…when they grumble, whine, bellyache, bitch and basically kick up a fuss.

Back on June 18th, I received an email from Netflix stating that they were eliminating profiles on September 1, 2008 citing that, “this change will help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.” For those of you who do not use this Netflix service, profiles allow you to set up a separate queue for your account, assign a number of your rentals to that queue, and even set parental control for the queue. This was particularly handy for my girlfriend and I, because we were able to put the movies that we wanted to see the most at the top of our respective queues - leaving only the “which one do you want to watch” question [handled easily by the 'pick a card method'] unanswered.

I’m sure you’re asking yourself, as did I, why in the world would you eliminate functionality from a site? I’m sure there is a viable reason on the programming/site up-keep side of things, or this functionality is making it difficult to implement a new feature… but hell - this was one of my favorite things about Netflix. It was a no hassle way to ensure that everyone got a say, and that everyone [based on the luck of the draw] was happy.

It seems that there were quite a few others that were as perplexed, and bothered by this as I was. Yesterday evening, to my delight, I received another email from Netflix stating that they were keeping profiles.

Kudos to Netflix for listening to their users. I’m quite sure that there’s a programmer out there who’s life just got a little harder, but way to go!