Never take a road trip with a scorpion…or Netflix

Ever hear the old fable about the scorpion and the beaver. The beaver is traveling cross country in search of a certain kind of birch tree. He’s about to swim across the mighty Missouri River when he spies a scorpion building a raft out of flowers. The beaver knows a thing or two about rafts and tells the scorpion he might want to change building materials. The scorpion responds that he’s not much of a handyman and that he’d certainly appreciate a ride across the river on the back of the beaver. The beaver thinks about this for a moment and says no, as he is concerned the scorpion might sting him. The scorpion assures him that is not the case since both he and the beaver would surely drown. The beaver thinks that makes perfect sense but he wants something in return for providing transportation. The scorpion offers to fatally sting the beaver’s arch nemesis Tom the Lumberjack. The beaver thinks this is a fair deal and they cross the river successfully. Later that day after the scorpion kills good ol’ Tom he stops by the beaver’s campsite to share the news. The beaver thanks him and goes to give the scorpion a handshake when the scorpion stings him. As the scorpion lifts the dying beaver’s wallet, the beaver asks why did you sting me? The scorpion replies that he’s still a scorpion and “that how we do.” The moral of the story is never trust an evil soul sucking predator not matter how good a deal they offer you.

This of course brings us to Netflix. When a company such as Netflix offers such an exciting new service at reasonable prices and then combines that with creative advertising, and excellent customer self service, one can forget they’re doing business with a corporation aiming to make money. Recently Netflix has admitted to preferential movie delivery. You see Netflix can’t make a profit off of you if you’re watching and returning 3 movies every day or two and have a list or queue of 40 movies waiting in the wings. They’re spending too much money on the shipping and processing. The ideal customer is one who returns a movie after a week or more and keeps their queue under 20. So to balance this out Netflix has taken to delaying delivery to frequent renters by giving new releases to infrequent or new renters and lowering the priority on the frequent renter’s queue. There has already been one class action lawsuit filed against Netflix with undoubtedly more to follow. Now I’m not ready to file my legal brief and I don’t think my rental habits but me in this predicament, but I’m still disappointed. I thought Netflix was an exception to the rule, but in the end I am reminded of the fable about the scorpion and the beaver. After all, we can’t blame Netflix, they’re a big corporation and that’s how they do.