For the past few years, I’ve been a very happy user of Netflix, the innovative web site which let
you receive DVDs via the post for a flat fee per month, for US residents.
When I got back to Dublin, I was very happy to see that there
was a local equivalent, in the form of
ScreenClick — so I signed up.
However, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with their service, for the
same reasons as Adrian
Weckler writes about here…
Turnaround time: this varies wildly, and can take nearly a week to turn
around a DVD from dropping it in the postbox to receiving the next one. Netflix
was reliably two days for me, out in suburban Orange County, California; Even this
Kansas blogger noted that the longest they’d waited was 4 days.
This may seem to be an externality for Screenclick — but really, it shouldn’t
be. Their business is built on the postal service, and they have to have
decent results for it to work.
The ‘wishlist’ model: Netflix uses a queue, operating on a first-in,
first-out model, while Screenclick uses something they call a ‘wishlist’, where
the DVDs are delivered based both on position in the list and availability —
in other words, you can find you’ve been delivered the DVD at number 10 in your
list, instead of whatever’s at the top.
Again, superficially a minor point. However, one important factor is that
these services are bought by households, not by individuals. Chez jm, that
means that we operated a pretty strict alternating system in our Netflix queue
— one movie for me, one movie for the lovely C, repeat. This is now
thoroughly scuppered with a random ‘lucky dip’ system. On top of that, forget
about watching a serial in
order.
The end result is a mess.
The website: it’s atrocious, a
hodge-podge of ads for third-party sites, press coverage of Screenclick, more
ads for Screenclick (hey, I’m already a customer!), and news
clippings I couldn’t care less about — with finally a few tiny sidebar
boxes containing the things I want (login, search box and wishlist). My
impression: it’s designed to sell the company to investors and advertisers, not
for customer use.
On top of that, it’s all squished into a tiny window — Irish web designers
need to buy bigger screens! That late-’90’s Jakob Nielsen thing about
users not knowing how to scroll? They’ve learned by now.
That’s not even talking about the awful Javascript that’s used to edit the
wishlist ordering, where little buttons need to be clicked repetitively, one by
one, to reorder the list. Surely someone took a look around at other sites
first — Amazon perhaps — to see how other sites do it?
Anyway, on this count, I sent in a mail containing a batch of bug reports and
unsolicited opinions, and got no reply. ;)
Less bang-for-buck: pretty simple. Netflix: 3 movies at a time, more movies
in the collection, $17.99 per month; Screenclick, 2 movies at a time, EUR
19.99 ($25.56, $10 more expensive than the equivalent Netflix service) per month. Surprisingly, this is actually a minor issue
compared to the others, though, since it’s made plain from the outset.
These may seem to be minor points, but when selling a disposable-income service
to consumers, the difference between an essential leisure-time service and a
waste of pocket money is a very fine line. Looks like Adrian
eventually cancelled. I’m not at that point yet, but it’s heading that
way…
