I just tried to put the movie, Whiteout in my Netflix queue and instead of showing up with a release date of January 19, 2010 it said Release date unavailable. A few days later it now says the release date is February 2010. What the kelp is going on?

You’re not going to like it.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you might be more than a little disappointed that Netflix decided to make us all take it up the rear and wait a month to rent new Warner Brothers DVD releases.

Netflix has made an agreement with the first of what will obviously become many if not all studios. They make us faithful Netflix subscribers wait 4 weeks after DVDs and Blu-ray discs go on sale until we can rent new titles. The studios charge Netflix significant less money for DVDs while Netflix charges us the same amount of money to get less than we were getting. (Whiteout is a Warner Bros. release so that’s why the release date is Feb. for Netflix members instead of Jan. like everyone else).

See the movie studios have been asking Netflix to agree to delay our new rentals by a month in exchange for selling Netflix DVDs at a “discount.” A bribe is more like it. A bribe asking Netflix to turn it’s back on their customers in order to get cheaper DVDs while still charging their members full price for less service. Sounds great eh? Not if you’re a Netflix member!

The reason the movie studios think this is a great idea is they believe that if we’re forced to wait an extra month after DVDs go on sale to rent them we’ll instead buy more DVDs. Which doesn’t make any sense of course, if we wanted to buy a ton of DVDs, we wouldn’t be Netflix members!

Netflix thinks it’s a good idea because if they sucker everyone into taking this bull and accepting less while paying the same amount they lower their overhead tremendously and pass the saving to themselves and laugh at all of us for remaining their customers!

Lower overhead costs for Netflix, the movie studios get a month to try to get us to buy DVDs (which we won’t) and we get to wait a freaking EXTRA month for new releases while paying the same $$$ to Netflix. Win, win eh? Not for us Netflix members it isn’t.

A win for Netflix and a win for the movie studios equals a big loss for Netflix customers. The first loss of many to come.

The Warner Bros. deal is the first but won’t be the last. It’s all up to Netflix members, will they just lie down and take it? I wonder.

Now looks like a good time to put my Netflix account on hold and let them know why. I wonder if my fellow members are smarter than Netflix and the movie studios think? Let’s see how many Netflix customers don’t wait to take this laying down and do something about it. Emailing Netflix, putting your subscription on hold or canceling sure sound like great options.

I wonder, do torches and angry mobs ever go out of style? What do you think?