Netflix’s 60% price hike goes into effect today

Netflix fans, say your final goodbyes to the $9.99 streaming and DVD combo package. The company’s much-hated price increase goes into effect today.

Back in mid-July, Netflix announced that it would change its pricing structure so customers would be charged $7.99 a month for streaming alone and $7.99 a month for 1-DVD-at-a-time rather than offering a bundled price. That change increased means the combination plan goes from $9.99 to $15.98, a 60 percent increase.

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For many people, today is the last day you can change your plan without being charged extra. So go into your Netflix account settings and make the appropriate selections.

Netflix’s expressed intention with upping the price is to convince customers to stop renting physical DVDs and move to only streaming. The biggest problem with this move is that the streaming catalog is much, much smaller than its DVD catalog. The more obscure your tastes, the less likely you are to find what you’re looking for in the streaming catalog.

The company wants to acquire the rights to every movie and TV show it can for streaming, but licensing these properties from movie and TV studios is expensive. The studios also have less incentive to stream their content because they make much more money on sales of physical and digital copies than they do on rentals.

As someone who had the Netflix combo plan, I was especially unhappy about the price hike. I’ve since switched my plan to the $7.99 all-streaming package. While I’m not completely satisfied with the catalog, I do appreciate how easy it is to access, and there are enough movies and shows that I haven’t seen to keep me watching.

Have you changed your Netflix plan? Are you satisfied with the steaming plan?