Netflix Goes Down Again, But Streaming Not Affected

For the second time in about a week, Netflix is experiencing an outage. On Christmas Eve, many users lost streaming capabilities and didn’t get it back until well into Christmas morning. Netflix pointed the finger at Amazon Web Services, and indeed it appears that an Amazon facility in Virginia was to blame.

This time around, Netflix streaming is apparently unaffected, with the DVD side of the site taking a turn at laying an egg. Netflix sent TechCrunch this statement: “We are experiencing some technical difficulty with the Netflix DVD Web site, which as a result may not be available for all members. Our engineers are working to address this issue. Netflix streaming is not impacted.”


According to Netflix, the only thing not working is users’ ability to add DVDs to their queues, while actual DVD shipments are chugging along just fine. Apparently, then, this seems like a simple website glitch as opposed to a massive cloud outage. Thus, this time Netflix can’t blame Amazon for the flub. Even though Netflix can probably legitimately be let off the hook for the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day debacle, at the end of the day the site is responsible for guaranteeing its service, and this is twice in a week that Netflix users have been unable to use part of the service they’re paying good money for.

Not a great way to kick off the new year, Netflix.