Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, has had a rough year.

First Netflix hired actors in Canada to pretend they were excited customers. The problem? Canada was dying to get Netflix so the anticipation and excitement was already there and actors weren’t necessary. But the bigger issue was those actors were talking to media, as if they were real customers. And, maybe they were, but that’s not why they were there.

When found out, Netflix had a bit of a crisis on their hands.

Then, in July, Netflix announced a price hike. Overnight. Via email. They lost nearly a million customers and their stock tanked.

In September, they apologized for the price hike and described the reasons they did it, including streaming comes with its own infrastructure issues, such as different taxes and IT. They also announced they were splitting the DVD and streaming businesses. Now you could have access to DVDs through Qwikster and streaming would remain Netflix.

Earlier this month they decided they weren’t going to split the businesses, after all, and claimed to have learned their lesson. (more…)