Spoiler Alert: Netflix Sucks 
 
 Netflix sucks. I’m currently a subscriber but I’ll be canceling as soon as I find the “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure” DVD we rented most recently. The company unveiled a stunning, sixty percent price increase yesterday, misleadingly landing in the email inbox of subscribers as a “change in pricing plans” reports the New York Times. 
 
 The “change” they’re referring to is this: Instead of offering $9.99 for unlimited streaming and one DVD at a time, Netflix is now making customers choose one of two options: $7.99 for unlimited streaming or $7.99 for one DVD at a time. If you want your current plan to continue, get ready to shell out $15.98 a month. Current customers have until September before the price increases go into place; for new customers, they’re immediate. It’s a sign that there’s still an interest in DVD rentals as more and more content becomes available for streaming and downloading. As one expert told the Times: “Netflix must be pretty comfortable with the value of both services that they can break each out.” ||||| In a bold business strategy announced yesterday, Netflix declared that it was effectively going to begin destroying customer’s lives by taking the address information that they have acquired through their popular online DVD-to-Door rental service and using it to find each and every one of their customers to punch them as hard as cybernetically possible in the left kidney. 
 
 Or so yesterday’s Twitter stream and Netflix blog comment section would have you believe. 
 
 Really, what happened was Netflix announced it was going to be raising prices in September of this year. 
 
 For many, what used to be a 1 DVD Out-At-A-Time and Unlimited Streaming to internet/TV/mobile device/shuttle-station-monitor plan at $9.99 per month is sky-rocketing to $15.98 per month. The plan will now be split into two smaller plans, $7.99 per month for the 1 DVD Out-At-A-Time plan and $7.99 per month for Unlimited Streaming plan. 
 
 At nearly $72 per year, this 60% increase has gotten a whole bunch of people all worked up into a tizzy. 
 
 Many folks are rolling their eyes at the increase, saying that for less than $20 per month they can STILL get a whole lot of unlimited programming for pennies. 
 
 Others, however, claim that it is the PRINCIPLE of the thing. That they have been there since the beginning and their loyalty should be rewarded. That Netflix is a big bad corporate machine that is looking to squeeze every possible cent from their subscribers. 
 
 As comedian Louis CK said during his October 2008 appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show, which later became the viral YouTube video hit “Everything is Amazing Right Now And Nobody Is Happy“: ”How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 minutes ago.” 
 
 Determined to figure out if there really was some capitalist conspiracy to rob me of my hard-earned money, I looked through my Netflix “Recently Watched” queue of movie and television show titles I had watched in the past 30 days. 
 
 At 21 titles (including multi-DVD television shows) I had over 1000 minutes of streaming video or about 1/2 an hour of TV watching a day (Note – I have had the same hard-copy DVD out for almost 6 months and do not have cable). 
 
 At my current plan that is $.47 1/2 cents per title. With the increase, it would be $.76 cents per title. This change prompted me to look over the plan and I decided to cancel the DVD option since I barely use it. With my new updated $7.99 per month plan, it would be $.38 cents per title 
 
 Comparatively, should I take out these titles as one night only rentals from the competitors, I would be paying at least $21 through RedBox and possibly close to $60 at a movie store. This does not include the personal time spend of going TO any of these locations to take out the movie AND going back the very next day to return the movie. Oh, and there are the potential late fees incurred if I do not get this all done during the timeline they have. 
 
 What completely befuddles me about this entire situation is the belief, as Louis points out, that somehow we as consumers are OWED something by Netflix. 
 
 It is no secret that the studios, broadband providers and pigeon-lady-on-the-street-corner are out for a chunk of Netflix subscription rates. In January of 2010 the popular tech-site Gizmodo predicted the loss of major titles from the Netflix stock due to these battles. This past January Hollywood insiders projected that Netflix would have to pay close to $1.2 Billion (yes, that is with a ‘B’) in licensing fees in 2012. 
 
 They aren’t exactly a non-profit foundation. Last I checked, Netflix is a publicly traded FOR-PROFIT company. 
 
 If you don’t want to pay the Netflix fee-plan increase, cancel your subscription (I’m sure many of the people whining the loudest will not because it is still the best deal out there). 
 
 If you accept that the cost of doing business is going up, maybe make sure to order one less orange-mocha-frappuccino a month. 
 
 If you want cheaper movies? 
 
 Then get a public library card. 
 
 Will you still subscribe to Netflix come September or are you breaking up with the service? 
 
 Elisa Doucette writes about leadership, relationships and life lessons for young professionals. You can visit her at ElisaDoucette.com. 
 
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 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Talk about backlash. I’ve yet to see one comment anywhere supporting Netflix’s price hikes and for good reason. Netflix announced a new pricing scheme yesterday that effectively raised the price of a popular subscription plan by 60%. Instead of costing $9.99 for streaming and DVD rental, Netflix separated the services and priced them each $7.99, which results in a combined cost of $16. 
 
 But it’s not the $6 people are ranting about. Most of us would spend half of that amount on one silly coffee drink every day if we weren’t lactose intolerant. It’s that Netflix raised the prices without adding any value. There simply isn’t any way of spinning this as a benefit to the consumer and backlash is the result. 
 
 We all know the history of Netflix: The rent-by-mail DVD company morphed into the leader in streaming video and did so slightly ahead of the curve. VOD and streaming technology hit the big time a few years back, and Netflix embraced it from the start, producing apps for nearly every hardware platform available. There was suddenly less of an interest to wait for their DVDs when some of the content was available instantly. 
 
 But the DVDs still served an important function for some consumers as Netflix’s DVD library is about 5 times larger than its streaming library. In other words, the DVD served as a back-up device in case Netflix didn’t have a particular title available for streaming. It was worth the $2 per month additional cost — at least to me. 
 
 Then yesterday Netflix announced its new plans. Suddenly the cost to rent a DVD shot up, going from a nearly unnoticeable charge to almost double the cost. It didn’t make sense to keep the option and so I canceled it right away. Netflix’s own announcement email and blog post noted it’s easy to cancel, which, while honest, doesn’t inspire confidence in their pricing. 
 
 Instead, I believe I’ll be waiting in line up at Krogers to use Redbox’s DVD rental service the few times a year I need a particular DVD. I just wish I could see Netflix’s internal numbers. No doubt Netflix’s dedicated DVD customers will stick with them and continue to suck Netflix dry by renting countless DVDs every month. But I wasn’t costing Netflix any money; it was probably quite the opposite. Consumers like me — consumers who probably rented 2 DVDs last year — should have been valued by Netflix for paying for a service they rarely use. But instead they’ve drove us away. Oh well. Redbox is just as cheap and convenient and that’s all I care about anyway.
– Netflix's new subscription plan, which hikes the cost of enjoying both streaming videos and sent-in-the-mail DVDs from $9.99 to $16—that's 60%—isn't winning it many friends. Amid a sea of anger, Newser picks some favorite reactions: Points for brevity: "Netflix sucks," opines Pat's Papers. No wonder then that this current subscriber will "be canceling as soon as I find the Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure DVD we rented most recently." Best summary of why we're so angry: "It’s not the $6," explains Matt Burns for TechCrunch. "It’s that Netflix raised the prices without adding any value. There simply isn’t any way of spinning this as a benefit to the consumer." The best "Dear Netflix" tweet: @theroxy quips, "Dear Netflix, As much as we love the 'cerebral romantic comedy documentaries' genre you suggested, paying double is insane. k thx bai." Best (and only?) defense of the move: In a piece for Forbes titled "Could We All Please Shut Up About Netflix," Elisa Douchette writes that "What completely befuddles me about this entire situation is the belief we as consumers are OWED something by Netflix. Last I checked, Netflix is a publicly traded FOR-PROFIT company. If you want cheaper movies? Then get a public library card." To dig deeper into the rich history of America's love affair with Netflix, check out this map of the most popular Netflix movies, by state.