SAN FRANCISCO — Some Netflix customers called it a slap in the face, others a betrayal. Many threatened to drop the movie service.
On Wednesday, many of them vented on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, seething over Netflix Inc.’s decision to raise its prices by up to 60 percent for the millions of subscribers who want to rent DVDs by mail and watch movies online.
“I can definitely afford it, but I dropped them on principle,” said Joe Turick, a technology engineer in Monroe, N.C., who has been with Netflix for about a decade but canceled his subscription within an hour of learning of Tuesday’s price changes. He plans to try competitors.
By Wednesday afternoon, more than 40,000 people had responded to a post on Netflix’s Facebook page announcing the change, with some saying they would switch to rivals such as ‘s paid service and to Redbox’s DVD-rental kiosks.
Outrage bubbled on Twitter, and on Netflix’s blog a posting about the new plans had garnered 5,000 comments — the limit allowed by the site’s host, Google Inc.-owned Blogger — which included many seething customers.
Netflix said company officials expected the intense reaction.
“Everything Netflix does is with extensive research and testing and analysis, so we expected some people to be disappointed,” company spokesman Steve Swasey said.
While thousands complained on Facebook, Twitter and other websites, with 22.8 million customers in the U.S., it’s clear that plenty of them are not upset about the change.
Doug Baker, a software developer in Fort Collins who has used Netflix since 2000, isn’t cutting it off completely, but he is downsizing to a cheaper plan.
He had been paying $20 for unlimited streaming and four DVDs out at a time, and this would rise to $30 after Sept. 1. Instead, he’ll opt to pay $16 for one DVD at a time and unlimited video streaming.
Baker thinks the company should have offered a smaller price increase to longtime subscribers, saying, “It would have been nice if they showed some appreciation” to them.
“It makes you wonder if they really want to serve their customers or just their stockholders,” Baker said.
