Netflix recently announced that all plans including DVD mailing services will be increasing in price, between $1-8, depending on how many DVDs you have out at a time. They also added a new streaming-only plan, now their cheapest option, as part of their transition to a streaming-focused company offering DVDs, rather than a DVD-focused company offering streaming titles.

This is apparently a really popular idea, because the internet is abuzz with people saying they want to switch to the streaming-only plan. There’s just one problem: only about one percent of Netflix streaming titles have captions for deaf users. There are about 30,000 streaming titles currently, and only about 300 captioned streaming movies. How Netflix decides what to caption is anybody’s guess – there is a 1969 Elvis Presley movie, the 2004 film “Clifford’s Really Big Movie” (yes, the big red dog), the 2009 alien flick “District 9″ is captioned…it seems quite random. As a result, most deaf Netflix customers use DVDs almost exclusively.

There’s been a lot of angry words about the rate hike being unfair to deaf people, who don’t have the option of watching streaming movies. A lot of people, including friends of mine, have canceled their Netflix memberships, making sure to let the company know why they’re quitting. I won’t quit – I love my Netflix movies too much, I’ve watched things I never would have heard of, never could have accessed, etc. – but I do think I should be allowed to keep their old rate.

So I called them up through VRS and asked about it. Here’s what I was told:

  1. The rate is fixed. If McDonald’s raises the price on a cheeseburger, it is what it is, you can’t bargain.
  2. It’s just a dollar. Not $3, not $4. Just one dollar.
  3. We’re trying to get everything captioned, honest. (Note: They’ve been saying this for at least three or four years.
  4. You’re not the only group affected by lack of subtitles, I just had a Spanish speaker call me and complain because the movies are only in English.
  5. Your complaint has been duly recorded and might actually be looked at by somebody, someday.

Not exactly inspiring stuff. So yeah, I’m going to pay the extra $12/year, because I like Netflix a lot. But I was not thrilled with the customer service rep, who didn’t seem to realize that captions for deaf people are a legal issue, not a nice feature like subtitles for Spanish people. (That is, there is no legal protection for speakers of languages other than English – there is legal basis for deaf people complaining here.) Also, I wonder if I would have been taken more seriously if I had been on the maximum plan, which is seeing an $8/month increase…would they have still pushed the “it’s just $8, not $15, not $20″ justification?

Will anything come of deaf people complaining and canceling their accounts? Of course not. Netflix hasn’t cared about the years of begging for captions; they’re not going to care about the rate hike driving people away, either. So I’ll cough up my extra buck a month, and keep enjoying movies…and eventually I’ll even forget that I haven’t always paid $9.99/month. (Actually, that’s what it was when I started back in 2005, I think!) But it is unfair, and not just in a “life sucks sometimes” way, but in a “hey this is illegal” way. Life does go on, though.