Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 1:22 PM PT

 

Why There’s No Red Envelope at Your Door

DVD rental-by-mail service Netflix is having a technical problem that has all but shut down its shipping capabilities since Tuesday. (That’s why your copy of Good Luck Chuck hasn’t arrived yet.)

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company still doesn’t know what caused the failure, but customers will be credited in some way for the downtime. This is the second outage for the company so far this year. Maybe Netflix should accelerate the bulking up of its streaming library.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] taken a lot of heat this year. Netflix dominates the rent-by-mail space (when its shipping centers aren’t down), and Blockbuster’s bid to buy Circuit City was derided by just about everyone. So [...]

    Blockbuster CEO on Kiosks, Set-Top Boxes « NewTeeVee on August 15th, 2008 at 8:11 am - Permalink
  2. [...] some echo chamber coverage, see The Consumerist, Epicenter, BoingBoing Gadgets, NewTeeVee, and The [...]

    Kyle Brady: A Blog » Archive » Netflix Downtime on August 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm - Permalink
  3. I think they missed the obvious solution, aka “not a refund”.

    Send more movies.

    Details: http://www.kyle-brady.com/2008/08/15/netflix-downtime/

    –Kyle

    Kyle Brady on August 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm - Permalink
  4. [...] that they would “leave the company unable to send out confirmation on the returned discs or send out new orders to subscribers.” Although operations have resumed, the company is continuing to work on fully restoring [...]

    IT’s About Uptime - The StackSafe Blog » Blog Archive » Links List 8.15.08 on August 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm - Permalink
  5. [...] in the Netflix Groove: Red Envelopes Return After being out of commission for three days this week, Netflix has got its shipping back up and running. Like the bizarre death [...]

    Back in the Netflix Groove: Red Envelopes Return « NewTeeVee on August 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm - Permalink
  6. Running the systems for DVD rentals is complex and NFLX is solid! I know, I run the software for SugarDVD.com, the largest rental by mail for Adult DVDs online. Hats off to NFLX for addressing this publically and quickly. Anyone who gets upset at their delay can drive to the video store or use video-on-demand!

    dapgar on August 20th, 2008 at 5:07 pm - Permalink
  7. [...] company hit two rough patches during August with an outage that interrupted service and cost Netflix $6.5 million in credit given to subscribers. Additionally “net subscriber [...]

    Netflix Updates Q3 and Q4 Guidance « NewTeeVee on October 6th, 2008 at 8:39 am - Permalink

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