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Much like a Hollywood couple, the relationship between Netflix and its customers has undergone many publicized ups and downs. And just like the tabloids, sometimes rumors emerge to keep people in the spotlight. Just recently, some news sites reported that Netflix is now offering a DVD-by-mail service for $7.99 a month, separate from the video streaming service. However, this report is flawed. Netflix has always offered a separate mail service, and a spokesman for the company tells Huffington Post:

"Nothing is new with Netflix DVD plans. We simply enabled a URL." (dvd.netflix.com)

It was only in June of last year when Netflix made the wrong move of raising its prices for their combined package of DVD- by- mail and video streaming to $16 a month, up from $10 a month. And just like a high profile celebrity who was caught cheating, CEO and co-founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings issued a public apology:

“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation. It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. I’ll try to explain how this happened.”     

Although it seemed as though Netflix was making sincere efforts to address the concerns of its customers (they even vowed to work on better communication) the company seemed to misunderstand one of the issues that customers had that coincided with the increase of rates: Qwikster. Qwikster was going to be the mail service portion of Netflix, while the name Netflix would still be affiliated with the video streaming portion.  Hastings explained in the same apology, “We chose ‘Qwikster’ because it refers to quick delivery.” Qwickster did live up to its name — for being an idea that was quickly rejected.

So one month later, Hastings offered an apology on behalf of Netflix:

“It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.”

So in another effort to make things right with customers, Netflix dropped Qwickster and offered unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows for $7.99 a month or mail-DVD service for $7.99 a month.