Netflix has quietly pulled the plug on its popular Twitter customer help account after 13 years and more than 900,000 tweets, Variety has confirmed.
A Netflix spokesperson told Variety that the end of Netflix CS (@Netflixhelps) customer support is not related to the company’s recent cost-saving measures in the middle of a subscriber contraction. Rather, the move is about the streamer focusing customer support efforts on company-owned platforms, according to the rep.
The company’s @ Netflixhelps account on Twitter was established in February 2009, when the company was still primarily a DVD-by-mail provider and the streaming service was in its early days. The account has almost 270,000 followers.
As of June 30, 2022, the @Netflixhelps account – without explanation – stopped offering online help to Twitter users. Netflix confirmed that the company discontinued Twitter customer support from that date. Users have continued to tweet @Netflixhelps in recent weeks, even though the account no longer responds to inquiries.
Netflix continues to offer three customer support options: countrywide telephone support; online chat; and call Netflix from the streamer’s apps for Android or iOS phones or tablets.
As Netflix’s subscriber base has shrunk in the first half of 2022, the company has taken several cost-cutting steps. In the second quarter, Netflix completed several rounds of layoffs, terminated nearly 500 employees and incurred a cost of $ 70 million related to severance pay for the period. It also recorded a write-down of $ 80 million related to the downsizing of some office leases in the second quarter.
The company is also pressing the brakes on content spending: for 2022, it now expects to spend $ 17 billion in cash (against previous forecasts of $ 18 billion) and that content spending for 2023 will be at “similar levels,” CFO Spencer Neumann told analysts Tuesday.
For the record: The very first tweet from @Netflixhelps – in March 2009 – alerted customers that the DVD release of the horror film “Let the Right One In” for some reason had subtitles that were different from the movie release.
The DVD version of Let The Right One In has subtitles other than the movie release.
– Netflix CS (@Netflixhelps) March 26, 2009
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