Netflix: Notice of Class Action Settlement

[drjtech]

I just received the following e-mail from Netflix. For more info see http://www.netflix.com/Settlement.

You are receiving this notice because you were a paid Netflix member before January 15, 2005. Under a proposed class action settlement, you may be eligible to receive a free benefit from Netflix.

A class action lawsuit entitled Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. was filed in San Francisco Superior Court (case number CGC-04-434884) on September 23, 2004. The lawsuit alleges that Netflix failed to provide "unlimited" DVD rentals and "one day delivery" as promised in its marketing materials. Netflix has denied any wrongdoing or liability. The parties have reached a settlement that they believe is in the best interests of the company and its subscribers.

Netflix will provide eligible subscribers with the benefit described below, if the settlement is approved by the Court.

* Current Netflix Members: If you enrolled in a paid membership before January 15, 2005 and were a member on October 19, 2005, you are eligible to receive a free one-month upgrade in service level. For example, if you are on the 3 DVDs at-a-time program, you will be upgraded to the 4 DVDs at-a-time program for one month. There will be no price increase during the upgraded month. (If you cancel your membership after October 19, 2005 and before you receive the upgrade, you will have to rejoin to get the upgrade.)

* Former Netflix Members: If you enrolled in a paid membership before January 15, 2005 but were not a member on October 19, 2005, you are eligible to receive a free one-month Netflix membership on your choice of the 1, 2 or 3 DVDs at-a-time unlimited program. (If you rejoin after October 19, 2005 but before you receive the free one-month membership, you will receive a credit for the free month when it becomes available.)

These benefits will be provided after the Effective Date as defined in the Settlement Agreement. Your eligibility for the benefits is based on your membership status as of October 19, 2005. The full Settlement Agreement is available for review at www.netflixsettlement.com.

You have four options to respond to the proposed settlement. You have until December 28, 2005 to make your decision:

Option 1. Sign Up For The Benefit As Part Of The Settlement

To receive the benefit, you must complete the online registration process no later than February 17, 2006, at www.netflixsettlement.com. By signing up for the benefit, you waive your right to bring a separate lawsuit against Netflix concerning the Released Claims (as defined in the Settlement Agreement found at www.netflixsettlement.com).

Option 2. Do Nothing

If you do not wish to receive the benefit, do nothing. You will not receive the benefit but will remain a Class Member. You therefore waive your right to bring a separate lawsuit against Netflix concerning the Released Claims.

Option 3. Exclude Yourself From the Class

To exclude yourself from the class, you must mail a letter by December 28, 2005. By excluding yourself, you preserve your right to bring a lawsuit against Netflix concerning the Released Claims. However, you will not get the benefit described above.

Option 4. Make An Objection To The Settlement In Court

To object to the settlement, you must file legal papers in the San Francisco Superior Court by January 5, 2006.

To receive your benefit, you must register by February 17, 2006 as described above in Option 1. You will not receive any other reminders to register for the benefit. If you have registered for the benefit and your eligibility is confirmed, then you will be provided additional information by email following the Effective Date as defined in the Settlement Agreement.

After the benefit period ends, the new or upgraded level of service will continue automatically (following an email reminder) and you will be billed accordingly, unless you cancel or modify your subscription. You can cancel or modify your subscription at any time.

In addition, if the settlement is approved by the Court, Netflix will modify portions of its Terms of Use. Netflix also will refer to its Terms of Use in certain advertisements.

To get more information about the settlement and procedures, and to take options 1, 3 or 4, visit www.netflixsettlement.com.

SRC: 10312005CAS
(c)1997-2005 Netflix, Inc. 970 University Ave., Los Gatos, CA 95032

[Bullworth]

Guess who has to pick up the bill for paying this settlement. (Look in the mirror). It's nice to live in a country where you can make people hold their end of the bargin but lawsuits like this hurt the rest of the consumer base in the long run. On the other hand I hope Netflix is more careful about what it promises.

[mbellot]

After the benefit period ends, the new or upgraded level of service will continue automatically (following an email reminder) and you will be billed accordingly, unless you cancel or modify your subscription.

Looks like Netflix is banking on a bunch of members forgetting to downgrade their membership after the one month "settlement".

Any bets the reminder email is crafted in such a way as to get absorbed by 90% of the SPAM filters now in operation?

[somebodeez]

I received that email as well and thought the same as mbellot.

[SCDVD]

It's a trick. It's actually a marketing promotion masquerading as a "settlement". They will make BIG MONEY from this because a lot of people will forget to downgrade to their former quantity per month and be sure, Netflix will spare them no mercy.

My TV cable service just did a promo for movie channel upgrades - Free for a period of time after which you have an option to continue for an additional charge or cancel. But the difference is this is a bonefide promotion, not a pretence of a settlement!

[redwudz]

That's interesting. Since I have been a customer of Netflix for several years, when they changed the number of DVDs you could have at one time, they 'grandfathered' me in. I have always paid the rate for 3 DVDs, but get 4 at a time. With my luck they will change me back to 3 after this settlement runs out.

[somebodeez]

Might be for real. They have changed their notice of terms awhile back basically admitting that they do delay shipping to heavy users (I wondered why at the time and now I know)

In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service. As a result, those subscribers who receive the most movies may experience that (i) the shipment of their next available DVD occurs at least one business day following return of their previously viewed movie (ii) delivery takes longer, as the shipments may not be processed from their local distribution center and (iii) they receive movies lower in their queue more often than our other subscribers.
http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse#how

and then there is this - which I have also noticed:

Netflix Has "Magicially" IMPROVED
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=283520

Wonder how long that will last?

[mike909]

I cancelled a while ago, but been thinking of rejoining. I took this "opportunity" to get a free month. We'l see if I get it.

Thank you for completing the Claim Form Process. We will notify you at your email address when the Class Benefit becomes available to eligible Class Members following the Effective Date. As described in the Settlement Agreement, the Effective Date depends on such factors as the pendency of any appeals and is therefore difficult to predict.

So...the 'effective date depends on....' part probably means I won't see a free month for a while. Will post back if I ever get it.

[GKar]

Lawyers suck....NetFlix sucks...I get 1 day delivery about 1 in 10 DVD's the rest come in 4-9 days. They will pay the lawyers then continue with their downward spiraling service until they go bankrupt.

Plaintiff got $2000
Lawyers got $2,528,000

Pathetic

[lordsmurf]

Looks like Netflix is banking on a bunch of members forgetting to downgrade their membership after the one month "settlement".

This is why I won't bother with it.

[somebodeez]

I figure I can use a sticky note as a reminder to myself when the free upgrade period is over with should their email reminder some how or the other not make it's way through to me.

[GullyFoyle]

Here is a kind of a Netflix related article
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/porn.html
"Ting walks past the framed Jenna Jameson on the wall and the pornographic magazines on his partner's desk, heading for the hallway. He returns with a 4-inch stack of Netflix envelopes and lays an earlier version down beside the new one. Then he sees it: In place of the old paste-on address label, the newer sample has his address printed right on the envelope, with a barcode above it. "See that?" Ting says. "They're probably 20 to 30 percent more efficient, the way they're doing it now.""
.......

WantedList owes its creation to the serendipity of airline seat assignments. One of Ting's colleagues at Andersen found himself next to a Netflix VP on an LA-to-San Francisco run in 2000, and the two spent the flight talking about the rental business. When they landed, Ting's buddy called him with the pitch: They'd swipe the model but offer only pornography. Ting was intrigued. But the friend's fiancée didn't like the idea of marrying a would-be porn mogul, so he dropped out. Ting recruited Tran, an Andersen colleague he'd met on smoking breaks. Over dinner in a San Jose noodle shop, they began building the business case.

Whoa Whoa I just caught this

So they got tricky. They hired a marketing firm to search the hard drives of members of peer-to-peer services like Kazaa. When the firm found one filled with porn, WantedList emailed an invitation to a free trial. That tactic helped them gain almost 10,000 subscribers by the end of year two, which gave them the cash flow to move into their Van Nuys office in October 2003; it's in an industrial park where a third of the tenants are adult-industry players. By 2004, they had 15,000 titles in stock and had begun buying up rivals.

Does anyone else find that not scary but a violation of the law?

[kirpen]

So I guess this ends the great netflix debate. All the name callers were proven wrong. The lack of shipments wasnt really a big problem for me but the abused discs were. It got to the point i wouldnt even stick the filthy things in my dvd player.

[CaptainVideo]

Does anyone else find that not scary but a violation of the law?

How would this be against the law? When you share files on a P2P network it is no different than posting it onto a web page for the world to see. Their is no expectation of privacy. And since these P2P apps come with a messaging system there is nothing wrong with sending a message.

At worst they may be violating the license agreement of whatever software they are using by I guess technically spamming.

[GullyFoyle]

That would depend. usually a folder or certain files are shared not the whole hard drive. There are warnings about allowing access to the whole hard drive.
If they were searching through unshared folders and files I imagine that is not legal.

[TBoneit]

Netflix has been getting slow lately, Creatively!

They ship 2 or so out my local distro center, another may come out of Texas and the 4th out of California. Thus disc 3 & 4 take longer to arrive and return and they pay the same postage.

I've been thinking about overwriting their out of state mail addresses and returning them all local. It may not speed things up or may get me banned but I'll bet it gums things up a bit. After all I just noticed a bad return address and corrected it!

[chas0039]

Netflix has been getting slow lately, Creatively!

They ship 2 or so out my local distro center, another may come out of Texas and the 4th out of California. Thus disc 3 & 4 take longer to arrive and return and they pay the same postage.

I've been thinking about overwriting their out of state mail addresses and returning them all local. It may not speed things up or may get me banned but I'll bet it gums things up a bit. After all I just noticed a bad return address and corrected it!

Do what I do and send back 2 discs per mailer. I have a ton of accumulated mailers with the local address and I throw away the out of region envelopes.

Netflix automatically blocks 50% of my shipments from going out the same day. They finally came clean and admitted this after telling me for most of a year that this was not the case.

As far as this "great deal" goes it is not worth my time to get one month upgraded for free, saving me a whopping $6.

[TBoneit]

Netflix has been getting slow lately, Creatively!

They ship 2 or so out my local distro center, another may come out of Texas and the 4th out of California. Thus disc 3 & 4 take longer to arrive and return and they pay the same postage.

I've been thinking about overwriting their out of state mail addresses and returning them all local. It may not speed things up or may get me banned but I'll bet it gums things up a bit. After all I just noticed a bad return address and corrected it!

Do what I do and send back 2 discs per mailer. I have a ton of accumulated mailers with the local address and I throw away the out of region envelopes.

Netflix automatically blocks 50% of my shipments from going out the same day. They finally came clean and admitted this after telling me for most of a year that this was not the case.

As far as this "great deal" goes it is not worth my time to get one month upgraded for free, saving me a whopping $6.

Just checked latest batch here, 3 from NJ (Local 30 minute drive actually) one from Baton Rouge, LA, and 5th one from San Jose.

I hadn't thougth of putting two into an envelope Does that speed it up? Slow it up or no impact?

Thanks

[Xylob the Destroyer]

has anybody here actually gone through with this?
I got the email as well and clicked the link -- the set up of the page is a bit odd, not like rest of their page. In fact not even close to the overall style or set up anything that has to do with Netflix.
I thnk this may be a phising scam.

[TenaciousJP]

The settlement is linked to on the Netflix website, so unless they hacked the site, this isn't a phishing scam. I logged into Netflix, and then clicked on the link from the Netflix site. Signed up for the settlement.

It told me that they will notify the class when their reward will be redeemable.

[GKar]

Yes it does sound legit, lawyers get everything clients get diddly squat.

[NiteLite]

I choose option "3" and would advise the same. A much sweeter deal may be coming and you still retain your right to bring action.

Would be nice if they provide an address and a sample opt out letter.
Cheers to those who brought the action againt the lying bast#$@s.

To the post above...I was a little suprised sometime back when a customer rep finally admitted I was being delayed concerning shipping, receiving, and movies in "wait" status. To which I commented, "isn't it nice to not have to lie to people anymore?" ...to which we both shared a laugh.


#3

[lordsmurf]

People whining about Netflix reminds me of that "all you can eat" episode of The Simpsons.

[jimmalenko]

Ahhhhh America ........ the land of hope & opportunity ......... and ridiculous lawsuits.

[mbellot]

the land of hope & opportunity ......... and ridiculous lawsuits.

Pretty much the same thing these days...

Much as it pains me to say publicly, Shakespeare did get one thing right.

First, we kill all the lawyers.

[NiteLite]

People whining about Netflix reminds me of that "all you can eat" episode of The Simpsons.

I've never seen "The Simpsons", but I sure have seen many whining here about "types of media", "types of recorders", etc... What's the difference? (rhetorical)
I also love Lawyers. Sue me.

[adam]

Hey mbellot, when Shakespeare said kill all the lawyers he was complementing them. Look it up.

[GullyFoyle]

Netflix was limiting the amount of dvd's high users could get.
You can't claim UNLIMITED if you do not follow this up.
This is similar to Blockbusters NO LATE FEE fiasco.

[lordsmurf]

For those that don't know, a settlement typically means no fault is admitted.

"Unlimited", as has been discussed in the past, is based on normal people, not the a minority that want to distort it beyond intention. It does not mean "without limits, all that you want".

[ebenton]

I am a Netflix member, and even though I qualify for the free "benefit", I refuse to participate in this frivolous act of litigious masturbation.