Seattle Startup Life

Today, out of sheer curiosity, I had the urge to watch the first season of Heros. Hulu.com is already showing season 2, but I’m too fickle of a person to just jump into the second season. So, being the Asian nerd that I am, I scoured the internet searching for a place that would stream the episodes. I finally found what I was looking for on Netflix.com.

However, there was a problem: I was already sucked into the Blockbuster machine and had movies in the queue. I decided that having the ability to stream movies and TV shows outweighed the convenience of being able to drop off movies at close locations. I bit the bullet, canceled my Blockbuster account and registered for Netflix.

Boy, was I making a mistake.

The good:

The registration process was very straightforward. The first screen was nice and simple (name, address, etc). I was then taken to the credit card page; again, another painless process. After putting in my sensitive information, I was greeted with the homepage. Thinking that I was done with the trial registration, I proceeded to try and stream some movies. This is where the fun begins….

The bad and the badder and the baddest and the badderer

At first, I was welcomed by a friendly your-browser-is-whack-so-please-change-it screen. Wha? You don’t support Firefox 2 or Safari or Opera? Isn’t this supposed to be Netflix, the largest online place for renting movies? Grrr. I hate IE. (first movie watching attempt) Oh well. I switch regardless of my discontent for the Microsoft product.

I finally find my IE browser and launch Netflix.com again, re-sign in and conduct another search for “Heroes Season 1.” I hit the play button and am now prompted to install updates for Windows Media. Grrr. (second movie watching attempt) After the install, I return to the movie and try to watch my episode again. (third movie watching attempt) After the loading process, I was treated to a “Media Usage Rights Acquisition” pop-up letting me know that I needed to reactivate my account by clicking on the “My Account” link. Huh?

First, I wasn’t ever prompted to check my email for a registration email (I check it 10 minutes later for the heck of it; nothing was in my inbox). Second, how could I re-register for something I never confirmed registration for?

I click on the “My Account” button and attempted to troubleshoot my problem. Now, from this page, can you tell me what to click on to re-register my account? Can’t find it? Yea, neither could I.

I click the “Help” link and do a search for “reregistering”. The next window gives me a link to a page where supposedly I can re-register my account. I click on it hoping something magical would happen.

Nope. Grrr. (fourth movie watching attempt) All I get is this page and a big SUCKER feeling in my stomach.

What the hell? I then proceeded to log out, reboot, and re-sign into my account. Nope. Nothing. Again. (fifth movie watching attempt) I proceed to call the help line and talk to a representative. She tells me that the reason my registration was never registered was because I didn’t put it the “Security Number”. Wha? From the screens above (see first and second attempt), Netflix never ASKED me for the security code. And when asking me to revisit my account page, why wasn’t anything flagged next to the “Payment Method” link so I know where to look? Grr. I put in my security code and head back to the video page. Nothing. Again. Grrr. (sixth attempt)

My question is: Why is something so simple, so hard to do? 6 attempts to get something right? Are you kidding me? Netflix really needs to do some focus groups and run more user scenarios. It’s pain points like these that ruins great ideas.

It’s 12:56am and I’m still waiting to watch my movie.

UPDATE: 7:00 pm, 3/17/2008

My account still doesn’t work. I call customer service again and this time speak to Jessica. She tries to put in my security code again and still nothing works. I proceed to give her another credit card number and the system denies me AGAIN. She advises me to call the bank and credit card companies to see what’s wrong. I know for a fact that there is nothing wrong with either accounts.

In the end, I decide to cancel my trial period with Netflix.com. It was too much of a pain in the ass. Blockbuster, are you paying attention?