, the mailer cover became separated from the rest of the envelope, or an error with the USPS known as "Looping" occurred where the movie was returned to us in error instead of being delivered.

There are some things you can double check in case your problem is not related to the examples stated earlier. Please be sure the name on the account is on file with the USPS for that address. Also make sure your address is correct and complete according to the USPS standardized address format. You may verify your address at the following link:

http://www.usps.com/zip4/

Please note that your regular carrier can correct for wrong or incomplete information but a replacement or new carrier may not be able to do so. If you still wish to view this title, please feel free to add it to your Rental Queue.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.

Thanks,
Martha,
Netflix Customer Service .

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 8:55:46 PM
To: CS Mail
Subject: Shipping and Receiving DVDs

Subject: Not getting DVDs

We have not received Mr. Deeds or On The Line. Mr Deeds
shows that we returned it but we never got it. The address
is correct and we have gotten DVDs since we moved June 1st. Our current address is

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Thanks,
Josh

=============================
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/125.2
(KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8
App:Netscape = 5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/125.2
(KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.8
JSVersions: generic, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.0
Screen: 1024x768x16 (avail: 1020x746)
Window: 887x579
CinematchEnabled: true
WebsiteVersion: 2004072200
Plugins: QuickTime Plug-in 6.5.1, Shockwave for Director, Java Plug-in
for Cocoa, Java Plug-in (CFM), Java Plug-in, Shockwave Flash

=============================
server id = 112

Customer Country = USA

=============================

Search String: Not getting DVDs

So we've now been sent the third movie we'll never see hit our mailbox and Netflix has made the situation even worse. You see the tracking number in the subject is just an illusion evidently because they can't take email if they don't know the address.

From: customerservice@netflix.com
Subject: Netflix Customer Service Received Your Message
Date: August 1, 2004 9:49:21 AM PDT
To: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx

Greetings,

Thank you for your message. Our records indicate the email address you have written us from is not the email address Netflix has on file. In order to assist you properly, we will need you to log into your account with the correct email address and resubmit your inquiry.

Sincerely,
The Netflix Team

So changes were made and now this is the response:

From: nobody@netflix.com
Subject: Email Not Deliverable To This Address (was Fwd: Shipping and Receiving DVDs NFLX ID: 137671)
Date: August 2, 2004 3:32:00 PM PDT
To: xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reply-To: nobody@netflix.com

Dear Netflix User,

Your email has reached an automated mailbox. Email sent to this
address does not reach our Customer Service team and will not
receive a personal response.

If you have a question you need answered right away, please visit
our online Help Center at http://www.netflix.com/Help. It covers a
wide variety of commonly asked questions.

If you need to contact a customer service representative
please visit http://www.netflix.com/ContactCustService.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Your friends at Netflix

Yeah, right. My "friends." What's that cliche... with friends like that you don't need enemies.