So a few things changed since I last had a Netflix account. They were sued (and lost, but still screwed everyone) over fixing rental queues so that new members got movies faster while under trial accounts, and existing users took the hit of longer times to make up the difference. They also added unlimited streaming to most accounts, and this guy added support for Netflix in Windows Media Center.
The goal: I want to stream movies to any room in the house, mostly the bedroom and the living room. I want to pay a reasonable flat rate. I want it to tie into Media Center because I have a kick ass remote that works on my PC for watching movies, and also because my XBox 360 is a 1080p movie playing Media Center as well.
If the title and cute Asian girl saying "fuck you" with a smile didn't give you the hint, Netflix did not reach the goal. Now that, in and of itself, would not be worthy of a rant post (even on a grilled cheese blog). Lies and poor service do qualify!
"Unlimited" streaming really means "one stream" at a time (or possible one to four streams if you have a higher plan, site isn't really clear on this point). Oh, "one stream" is in quotes because it really means one PC - Netflix DRM (custom required install) lock streaming of your account to that machine. So when I tested on my laptop, everything was okay. When I testing my desktop, I was told my "one stream" was already in use - by the laptop sitting in the corner, switched off.
After a good 30 minutes trying to find the magic "I'm done now" button on the laptop, and googling for ideas (because the Netflix help was useless), I called the number that was showing on my desktop in the error message. Please hold for 30 minutes...
About 10 minutes in, I saw a number on the Netflix website with "wait times 1 minute." I hung up and called that number, and true to the claim, a human picked up. Jake told me that I would need to be transferred to tech support for this issue so they could "change a flag" to fix the problem. Would I need to do this every time? He wasn't sure - in a way that conveyed "yes, you will but I don't want you complaining to me." Transferring to tech support.... please hold 36 minutes.
Unable to cope with additional 6 more minutes from the previous attempt, I looked on the site for an email address I could use. I figured I'd just send an email and check on it in the morning. Oh, what's this? Netflix doesn't have email support - phone only! I decided to test the XBox 360 with the Media Center plugin - a message came up that streaming on the XBox wasn't supported (not Netflix's fault, unless you count this as something which they should be supporting themselves and not leave to the user's to figure out).
So, from my email timestamps I was a Netflix member again for exactly 1 hour and 19 minutes.
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