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Netflix stops charging customers who never watch
- notadog 6y ago> Netflix says it will now start to cancel accounts that have watched nothing in more than a year, but have still been paying subscription fees. > Netflix said less than half a percent of its user-base falls into that category. > Almost 16 million people created accounts in the first three months of the year, nearly double the new sign-ups it saw in the final months of 2019.
- notadog 6y agoWith 182.8 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, that means that less than 914,000 accounts have watched nothing in the past year.
- ilaksh 6y agoNot sure I believe that. Even if it's true, it means they include everyone who watched a _single_ thing. I feel like they are doing the minimum change necessary to try to reduce legal problems. They have actually probably had a lot of people try to sue them for charging them for a service they have not used for months and months, when they forget about it and then notice the charges.
- cma 6y agoProbably also reducing chargebacks to get a lower fee from CC companies.
- swilliamsio 6y ago> Almost 16 million people created accounts in the first three months of the year, nearly double the new sign-ups it saw in the final months of 2019. No doubt the quarantine was a solid motivator to sign up.
- notadog 6y agoLink to the Netflix blog post: https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping-members-who-havent-been-watching-cancel https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping-members-wh...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- notadog 6y agoIt would be nice if other subscription based products did this also.
- WalterBright 6y agoA reasonable strategy would be to stop charging customers who haven't watched in a while, but leave them enrolled as subscribers. If they start watching again, start charging again.
- ec109685 6y agoNetflix keeps all your preferences and history, so the account can be reactivated without losing anything.
- WalterBright 6y agoSure, but my proposal makes it frictionless for the customer.
- gnicholas 6y agoOnly for a few months. After that it’s gone forever.
- tzs 6y agoI wonder if it is different if you were never a paying user? I did the free trial in February 2019 and then cancelled. If I try to login now, it starts going through the whole set up a free trial for a new user process, with no indication that it recognizes my account. In fact, if I try to login with the email address I used for the trial and any random thing for the password, it goes to the new user trial setup. If I hit thee "need help" link on the sign in screen and try to initiate a password reset, it tells me there is no account for my email address.
- viburnum 6y agoProbably should be a law to do this automatically after four months or so.
- wayupthere 6y agoA good way to rank the level of scumminess among SV companies: Signup with a credit card and don't validate your email address or ever sign into your account. You'd be amazed how many companies will happily start charging you.
- jonas21 6y agoHow is that scummy? You bought something, and they're charging you for it.
- wayupthere 6y agoI should clarify. You sign up for a free trial and never log in and never confirm your account. Scum kings will still begin charging you after your free trial ends.
- croshan 6y agoHow can you cancel (without cc chargebacks) if you typed in the wrong email address?
- jasonkester 6y agoEmail and ask. I routinely cancel subscriptions for S3stat customers who have forgotten which old employee first signed up for the service, or just don’t want to bother logging back in to do so. A name, or even company name is plenty.
- monadic2 6y agoI imagine it’s scummy when your site is used for fraud.
- mod 6y ago
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWhat happens with your subscriptions when you die?
- stormdennis 6y agoIt's a worry all right!
- organsnyder 6y agoTypically your credit cards are cancelled.
- londons_explore 6y agoA few scummy companies put huuuge termination fees in the case of a customer's death. In one case it was equivalent to 100 years service for a phone setup my grandfather had! In most cases I bet they get paid - usually whoever is overseeing a loved ones estate really doesn't want to be going to court etc.
- rosstex 6y agoThis sounds insane, do you have some examples?
- Tempest1981 6y agoSo if his setup was $10/mo, the termination fee was $12,000?
- londons_explore 6y agoIt was a $3 per month business VoIP phone number redirecting service, and the termination fee was $3000 if you didn't use the correct termination procedure, which involved knowing a password in a web form only my grandfather knew, or passing a 'my password is my voice' phone login. They also allowed termination by a letter to their HQ, with a $3k fee. I think the fee was more of a "we can only offer low prices if everything is automated, so we charge a stupidly high fee for anything we can't automate". I don't want to name the company, because the dispute is still ongoing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raiyu 6y agoI always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes. Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it’s better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts. On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.
- ukoki 6y agoJust one theory: If I go to a restaurant I expect they'll give me to-go box if I ask for it; If I accidentally buy they wrong size shirt from a high-street retailer, I expect to be able to return it. If a business doesn't meet these generally-agreed on "consumer expectations" they may be complained about viciously. If Netflix can successfully normalize "only charge me if I use the service" into a basic consumer expectation for subscription businesses it might cost Netflix a little, but it might cost their competitors a lot more.
- oarsinsync 6y agoI hadn’t considered this angle and absolutely love it. I hope this becomes true.
- bschne 6y agoInteresting argument, I am curios though why this would hurt other streaming services more than netflix? Is this based on an assumption like "netflix has more content so less people will not watch anything for a few months than on [other platform]" or something like that?
- Klathmon 6y agoIt could also be an attempt to beat the innovator's dilemma. By putting a policy in place like this they're internally much more incentivised to ensure they are putting out consistently good content.
- ukoki 6y agoNetflix competes with cable TV which has famously infuriating billing practices. they also compete with any “digital entertainment” you might choose to spend money on instead of Netflix: Xbox live, Spotify etc
- ASVVVAD 6y agoThose are most likely accounts made for the free 30-day trial They're very common and they're given away to on social media sites etc.
- kalium-xyz 6y agoPerhaps to eliminate old accounts that have the discounted subscriptions?
- cmckn 6y agoThis is where my mind went too. I don't think Netflix has generally grandfathered-in pricing, my bill has always gone up when their advertised price does. If there are some folks who are getting a year or so of promo pricing, I don't see how cancelling their accounts is advantageous.
- kalium-xyz 6y agoMy family is sharing an account with grandfathered pricing. Edit: seems like they ungranfathered everyone recently
- zwily 6y agoSlack does this too, every month. (Maybe it’s more common in enterprise offerings?)
- jaggederest 6y agoYeah I appreciated it a lot. They also prorate by active users, so if you're paying for 50 users and only 20 were active, you get a 60% discount. Super solid as a way of doing business.
- zerd 6y agoImagine if gyms did this with memberships. They'd lose a fortune.
- thiscatis 6y agoBecause it's against their business model. They want you to subscribe and not come.
- raverbashing 6y agoBecause not alienating customers is bad for business apparently No wonder "no contract" chains are growing in some countries. Less BS for the consumer, even if they have to "pay more" (i.e. the actual cost of the service). (But yeah in the case where you actually want to pay for a gym membership and not go, those seem optimized for it)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- krick 6y agoExactly. And while I don't want have the urge to use Netflix anyway, I'd sign-up for a gym that charges for actual usage without hesitation. But that's why it only more interesting. We all are sadly accustomed that selling subscriptions you would never is the business model of most gyms. But then, what would be the reason for Netflix not to do this? This is really weird, I don't believe they would do this just to be good guys, and I don't see what can be the reason for them to do that otherwise.
- billfruit 6y agoIt would have been better if they don't collect the charges for a month if you haven't watched even a single thing on Netflix for that month.
- dawnerd 6y agoThat’d actually keep me subscribed longer I think. Right now I’ll batch stuff up and binge it all in a month and then cancel for another how ever months it takes.
- antpls 6y agoBy reading the title, I thought that was the deal. It would have been amazing to me. Disappointed after reading the article. TLDR : they cancel your subscription after 1 year of inactivity
- wuxb 6y agoI'm so eager to know how will people start to think of some bundled call phone plans such as a T-Mobile's family plan that I used for a couple of years. The Netflix subscription is offered "for free" with a "1? dollar value" but of course there is no refund if I don't watch it. Oh wait that's how mobile plan always worked.
- rb808 6y agoCredit cards only last a few years before theyre expired and replaced. I'd think only very few accounts are unwatched, after 24 months I'd think more than half of CCs would have expired anyway.
- jacobwil 6y agoCard networks offer services to receive updated credit card numbers for mutual customers now and have for a bunch of years. If your credit card expires, many subscription providers will get the updated details automatically. Here’s an article with some details on the topic: https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater-services-auto-pay-1585.php https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater-se...
- rconti 6y agoThanks for the link. I've also had the utterly bizarre experience of a service charging my old card number for MONTHS after it expires, have the charges go through, THEN tell me my card is expired 3-6months later and force me to update. Probably a related thing where they want to keep receiving revenue from me without interruption to my service, but ultimately need to confirm it's not fraud?
- jmpman 6y agoI just got an email saying that account was cancelled. For some reason I signed up for a second account, so I could get DVD service, received the DVD and never cancelled. Should probably return the disk... if I can find it.
- wrycoder 6y agoI have a DVD and a streaming subscription. I use the DVD fairly often, but the streaming rarely. There’s very little I want to watch available on streaming. I really should cancel.
- solarkraft 6y agoReading this I kept thinking "What? What? Why would you do this?!" Less than half a percent isn't that much relatively, but those are still many millions. It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have share holders who are not interested in that stuff. So what could have pressured them to do this? Regulation?
- bergstromm466 6y ago> It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have share holders who are not interested in that stuff. 100%. It might have something to do with wanting more clear/precise analytics numbers. Non-active members might weigh down certain metrics in some way, so removing these members likely allows for 'fuller' analytics/measurements, which is important to their core business. Netflix is now also a very active producer of content itself, instead of it's previous business model of licensing/'renting out' others' content, so clearer and probably higher engagement metrics (once non-active memberships are removed) helps one of it's core competences. It's purely a business move. Their blog post is PR.
- goodside 6y agoYears ago, I heard of a dating site doing the opposite of this. They normally sent periodic digests and newsletters to their users to try to increase engagement, but if a user went a certain number of months without logging into their account, but still allowed monthly fees to be charged, they were labeled as a “sleeping giant” in the database. Once in this state, they would not be contacted by the site for any reason until they logged in again by their own initiative. The site had determined that, on average, contacting these users had a net-negative effect on retention — i.e., they would be reminded that they were paying for an unused service and cancel.
- jclulow 6y agoI am routinely surprised to receive email spam from my gym membership. It's like they're daring me to remember to cancel it.
- ta17711771 6y agoMaybe they know their market better than their market knows itself?
- hackissimo123 6y agoMy gym (a very popular UK-wide chain) has suspended all customer payments while their gyms are closed during lockdown. Instead they're spamming me trying to get me to pay for their workout app which they obviously knocked out in a hurry in an attempt to salvage some cashflow during this crisis. I can't blame them for trying, but it's definitely not a good time to be running a gym.
- TechBro8615 6y agoI’m quite sure hellosign does this as well. I did not receive a single email from them for two years, but they charged me $140 two times. I never used their paid offering. The second year, I never even logged in. I received no marketing emails, no “you’re about to be billed” emails, no “we received your payment” emails. It seems wrong.
- deleted 6y ago
- alanlovestea 6y agoBe careful, exactly 10 years after I cancelled my Netflix, Netflix started to charge my card again. I contacted Netflix, but they cannot did anything about it. I ended up having my card issuer to issue a new account number to me.
- jonathanlydall 6y agoThe most likely explanation is that your credit card details were compromised and someone was using them for “free Netflix”.
- nodesocket 6y agoIf you don't follow you finances and continue to pay Netflix for a year of service without use, I personally don't think they have any obligation to cancel your account. As somebody who has run SaaS services and seen countless baseless e-mails (even worse chargebacks) come in from users who "forgot" to cancel service and then were irate about it, this doesn't help the customer "entitlement" problem I see. Let me explain what I mean in terms of customer "entitlement". A few of my friends will go out of their way to call and complain to companies for mistakes they themselve make, demanding refunds, discounts, reward points, and often they get compensation. As a business owner, this sort of behavior really infuriates me. These types of users are taking advantage of situations because of their own failing, and thus are now blaming the companies expecting something in return.
- jpalomaki 6y agoMaybe this is why it makes financially sense to automatically cancel forgotten accounts at some point. You would avoid some of the support costs, some chargeback costs and cost with negative publicity (people complaining about ”fraudulent” charges on social media). On large enough scale you can likely do some calculations and eventually A/B testing to figure out what does this mean financially.
- Hamuko 6y agoI cancelled my Netflix account after almost never watching it and now they keep sending me emails to reactivate my subscription for the low low price of 7.99 euro a month. For some reason they think that I want to come back to Netflix to watch shows at standard definition since for 7.99 you can't even get 720p, even though when I was subscribed, I had the 4K plan.
- foepys 6y agoThat's just to reel you in. You might think that they discounted their UHD offering for you. So you check and Netflix got their email engagement click.
- Hamuko 6y ago>You might think that they discounted their UHD offering for you. Yeah, that's what I assumed when I opened the email. Rather scummy in my opinion.
- NKosmatos 6y agoI don’t understand how people leave subscription or renewal charges unchecked in their credit cards. I can understand keeping a subscription unused but still acknowledging and paying for it (for whatever personal reasons), but having a charge in your credit card without knowing what exactly it is or why, sounds a bit strange to me. Could be that I’m not rich enough and I’m still paying attention to every single €/$/£ being charged :-)
- gear54rus 6y agoOne of the reasons subscription model is cancer: they hope you'll forget it's on.
- mav3rick 6y agoVirtual Cards with set expiry numbers will end this game
- gear54rus 6y agoDo you think someone who forgets their subscriptions will take the time to set that up?:)
- Jare 6y agoYeah I would say setting it up now is much more likely than remembering to cancel later.
- vbezhenar 6y agoI'd prefer my bank to allow me to manually approve every payment, e.g. via smartphone application. It would be easy to understand, fast enough, with some options like "approve netflix forever". That would be ideal for me. And if I don't like this particular payment, just decline and move on. Those agents who pull my money without my explicit consent every time are the reason I'm keeping my card with minimal amount of money (I don't use credit cards, only debt cards).
- jaakl 6y agoIt is not just ”altruistic”. The idea is clever: they loose <0.1% inactive users but will win new ones blocked now behind worry ”what if I will not really use it”. Their bet is that the second group could be larger than first, and by order of magnitude. And if not, then it is still not so expensive marketing. I wish ’use only if you really use’ would become norm.
- sfj 6y ago> I wish ’use only if you really use’ would become norm. I wouldn't look at them as an shining beacon. They only cancel if you haven't watched it for a year, and none of your money is refunded, so it's not that great of safety net.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoIt is still pretty great. A lot of people would happily exchange one year of fees for having to unsubscribe. Think of the application for the deceased or incapacitated. Running down every subscription a deceased parent could have had is a huge pain.
- sfj 6y agoWhy not just cancel their cc?
- s1artibartfast 6y agosome things roll over to collections, which can also be difficult to unwind.
- AstralStorm 6y agoIt's also a good security practice - their payment, account and other personal data can be offloaded to cold storage. Both harder to damage and harder to take over.
- kerng 6y agoI wish 24 hour fitness would do the same. They keep charging me even though I called them multiple times to cancel.
- destory-everyth 6y agoThis reminded me to cancel my cable subscription, I only had it for the EPL and F1 and they did not make any concessions for the fact they are not playing live sports. I also put my mobile plan to cheapest possible because where I am (Singapore) I can't really leave my place for past 2 months
- adav 6y agoIn the UK at least, Netflix is often used by fraudsters to check stolen credit card numbers. I bet Netflix were fed up with expense of dealing with all the fraudulent transactions. Or if not the expense, Netflix doesn’t want the negative press that they’re profiting from all these unsuspecting victims.
- dylan62 6y agoNetflix impressed me recently with how easy they made it for me to cancel my subscription. It means I will have no hesitation to re-subscribe in future, should I feel the urge. I just wonder how long it will last. It sometimes feels like all the big successful consumer companies become accountancy-driven scumbags sooner or later. Fingers crossed Netflix can buck the trend and stay a nice company to deal with.
- skohan 6y agoI would think this might be triggered by a decline in revenue. When Netflix can't continue to grow organically into new markets and the share price starts to suffer, they might resort to less friendly tactics for increasing the revenue per customer.
- hrktb 6y agoIt might also come from detecting recurring patterns and trying to facilitate them. Before the simplified version, we already used to only register to Netflix during long vacations, binge watch whatever we wanted (typically Black Mirror and Sherlock) and cancel the rest of the year. Now that it’s way easier, there’s less friction in reenabling the account when there’s a series we want to watch and set the subscripting to cancel again at the end of the month.
- _squared_ 6y agoNetflix joined the Motion Picture Association not so long ago. I'd recon they are well into the transition from startup mentality to dominant bureaucracy-driven business mentality.
- jedberg 6y agoI think they joined the MPAA so they could influence it towards their more liberal views on how content should be released. If anything I think it will mean other companies relax their rules.
- koheripbal 6y ago
- rob74 6y agoFerengi Rule of Acquisition #188: "A fool and his money are the best customer". Kudos to Netflix for doing this, but I can entirely understand that they are the exception rather than the rule here. After all, if people don't care about a sum of money they pay monthly without getting anything for it, the only reasonable explanation is that they earn more than enough, so they can probably afford to continue paying it...
- djhworld 6y agoI subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now that I'm working remote. I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can they?
- NicoJuicy 6y agoJust cancel it on PayPal, if there is no easy way out. Cancelling the payment is the same as cancelling the subscription.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoMy understanding was that the correct way to cancel subscriptions payed with PayPal is via the PayPal website. I recall one service pointed me to PayPal to cancel a subscription, and that’s how I’ve managed them since. Edit: spelling
- djhworld 6y agoAh, ok thanks. Well, I've just cancelled it. No turning back now!
- IMAYousaf 6y agoIt's so funny to see this at the top of HN when right below it I saw this thread: "Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 White Pattern? vs. Dark Pattern
- INTPenis 6y agoMisleading title. Here I thought I could be charged by the hour. That would actually make me get netflix, finally. But I don't think it's worth 5 euro or 11 euro a month because I only enjoy a very small portion of media. So far it's easier to pirate. And I'm far too used to the situation where a friend wants to put something on from netflix and it's not available. What's the point of paying 11 euro a month when you're restricted to such a small library?
- chki 6y agoHow do you deal with the fact that pirating is not sustainable? Expecially right now when cinemas aren't even open, how can films be made if nobody's paying?
- INTPenis 6y agoNo answer I give will satisfy you morally. I've been pirating since tapes on C64 in the 80s so I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree as they say.
- Broken_Hippo 6y agoYou somehow think that not pirating would translate into paid movie/TV show watching? IIRC, pirating actually means more folks watch the shows - which translates into folks talking about the shows (Free advertising). Besides, lots of folks subscribe to one streaming service (like Netflix) and pirate the things that aren't available. If Netflix (and the producers of shows and films) want folks to watch, they need to improve. One could start by removing geographic restrictions and merely cull their library for legal reasons (X topic is restricted in X country: Y topic is only available after 8pm). Also, Netflix doesn't rely on cinemas for its films. The other production companies can follow suit if they decide they want to. The companies can find ways to finance things and reduce piracy, but so far... nope. They are still dragging their feet.
- bergstromm466 6y agoI think all media serves as 'covert' propaganda, for a certain way of thinking. [1] Westerners sell the American dream and the American consumerist way of life. If we all lived the way Americans do todat, we would need another one to two planet earth's. > pirating is not sustainable Please stop shaming people for not being as rich as you. For not having 'disposable' income and have money for 'entertainment'. Have you seen the state of the world? [2] It's honestly not as fair as you make it out to be, it's not sustainable for Hollywood to keep getting the kind of power it currently has to tell stories. [3] In my eyes Westeners are so psychopathic and culturally grandiose to believe that their systems are just and fair. They are all too happy to cecede control to the corporatocracy, their (perceived) benevolent overlords. I believe what is not sustainable is intellectual property rights used by rentier capitalists to extract parasitic rents: "Whether we are streaming content or licensing software, we are paying for the privilege of slowly ceding control of private property to corporate gatekeepers." [4] [1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/16/the-history-of-hollywood-propaganda-for-white-supremacy-at-home-and-us-militarism-abroad/ https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/16/the-history-of-holly... and https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/20/hollywoods-imperial-propaganda/ https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/20/hollywoods-imperial-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5xfBtD6rLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5xfBtD6rLY [4] http://archive.is/y0lQf http://archive.is/y0lQf / https://onezero.medium.com/landlord-2-0-techs-new-rentier-capitalism-a0bfe491b463 https://onezero.medium.com/landlord-2-0-techs-new-rentier-ca...
- krick 6y agoThat's great, but why would they do this? I don't understand. Is it just a seemingly costly PR-capmaign?
- notadog 6y agoIt's less than half a percent of their subscribers, so the cost is less than you might expect (especially considering the huge gain of users during Q1 2020). It's a altruistic and morally the right move, with the plus of having positive PR.
- krick 6y agoNobody in his mind cares about "altruistic and morally the right" and half a percent of their subscribers is millions of dollars in subscriptions.
- leonroy 6y agoA few years back I started to get a $12 charge from Lastpass on my Paypal account. I cancelled my account at Lastpass over 6 years ago so was puzzled why, especially since they don’t offer any sort of $12 service. It took a lot of emails and complaining before Lastpass told me that it was due to me being an Xmarks (bookmark sync service) customer in 2009! Apparently they owned Xmarks briefly. Why the charge started a few years ago they have no idea. Despite repeated attempts to cancel the charge via Lastpass and Paypal it still happens every year. Apparently neither company can stop it - so every year I complain, get the charge refunded and have to swallow the exchange rate fees on my credit card. Maddening and leaves me with zero good will towards either of these companies.
- FrojoS 6y agoIs there no way to block them on PayPal??
- juliand 6y agoIf it's a recurring payment then yes, it should be under PayPal's My Preapproved Payments.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoChange your credit card?
- ideaman924 6y agoGo into PayPal and check under "recurring payments," or "subscriptions." LastPass should be under there. Click it and then revoke the authorization and they shouldn't be able to bill you any longer. Outside of this I am pretty sure no company is able to automatically bill you on PayPal without your consent, except for a select few companies like Nintendo (where you can pay on your Switch without authorizing any PayPal prompts).
- MindTooth 6y agoLPT: each year order a new card. Been doing this for many years. If something that unexpectedly gets charged, I know right away or I just goes away. This way I have to some degree regained control.
- woutr_be 6y agoI wanted to do this as well, but it honestly takes so much time to change payment details on a lot of services. All my utilities for example are on auto payment through my credit card, I need to go to a physical store to change that. It's one of the reasons I haven't cancelled one of my credit cards, even though I haven't used it in years.
- IshKebab 6y agoOr get a card that has a decent mobile app that instantly tells you about charges.
- svara 6y agoThey know how to treat their customers. Meanwhile, cancelling a Wall Street Journal subscription online is simply impossible, they have you call their hotline. Unless you're in California, in which case you can cancel online. It's ridiculous and frankly should be illegal.
- ricotico060 6y agoCouldn’t agree more, tried to cancel my membership a week ago and just didn’t because the process was so long
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _hao 6y agoIf I have to give out my card details anywhere especially for a subscription based service I look beforehand on how I can cancel it. Companies have no shame in leaving you forget a subscription going on forever. That should be punishable by law. Also my main bank is now Monzo (based in the UK) and there I get a notification on my phone for every transaction I make. I also see a list of all the committed spending for a month which includes all subscription based services I have (some of them I had to mark myself as such because Monzo can't distinguish if they are recurring or not). To be honest I think every mobile bank application should offer this out of the box. It's 2020...
- foobar_ 6y agoThis is absolutely ridiculous. As a profitable company the duty of the company is to make money for the share holders and board members. The customer is a dumb expendable resource to be exploited. Netflix stock price is down because of this. Not only should Netflix not do this, it should charge pregnant women extra because they are watching with an extra person /s
- jzer0cool 6y agoThis is why Netflix is a honest company. 1. Reasonable prices for subscription (when you watch). 2. Does not "charge/steal" from customers. In contrast, I an older article how this one phone company charged an elderly women in rent for a rotary phone. > https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t-charges-elderly-widow--14-000-in--rent--for-rotary-phone.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t-charges-e...
- trashburger 6y agoWouldn't a better model be to not charge the user for that month if they haven't watched anything? So you would only pay for months where you actually watched things on Netflix, and you wouldn't find that your account was suddenly deleted. Also, maybe the title should be "Netflix will delete the accounts of customers who never watch", because that describes what Netflix will be doing more accurately.
- lacerrr 6y agoThey will be keeping the account data, so you don't need to start from scratch if you sign up again. It's more of an account freeze/deactivation than a deletion.
- andy_ppp 6y agoCan we talk about Apple subscriptions please... I understand the desire to make money by Apple but these trials that no one uses and then being charge a hundred quid for a year’s subscription... even if Apple makes a lot of money operating the racket it’s deeply wrong. Well done to Netflix on this I really cannot see an upside apart from the awesome brand loyalty they increased by doing this!
- bergstromm466 6y agoWow I love atruistic corps. So lovely to see this. [read with a sarcastic Ricky Gervais voice] [1] [1] https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020 https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020
- have_faith 6y agoCould this feasibly be law? what are the potential down sides? That is a company has to stop charging for a service if the service isn't used for a specified amount of time, 12 months or so etc. Like a gym couldn't just keep charging you if their records show you never turned up.
- minikites 6y agoWhy should the government interfere in market outcomes?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoBecause, scammers.
- kappuchino 6y agoIf that is not a rethorical question, here are my thoughts: Consumer protection laws/rules can actually help establishing a better marketplace. Example: DSL Connectivity. If there are only a few market participants and the allowed lenght for contracts is 24 months, it will be 24 months. This is bad for a number of reasons to me: - First, a different (and hopefully better/cheaper/cleverer serivce needs to "endure" that only 1/24th of the customer base per month could change. That is also the problem for customers who have issues with the Provider. - Second, this gives incentives for what I call "dishonest" offers: Marketed as "half off", its only half of the first year (or only six months), then full price for the rest. Hacker News is full of people who are good at math, but this appeals mainly for people who are not. Or who don't have the choice when they are already short on money. - Third: Part of the calculation is the rate of people who might not use the service to moving, death, etc. - and I don't want the company or me be part of that. When it comes to other types of contracts (mobile operators, gym services, ...) the stabiltiy of income is still guranteed with shorter spans if you provide a great service. This is proven by markets where these types of protections exist. And netflix shows that you can even go month by month. I believe thats also because people can buy dvds/blue rays, rent/buy online, go to cinemas, etc - so there are a lot of competing options, forcing you to excel in service. And thats vs. "free" bittorent, rogue streaming, too.
- 6y ago
- sahoo 6y agoYou can always ask your credit card provider to send you a replacement card or the charges move to the replacement card
- cdolan 6y agoFor those in the chat who react by saying “this should be law!” Laws have unintended consequences. Also I subscribe to a number of services I barely ever use, generally because I got in with an account very early on, and the price I’m paying is usually 1/5 or less of the current retail price. I do not want companies to proactively cancel my service. “Thats Absurd!” You may say... well for about 10 years I kept my original AT&T unthrottled and unlimited plan goong on an iPhone, then iPad, until my credit card expired and the payment lapsed. Of course my account want instantly closed and my grandfathered plan unavailable. Did I use more than 30 GB a month? No. Could i buy that plan again around 2017-2018? Nope. I was happy to secure that for $20/mo. Do I want companies to have more red tape and penalties, such that they proactively shut down accounts from legacy plans? Absolutely not, get off my lawn.
- fedups 6y agoPlanet money had a story where a similar superficially good idea ended up with Etrade selling a man's Amazon stock and deactivating his account after he didn't log in for a certain period of time. He was able to reclaim about $8000 for stock that would be worth ~$100k today. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoThis is mildly infuriating because the whole point of long term investing is to buy a stock, and well, do nothing -- besides hold it for decades. The stock should continue being held whether a user logs in or not.
- alkonaut 6y agoImagine if gyms did this.
- notadog 6y agoThe difference between Netflix doing this and gyms doing this is gyms rely heavily on people who join and don't go (even specifically targeting that audience), while for Netflix it is less than half a percent of their users. If anyone is interesting in learning more about the economics and psychology of gym memberships, I highly recommend Episode 590: The Planet Money Workout of the NPR podcast Planet Money.
- kerkeslager 6y agoIf I pay for something, I want to own it. Revocable-access[1] subscription-based services are just a form of rent-seeking, and I'm deeply concerned about how this affects our society. As such, I'm not a direct customer[2] of Netflix and likely never will be. That said, I think it's important to acknowledge when people you disagree with do good stuff--this is how we make sure that our disagreements are based on principles and logic rather than grudges. Of the subscription services out there, it's my impression that Netflix is one of the best. They avoid a lot of dark patterns, and this latest action of not charging customers who don't watch is a very upstanding action, especially since it cuts into their profits in a really direct way. There are still complaints I have about Netflix[3], but the real heart of the issue is that this cannot last forever. There's simply too much counter-incentive for a company to walk away from a revenue stream like this. And with a subscription business model, there's nothing to keep them honest, because Netflix has all the control. [1] This is a term I'm basically inventing on the spot, based on something I've been thinking about lately. Physical print newspapers were subscription based but they weren't revocable-access: you received the newspaper on subscription, but once you received it, you owned it. This differs fundamentally from web-based subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if you let your subscription lapse, the site revokes your access to content which you previously had access to. [2] Most people around me have Netflix subscriptions, so I end up watching a lot of Netflix with people, despite not having an account myself. [3] a) Patterns that manipulate dopamine response. b) Glossing over credits so content creators don't get credit. c) Monopolistic practiced with regard to tethering content creation and content distribution together.
- Hello71 6y ago> Physical print newspapers were subscription based but they weren't revocable-access: you received the newspaper on subscription, but once you received it, you owned it. This differs fundamentally from web-based subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if you let your subscription lapse, the site revokes your access to content which you previously had access to. But with online subscriptions, you also gain access to historical content: if you sign up for a traditional newspaper, you don't immediately gain access to previously published papers, only those published subsequent to your subscription. Modern online subscriptions are more similar to traditional libraries, providing access to historical as well as future content. Presumably this is a major factor why Netflix and other services insist on calling their collections "libraries", despite being otherwise dissimilar. I think it's an interesting question though: would people pay for a Netflix subscription that provided irrevocable access, but only to current and future content? I would say probably not: a significant portion of the value proposition of Netflix is due to their historical content: "you can watch anything you want" (that we have), regardless of when it was published. Would you pay for this service?
- pjmorris 6y agoGood on them. I spent ~five years with a Netflix subscription that I never watched. I'd joke that I ought to get a Christmas card from them, because I was one of their very best customers. Even now, I'll flip back and forth between paying and not paying, because I only use the service occasionally. I suspect it's less hassle for them to keep people like me on the books than have us fade in and out.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoGiven there is no cancellation nor sign up fee for Netflix I just cancel it every time that I sign up, so I buy a month of access instead of keeping a live subscription
- madballster 6y agoThat is shocking. In my experience, well over 20% of all revenues of an online subscription service can come from stale users who keeping paying but never login anymore. They're gold to the bottom line.
- notadog 6y agoFor Netflix though, it applies to less than half a percent of their subscribers.
- gonational 6y agoIf you send the message that “don’t worry, if you don’t use your account, you won’t be charged”, it has the effect of making people think of Netflix as an account they can just keep forever. My guess is that they put together data internally that showed e.g. 3% of users become dormant for longer than a quarter, while 5% of people cancel their accounts after a quarter or two of low or no usage, due to the feeling of not getting enough value out of it. Imagine being able to reduce those cancellations at little or no cost to the bottom line, and turning it into positive PR.
- holstvoogd 6y agoAlready getting netflix phising mails regarding it hehe
- sitkack 6y agoFor those reading at Netflix, thank you! I worked for a game company and we had a small number of folks who bought lots of games and never activated them. I lobbied management that it was unethical to keep these peoples' money, it was unethical, I was laughed at. Now that that is out of the way, can we talk about parental controls?
- carapace 6y agoHa! I have to go cancel my Webfaction account. They're a decent service but they were acquired by GoDaddy (who I think are douchebags) so I stopped using the service. But I have been forgetting to actually cancel it for years now. For a while they were changing me ~$10/month. Nice for them and not painful enough for my lazy ass to jump though whatever hoops they may have set in place to cancel. Then one day I let the balance on the debit card they have on file for me fall to zero, so their auto-debits were failing. Eventually they sent me an email saying that they would stop charging it, but... They will (and do!) try again from time to time. Just to see if it will work. Rather than just cancelling the service (that I haven't touched in at least 4-5 years) they leave my account in a zombie state and periodically attempt to harvest it again. (EXPLETIVE DELETED) cheeky bastards, eh?
- leppr 6y agoThis is a good move, but still fairly lax (I'd personally like a reminder after as little as 2 months). This difference in preference by users and the top comment with an example of the reversed strategy used by a shady dating site, surface the point that pushing this responsibility to the providers doesn't scale. What we need is good UX for users to manage their various recurring payments, and cancel them by easily blocking payments to specific companies. That's one thing Paypal for instance does right with its "automated payments" dashboard. The current system of customers having to trust companies by default doesn't work in a market where antisocial behaviour is not more heavily punished.
- mrharrison 6y agoI remember during the last recession (2008) everyone I knew was going through their credit card statements and removing subscriptions/unneeded charges from their bills. It makes me think that Netflix has the foresight to see this next recession as quite bad and create some good press and become the good guy. Who wants to cancel the good guy??
- ehnto 6y agoIt's a really weird problem to have, I've had it in one of my products. Someone signed up and I was super happy to have a paying subscription. The first month or so I could see they hadn't yet made use of the service. No worries, maybe they just hadn't got around to it. Couple more months, still no use, what to do? Could it be fraud, but how does that work? No one gets anything from me, and I get all the money? Do I cancel their subscription? Is that the right thing to do from a customer service perspective? I have no idea. Sending an email that says "Hey, um, did you do this accidentally?" is a bit unprofessional. I tried contacting them to no avail, to see if they needed help setting up to keep it professional but still remind them they have this recurring subscription they might not want. Eventually I ended their subscription and left a professional sounding "We noticed you're not using our service, so we have paused your subscription." email and ended it. I still sometimes wonder if it wasn't a friend or friendly stranger who wanted to support me, and if it was I must sincerely thank them.
- mvkel 6y agoIs this for accounting purposes? They can’t recognize the revenue without it being used?
- xyst 6y agoTypically companies want to keep these dormant accounts because it’s literally free money. It’s nice to know that Netflix isn’t a parasite.
- Havoc 6y agoRefreshingly reasonable stance
- kartickv 6y agoI think this would be a good thing to try -- hopefully it will remove one barrier to subscription the fear that you'll be paying every month whether you use it or not.