Netflix had it all going for them. Great service at a great price. A "cool" app to have and a darling of Wall Street.
Then they got greedy. They increased their price by 60% for no apparent reason.
Netflix felt the backlash. They went from 25 million loyal customers to 24 million customers who are all wondering about jumping to another service.
In the parlance of Wall Street in the 1980's, they put themselves in play. Like many, I never really noticed that DVD that I forgot to return. The King's Speech is a good movie but I spent six months waiting to find time to watch it. When the price increase hit, I sent the King back to Netflix and cut the off the fees forever.
If they had left me alone, the King and I would have stayed together for a few more months. The price increase angered me and I wanted to send a message.
The head of Netflix absolutely does not get it. His answer was not to apologize, or lower prices again, but to break the company into two names and divisions. He never explained why customers would think that was worth a 60% increase.
Americans grew up on economic boycotts and they understand how to hit back at Netflix. Drop them. There are new competitors to Netflix coming on the market every day.
In my book Wealth Without Wall Street, I talk about the disconnect of Wall Street fat cats with people who are suffering on Main Street.
A sixty percent increase is chicken feed to Netflix stockholders. It is life or death to a family scraping to get by. Netflix was so far removed from Main Street that it did not get it.
When it comes to not understanding Main Street, Bank of America makes Netflix look like amateurs,
Three years after the United States taxpayers bailed Bank of America out by giving them part of the $700 billion that Congress wasted in bailout money, Bank of America repaid Congress by slapping their customers in the face with a $5 a month fee for using a debit card.
Bank of America may have sparked its "Netflix movement."
As I noted in another Huffington Post article, I have a chapter in Wealth Without Wall Street about a cause Arianna Huffington started -- 'move your money' from a "too big to fail" bank to a local bank.
Since the Bank of America decision, those of us who have been pushing Move Your Money for years are being deluged with people who have finally made the move.
Just like the Netflix price raise, the Bank of America decision has caused people to make a move.
Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the bestsellling author of the book Wealth Without Wall Street: A Main Street Guide to Making Money http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Without-Wall-Street-Making/dp/0979364485%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JJEH4PKQM4ZHS8QY102%26tag%3Dthehuffingtop-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creat
McNay, who lives in Richmond Kentucky, an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor. You can learn more about him at www.donmcnay.com
He is the Chairman of the Board for the McNay Group (www.mcnay.com) which provides structured settlement consulting for injury victims, lottery winners, and the families of special needs children.
McNay founded Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC, which assists attorneys in as conservators and setting up guardianship's. It is nationally recognized as an administrator of Qualified Settlement (468b) funds.