A week after announcing price hikes for many customers, Netflix experienced an outage Sunday evening that left some customers without service for up to eight hours -- its worst outage to date -- while problems affecting PlayStation 3 users lingered into Monday.
According to the blog HackingNetflix.com, the service was down for some customers starting around 8 p.m. Eastern before being resolved at about 2 a.m. on Monday morning. Netflix sent e-mail messages to subscribers offering those who were unable to access the service a 3% credit -- worth 24 cents -- toward the $7.99 per month streaming service.
"It was an internal technical issue on Sunday evening for a few hours," Netflix vice president of corporate communications Steve Swasey said in an e-mail. "We identified the problem and fixed it."
A message on the official Netflixhelps Twitter account on Monday said that subscribers using PlayStation 3 were unable to access Netflix. The problem had not been resolved as of late Monday evening, according to Netflixhelps.
Netflix previously suffered a two-and-a-half hour outage on March 15. The company cited a "rare technical issue" for that outage, without providing more details.
Last week, Netflix eliminated bundled DVD and Internet streaming plans, amounting to a price hike of up to 60% for customers who want both services. Analysts said the price change is designed to push subscribers toward the more-profitable streaming-only option.
