You just saw the trailer of the upcoming “24" and this stimulates a sudden desire to watch the latest season on Netflix. Just to get in the mood. You watch 3 episodes and the episode 4 is left for the next day. That day you turn on Netflix. Boom: 24 gone! Erazed from Netflix Catalog. What just happened?

What happened? You just observed what unlimited access on Netflix truly means. It means unlimited, until its not. This is true of any online streaming service: Hulu, Amazon, Spotify, Deezer, Rdio and so on.

Those services promise unlimited access on demand. Except that this wonderful content catalog in the cloud is conditioned by complex agreements between those online distributors and content owners which make it impossible to know, for us, poor consumers until when a content will or will not be available for consumption

Netflix and competitors don’t want us to know, how those deals are made/broken. Fine. they’re right. Boring and way too complex.

But the promise of unlimited and on demand comes with responsibility. The experience of cutting off a catalog some part of the content is something that should be understood by all consumers. But most importantly Netflix (and others) should have a clear policy of notifying and informing users when this is about to happen and has happened.

1. Notify clearly users ahead. say a week
2. Prepare a special message for those currently watching the content about to be removed
3. Make sure the content removed is still indexed with an explanation to users “no longer available”

Not finding, suddenly, the content you’re viewing, the playlist you created, the music you ve been listening for years, is such a terrible user experience. Netflix invests millions in algorithms and user experience to find content but can’t have an elementary CRM policy to notify users about content removal?

They actually do it with pride when they add content. Don’t they? So how about the other way round?

Ok. Ok. they do display a tiny little mention. which i guess no one views…(never paid attention to it, specially with their new auto play mode for shows)

And because i’m a nice guy here is a cool suggestion for Netflix. Use the in app inbox you’ve added recently (or any other like the one we build) to broadcast some update notes on the latest app feature and inform users here about those changes

Side Note: I guess this is one of the reason that pushed Netflix to create original content.