Netflix Feature Idea
Julie and I have been ripping through the Mad Men series on blu-ray via Netflix lately. We just finished season 1, and were all revved up to start season 2. So on Tuesday night, when we popped in what we thought was the first disc for season 2, only to realize it was the SECOND disc for season 2, it was a bummer.
Now this wasn’t Netflix’s fault, it was my fault. They sent me the correct disc, but I had mistakenly transposed disc 1 and disc 2 in my queue, and as Netflix does, they just shipped me the next thing in my queue. Which in this case, was not the disc we meant to have shipped to us.
ANYWAYS, my thought was that Netflix (it seems) could have some basic checks in place that look for patterns in your queue, particularly with series, that can notify you when it would appear that you are getting something out of sequence. Programatically, I’d imagine that Netflix could see that our previous three rentals looked like:
- Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 1
- Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 2
- Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 3
And based on that pattern, assume that our next logical rental would be Mad Men: Season 2: Disc 1. If Netflix then sees that the item set to ship is actually Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 2, they might send us an email, or pop a message in our queue saying something like:
It looks like the next item in your Netflix queue is Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 2. This appears to be out of order based on your recent rental history. Did you mean to select Mad Men: Season 1: Disc 1 for shipment? Click here to update your queue.
Again, the fact that I messed up the queue order is totally my fault and I’m not pissy at Netflix about it. However, I do see a way that Netflix could have saved me from my own stupidity here with what I would have thought was a totally awesome feature.
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