Netflix Suffers Issues with More Website Downtime

You would think that the nightmares for Netflix would be over and that the New Year would be rung in with a sigh of relief. We can all imagine that Netflix execs would be hoping that the Amazon hosting issues that affected Netflix in 2012 would finally be over. Unfortunately, if New Year’s Eve is any indication of what 2013 will bring, then Netflix is in for more website downtime in the coming year.

New Year’s Eve Brings More Issues for Netflix.com Website

On New Year’s Eve Netflix did not experience any problems with its streaming media service. This was a great relief to those who rely on Netflix for their entertainment on the holidays. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the DVD portion of the website. That portion of the site was experiencing website downtime due to issues with Amazon – the source of all of Netflix’s hosting woes as of late. What was the problem this time?

Amazon Doesn’t Readily Offer Answers

Once again, Amazon isn’t providing the public with details regarding why the DVD portion of the Netflix site was unavailable to some users on New Year’s Eve. They did, however, go on to explain what caused the issue on Christmas Eve (even if it was a bit too late and irrelevant to the current matter at hand). Perhaps Amazon is catching on to the fact that the public is getting frustrated with the company’s unreliable service. Perhaps Netflix is getting just as frustrated with their hosting provider. The question is, what really did cause the New Year’s Eve fiasco and what is Amazon going to do about it? Answers have yet to be forthcoming.

The Community is Abuzz

If Amazon thinks that the Netflix outage is going unnoticed, they are sorely mistaken. Even Roger Ebert piped in tweeting, “Why does Netflix always seem to stop working just in time for a holiday?” And he wasn’t the only one who was asking this question. If Amazon doesn’t get its act together soon, Netflix may very well go looking for services elsewhere. After all, website downtime equates to lost customer confidence and lost profits – and Netflix has been suffering quite a bit of downtime lately.

Fortunately Netflix is communicating with customers, even if Amazon is not. Utilizing social media is always a good idea if you don’t want customers looking elsewhere for products and/or services. Netflix seems to know this and has kept its customers as informed as they can during the recent outages – but how much information can they really give when Amazon (the source of the problem) doesn’t seem to be communicating about the issue?

This just goes to show you that your hosting provider can play a crucial role in the uptime success of your website. If you pick the wrong host or a host who doesn’t have all their programming ducks in a row, you’re going to be facing significant website downtime – and that’s something that no one wants to face going into the New Year.