When Netflix announced the price increase, rather than communicating the value the price increase will bring, the company focused the attention on its own pain, like the rising cost of acquiring content from the studios. Whatever you do, don’t make it harder for your customers to do business with you. Focus on the issue your customers are unhappy about and find a better way to explain the change you are making or offer other solutions. As a business, you only get one chance to correct a mistake. This generated more customer complaints and public ridicule, as shown in this scathing SNL parody (which in itself became a self fulfilling prophesy).
Rather than addressing the pricing issue with customers or finding a way to appease their angry customers, Netflix made matters worse by splitting the DVD and Streaming businesses into two separate entities, requiring customers who wanted both services to maintain two accounts, one for the DVD service (the short-lived Qwikster) and the other for the streaming service. The company lost 1 million more customers than anticipated and Wall Street was not happy - sending the stock price down almost 50 percent, from $300 to $155. Netflix quickly realized it had botched the price increase.