LOS ANGELES — Netflix Inc. is dropping a plan to
create two separate websites for its customers to use depending on
whether they are renting DVDs or downloading movies and TV shows to
their computers and televisions.
However, a recent
price increase that led to a backlash from consumers and a slide in the
company’s stock price remains in place. In July, Netflix dropped a
$9.99-a-month plan that let customers watch an unlimited number of
movies online and rent one DVD at a time. Now subscribers who want that
combination must pay $15.98 a month — $7.99 for movie streaming and
$7.99 to receive discs in the mail.
In an
announcement on its corporate website Monday, Netflix said it was
abandoning its plan to create a separate brand called Qwikster for its
DVD business as part of the new pricing structure. The Qwikster move,
announced last month, seemed only to further confuse and disturb
customers and investors.
“It is clear that for
many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we
are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,”
CEO Reed Hastings wrote in Monday’s announcement. “This means no change:
one website, one account, one password … in other words, no Qwikster.”
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%uFFFD2011 the Los Angeles Times
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