Netflix says shipping back to normal

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Online DVD rental pioneer Netflix Inc resumed normal shipping on Friday after the most severe outage in the company's decade of operations, a spokesman said.

"With possible rare exceptions we will get everything out today," said spokesman Steve Swasey.

Netflix said all customers whose shipments were delayed will get a 15 percent credit to their next billing statement. New customers using the service on a free trial basis will have their trial extended by a week.

"We don't have in our terms of agreement that if you miss a day you get a credit," Swasey said. "We just do that voluntarily because it's the right thing to do."

Netflix did not disclose what caused the outage, which affected about a third of its 8.4 million customers.

The disruption prevented Netflix from mailing out any DVDs on Tuesday, but the company did have partial deliveries on Wednesday and on Thursday.

This week's disruption was only the second delivery outage for Netflix since the company started mailing out DVDs in 1999, Swasey said. The company had a one-day delivery meltdown in March, he said.

Netflix shares edged down 35 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $31.49 on Nasdaq early Friday afternoon.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Mary Milliken, John Wallace, Richard Chang)