Breaking Up with Netflix

Well, I did it.

After a 2 year relationship with Netflix, hubby and I cut the cord and I canceled our membership tonight.

While I have enjoyed having it the past 2 years, the recent price change is just not worth it for us.

We joined in August 2009 after we had rented 2 newer movies at our local Blockbuster that cost us roughly $10 and we had only a week to watch them. I had heard about Netflix for awhile and decided to look into it, as pizza and a movie rental was an easy at home date for us on the weekends. After learning that the cost of Netflix was about $9 a month, we decided why not? If we didn't watch a movie right away, no worries, we'd only get charged the flat monthly rate. Plus, they had some stuff available for streaming too, which seemed kinda cool and I did get some use out of it every once in awhile.

We would watch an average 1 DVD a month, unless it was one that one of us wasn't that interested in, then it might take us a few weeks to get around to it. And while I didn't stream a lot, it was nice to have that option in case I got bored one night and wanted to watch something if nothing good was on TBS that night.

But since having Jay, our priorities have changed and it usually takes us a few weeks to get around to watching our Netflix movie. I also don't stream all that much these days since we moved as the TV with the Netflix devices (our PS3 and Wii) are in the basement and I don't always enjoy sitting down there by myself late at night after Jay goes to bed. I have watched some TV episodes on my laptop, but still... I hate watching TV on there as I can't do anything else on the laptop while it's playing.

The $8.99 charge for Netflix was reasonable - we did get around to watching our movies eventually and the streaming was a nice option to have for when I wanted to use it.

But with the recent price change... we'd be paying $15.99 a month to keep the same services - $7.99 for streaming which we hardly use and $7.99 for DVDs that we eventually get around to watching but not right away.

It just doesn't make sense for casual viewers, like we are now, to keep it.

We might do the streaming in the future when Jay's a little bigger, as there's lots of kids shows on there for him, but right now I think we'll just do Redbox for our movies. There's literally at least 2 kiosks within walking distance of us (1 is just a block away) not to mention most weekends we make a stop at Walmart where a major kiosk is so we could just pick up a movie on our way out and drop it off at one of the kiosks by our house. As far as TV shows, if I want to watch an older show, we'll just download the torrent from somewhere online like we have in the past - not that big a deal.

So, Netflix, it's been fun, but you've just gotten too expensive for us and you're just not worth the cost.