I was a Netflix subscriber many a year ago and signed up for this class action lawsuit that somebody filed against them. The lawsuit was for changing the queue length (or ‘throttling’) so it would take longer to recieve new DVDs for those who rented a lot of DVDs in a month (and thus cost Netflix more money in postage than they made in the monthly subscription payment.) This would have been OK, and they still do it, but at the time they didn’t actually tell anybody they did it. Instead, they advertised “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” when, in reality, you could not get “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” if you had already rented x number of movies in a month. Pretty simple false advertising.

Oops.

So, as a long-since-discontinued subscriber I still qualified for part of the settlement awarded to early subscribers. That settlement: A free month of Netflix, without having to actively cancel my subscription afterwards.

This got stuck in the appeals process for a few years and just yesterday I got the email I had been waiting for:

Dear Nick,

As a member of the Chavez vs. Netflix settlement class, you are eligible for a free month of Netflix on your choice of the 1, 2, or 3 out at-a-time plans.

Only plans with up to 3 out at-a-time are eligible for the free month. If you choose the 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 out at-a-time plan you will receive a discount equal to the cost of the 3 out at-a-time plan (currently $16.99).

At the end of your free or discounted month, your account will be automatically cancelled and you will need to return all Netflix DVDs.

To claim this benefit please click on the following link:

http://www.netflix.com/remedy

To claim this benefit, you need to:

[1] Choose a plan
[2] Verify your information
[3] Start your free or discounted month

This benefit will expire one year from today.

Learn more about this settlement at:

http://www.netflix.com/settlement

-The Netflix Team

SRC: 20080717IFSETL
(c)1997-2008 Netflix, Inc. 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032
This message was mailed to [xxxxxx@gmail.com].

The moral of the story? Don’t advertise what you know you don’t provide and then not tell your customers you are withholding service.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.