Netflix CEO Reed Hastings apologized last night for the manner in which the company announced plans to split its streaming and DVD-by-mail services into separate offerings with a higher combined price. Not the fact that Netflix hiked prices, to be clear, but the way the company announced the price hikes.

“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,” he wrote in a blog post that was also distributed as an email to Netflix members. “That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.”

Hastings went on to announce that Netflix will rebrand its DVD-by-mail service as Qwikster, with a separate website, billing and account management.

The mea culpa follows the news last week that more people than the company expected were canceling their Netflix subscriptions following the price hike.

GeekWire readers actually provided some advance warning on that front, with more than 40 percent of respondents to our July poll saying that they would cancel their Netflix accounts. It wasn’t strictly representative of the population, but it did indicate the general trend.

In that spirit, let’s here’s our follow-up poll based on the latest news …

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