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I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in

by atum47 3y ago

I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. By simple watching after the final date they gave us it triggered a renewal. the solution proposed in the chat was to logout every device at once and delete my credit card so that wouldn't happen again.

themitigating 3y ago
I would love to test this because I'm pretty sure that simply using netflix after you canceled will not start the subscription again without any prompt. What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?
- atum47 3y ago
  > What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment? Shouldn't matter, right?! Once I cancelled was not supposed to be charged again unless I agree to it. If my father wanted to renew the subscription, he should use his card, right? the renewal process should function as a new subscription, if not done by the same person that subscribed in the first place.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Were you and your father using two separate usernames/passwords? Or a shared login? If it was a shared login then Netflix would have reasonably assumed that you authorized the charge. If it was a separate account, you have a point—only the plan owner should be able to renew the plan.
    - gabeio 3y ago
      Unless I am missing something there is no way to have more than 1 login for netflix. Everyone uses shared logins.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        They recently added support for sharing your plan with an "Extra Member", for an additional fee: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123279 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123279
  - neximo64 3y ago
    Its really likely your father renewed the subscription with consent, and forgot about it. Netflix doesn't auto renew simply by watching. It asks you to renew the subscription. It requires conscious consent.
    - partdavid 3y ago
      How do you know this? Where is the record? If Netflix is going to charge me money, they need to prove that I incurred the charge. They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't. In my case they refunded the erroneously renewed subscription as a "one time courtesy". Like they're doing me a favor. Yeah, it's "one time" because I'd have to be a fool to do business with a company that treats me this way.
      - Alupis 3y ago
        > They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't. Most likely they do, and decided it wasn't worth fighting over this issue. OP's dad, using OP's account, consented to billing. There's really no other option, unless we're just going to say things non-technies think, like the computer decided on it's own or something. Netflix cannot just randomly decide to charge people for things. That would obviously be fraud, and Netflix wouldn't still be a company today if they depended on fraud for billings. Think about it...
        partdavid 3y ago
        Yes, you're right, it's not possible for "a company" to commit fraud and still be a company, right? If the world worked like that, you would expect to find many examples of companies committing fraud. And you'd never find a bank like Wells Fargo committing fraud for money, right? Because surely they wouldn't be a bank? And you'd never find a company violating its own user privacy rules, like Facebook, because they'd surely be out of business, right? And you'd never find a major phone company billing people for things they didn't have the right to do, because surely AT&T would be out of business, right? The fact is: "most likely" and "probably" and your uninformed best guess about what happened is not knowing. I'm not sure why you would think that the only reason that I would think that Netflix restarted my subscription in error is that I'm a "non-techie" (and ugh, what an odious way to try to dismiss someone) who thinks "the computer decided on it's [sic] own." It tells me a lot about your understanding that you can't imagine many scenarios where the interaction of a complex, mostly non-technical system of product design, business decisionmakers, microservice integrations, several apps on hundreds of distinct platforms might behave in an unexpected way that treats consumers unfairly, with varying levels of intention or neglect at different layers. As the consumer, I'm getting charged the money and I'm the one who needs the justification to indicate that it was authorized. I disagree with your perspective that "Well, they're a 'company', therefore they must have a good reason to charge me, I better pay it". I do, in fact, think it's "most likely" that someone did... something... on a logged-in device that restarted the subscription. However, I think it's very unlikely that that involved presenting a new billing agreement that they agreed to, or providing the password to my account (remember, this is a subscription that was cancelled, not suspended or paused or frozen or any other kind of seemingly-temporary measure--since Netflix doesn't offer a way to remove accounts, it's the strongest thing I can do to sever my business relationship with them). If the logic is unintentional: an edge case of a logged-in device where that particular app on that platform sent the wrong cookie when starting a stream, etc., then Netflix not caring to investigate and solve it is because they're happy to collect revenue from erroneous and unjustified subscriptions in the hope that consumers won't notice or fight it; which is gross. If the logic is intentional: to obscure the fact that whatever action the user takes results in a re-subscription; then it's gross and possibly illegal (dunno, not a lawyer, and my definition of "crooked" might include things that aren't yet against the law). Either way, they are likely to keep doing it until forced to stop, because your naïve perspective that companies can never do anything wrong is absolutely incorrect.
  - themitigating 3y ago
    It was the same person as viewed by Netflix because he had your account. Asking to renew using stored data is something you can object to but it's not insane
lolinder 3y ago
Did customer support confirm that that is the feature they were talking about—watching something after renewal triggers the charge? Or is it possible you were talking past each other? The only documentation on Netflix for this doesn't mention this 'feature' [0], and I can't find any discussion of similar cases (which I would expect for something like this). Also, this kind of behavior would unambiguously violate several existing laws, while most dark patterns are arguably legal (though they shouldn't be). I'm not saying your dad was lying—it's very possible for someone to click on a button like that (or even two—renew and confirm) and not remember it at all. My dad had a freaky call with what he believed to be Paypal customer support about a scam email, in which they wanted him to give them remote access to his computer. He swore up and down that he didn't call the number in the sketchy email, that he'd looked up the number, but on further investigation he definitely did call the scam number. My dad is a perfectly healthy middle-aged adult, but still misremembered what happened. [0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124418 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124418
- atum47 3y ago
  I'm trying to access the chat history, but I realized I'm a fool that did not took any screenshots. The conversation is probably stored in a internal chat of theirs instead of in my email.
- atum47 3y ago
  I mean, they have a lot of complaints about the same issue: https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/conta-reativada-sem-autorizacao_mU-o477qYht2FV69/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/conta-reativada-sem-a... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelar-assinatura_RiDPRBf_lhmOfSF_/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelar-assinatura_R... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelei-a-minha-assinatura-e-mesmo-assim-fui-cobrado-novamente_gWiGYXmLwdi_0X17/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelei-a-minha-assi... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cobranca-no-cartao-mesmo-apos-cancelamento-da-conta_cN4gzBW5KLYFtmnG/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cobranca-no-cartao-me... I mean, sorry about the topics being in PT-BR, but they seem to be doing that with a lot of customers...
  - 3y ago
dangus 3y ago
> By simply watching after the final date they gave us… Yeah if I stay in my apartment after my lease expires my landlord is gonna charge me rent. Obviously, Netflix shouldn’t have let you in, but… > I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. I learned long ago not to trust technological recollections coming from my parents. Ironically, Netflix was actually right about password sharing: someone else with your login credentials can do whatever they want. For all you know your dad is mad that he’s losing Netflix and hit the renew button. Of course, it would be nice if Netflix would create a family sharing mechanism like Apple and Google have.
- jrockway 3y ago
  If you cancel your lease and then stay in your apartment until the lease expiration date, they aren't going to renew your lease. You paid for the entire month, you're allowed to stay for the entire month.
  - dangus 3y ago
    “After the final date” is a key phrase in the comment I replied to. The word “after” is there. If you stay a day past your lease your landlord can charge you the next month’s rent. If you take a wrong turn and accidentally enter a toll highway you’ll get charged a toll, automatically in many places. If you forget to turn your faucet off you’ll pay for water and sewer usage even if you said you didn’t need the water. I’m not defending Netflix for willingly making the process this way, but at the same time individuals also have the responsibility to follow some basic instructions and stop using things that they want to cancel.
    - monsieurbanana 3y ago
      Just as a thought exercise, if you were actually defending Netflix, what would you change in your comment?
      - dangus 3y ago
        Do my words have to change for my intentions to change? If I say “that’s so hot” I can be talking about sexual intercourse or my microwaved hot pocket. Same words, different intent, different meaning. Netflix being wrong and the customer being wrong are not mutually exclusive. At some point it has to be acknowledged that adults are responsible for navigating the world and paying attention.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Not that I am accusing Netflix of anything, but at least one time I deliberately told the company to never store my credit card number. Despite repeated requests on their part. One month I altered something in my account and they immediately dinged my supposedly-not-saved credit card information.
stn8188 3y ago
I just went through something similar. When I canceled my Netflix a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that it would be very easy to restart the subscription for anyone who was still logged in, so I logged out all devices and attempted to remove the credit card. Interestingly, they won't let you remove your credit card unless you have another payment on file even if you don't have an active subscription. I just changed the password so nobody who I previously shared it with could accidentally log back in. The most ridiculous thing is that about a year ago I specifically bumped up my plan to the more expensive one because we were sharing with some family members. As a result of them enforcing this sharing rule, we ended up canceling and they get nothing from us now.
Alupis 3y ago
As someone who's done tech support in previous lives... I can say with 100% confidence users will always claim they "didn't do anything" when there is no other possible cause for the situation. "I didn't click anything!" usually means 1) They're embarrassed to admit they clicked something or 2) They are embarrasses to admit they didn't read some prompt before clicking through it. Even if the user doesn't remember clicking something, or doesn't remember what that something said before they clicked it - they still clicked it. Think about it for a second. Think about how software works, how billing works, and how the law works. What you propose, a hidden re-billing mechanism, would invite so many lawsuits it wouldn't be worth it. Not to mention the fraud allegations, bad PR, etc. Your dad signed in, was prompted with something saying he needed to re-activate billing to use Netflix, and he agreed. It's that simple.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  When I was a teenager I was charged for watching porn at a German hotel just by switching channels and watching the porn channel for too long, maybe two minutes. I think those kind of scams are quite common when they already have your credit card. To make the story more relevant for your point my father payed the bill at the checkout and I denied watching porn at all. He got mad at the hotel and wrote legal complaints to the HQ to get the porn money back ... dunno if he succeeded.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    That's like saying "but I only opened the mini-bar bottles for a little bit". You were certainly warned what would happen, and likely had some sort of parental advisory warning you clicked through. IDK German law regarding these things, but in the US you usually have to manually opt-into "adult" channels when at a hotel. The fact that you denied watching it at all really serves to make my point, though. Users deny deny deny... but they still did it, didn't they?
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      It was in like 2002 so I dunno how the TV reported what channel was viewed technically. I remember that I knew it was a pay channel, but I thought it would go dark after a sneak peak unless I called some pay number for a code or something, like the pay TV channels on the satellite TV at home.

by atum47 3y ago

themitigating 3y ago

I would love to test this because I'm pretty sure that simply using netflix after you canceled will not start the subscription again without any prompt. What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment?

atum47 3y ago
> What if you dad is lying to avoid embarrassment? Shouldn't matter, right?! Once I cancelled was not supposed to be charged again unless I agree to it. If my father wanted to renew the subscription, he should use his card, right? the renewal process should function as a new subscription, if not done by the same person that subscribed in the first place.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Were you and your father using two separate usernames/passwords? Or a shared login? If it was a shared login then Netflix would have reasonably assumed that you authorized the charge. If it was a separate account, you have a point—only the plan owner should be able to renew the plan.
  - gabeio 3y ago
    Unless I am missing something there is no way to have more than 1 login for netflix. Everyone uses shared logins.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      They recently added support for sharing your plan with an "Extra Member", for an additional fee: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123279 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123279
- neximo64 3y ago
  Its really likely your father renewed the subscription with consent, and forgot about it. Netflix doesn't auto renew simply by watching. It asks you to renew the subscription. It requires conscious consent.
  - partdavid 3y ago
    How do you know this? Where is the record? If Netflix is going to charge me money, they need to prove that I incurred the charge. They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't. In my case they refunded the erroneously renewed subscription as a "one time courtesy". Like they're doing me a favor. Yeah, it's "one time" because I'd have to be a fool to do business with a company that treats me this way.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      > They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't. Most likely they do, and decided it wasn't worth fighting over this issue. OP's dad, using OP's account, consented to billing. There's really no other option, unless we're just going to say things non-technies think, like the computer decided on it's own or something. Netflix cannot just randomly decide to charge people for things. That would obviously be fraud, and Netflix wouldn't still be a company today if they depended on fraud for billings. Think about it...
      - partdavid 3y ago
        Yes, you're right, it's not possible for "a company" to commit fraud and still be a company, right? If the world worked like that, you would expect to find many examples of companies committing fraud. And you'd never find a bank like Wells Fargo committing fraud for money, right? Because surely they wouldn't be a bank? And you'd never find a company violating its own user privacy rules, like Facebook, because they'd surely be out of business, right? And you'd never find a major phone company billing people for things they didn't have the right to do, because surely AT&T would be out of business, right? The fact is: "most likely" and "probably" and your uninformed best guess about what happened is not knowing. I'm not sure why you would think that the only reason that I would think that Netflix restarted my subscription in error is that I'm a "non-techie" (and ugh, what an odious way to try to dismiss someone) who thinks "the computer decided on it's [sic] own." It tells me a lot about your understanding that you can't imagine many scenarios where the interaction of a complex, mostly non-technical system of product design, business decisionmakers, microservice integrations, several apps on hundreds of distinct platforms might behave in an unexpected way that treats consumers unfairly, with varying levels of intention or neglect at different layers. As the consumer, I'm getting charged the money and I'm the one who needs the justification to indicate that it was authorized. I disagree with your perspective that "Well, they're a 'company', therefore they must have a good reason to charge me, I better pay it". I do, in fact, think it's "most likely" that someone did... something... on a logged-in device that restarted the subscription. However, I think it's very unlikely that that involved presenting a new billing agreement that they agreed to, or providing the password to my account (remember, this is a subscription that was cancelled, not suspended or paused or frozen or any other kind of seemingly-temporary measure--since Netflix doesn't offer a way to remove accounts, it's the strongest thing I can do to sever my business relationship with them). If the logic is unintentional: an edge case of a logged-in device where that particular app on that platform sent the wrong cookie when starting a stream, etc., then Netflix not caring to investigate and solve it is because they're happy to collect revenue from erroneous and unjustified subscriptions in the hope that consumers won't notice or fight it; which is gross. If the logic is intentional: to obscure the fact that whatever action the user takes results in a re-subscription; then it's gross and possibly illegal (dunno, not a lawyer, and my definition of "crooked" might include things that aren't yet against the law). Either way, they are likely to keep doing it until forced to stop, because your naïve perspective that companies can never do anything wrong is absolutely incorrect.
- themitigating 3y ago
  It was the same person as viewed by Netflix because he had your account. Asking to renew using stored data is something you can object to but it's not insane

lolinder 3y ago

Did customer support confirm that that is the feature they were talking about—watching something after renewal triggers the charge? Or is it possible you were talking past each other? The only documentation on Netflix for this doesn't mention this 'feature' [0], and I can't find any discussion of similar cases (which I would expect for something like this). Also, this kind of behavior would unambiguously violate several existing laws, while most dark patterns are arguably legal (though they shouldn't be). I'm not saying your dad was lying—it's very possible for someone to click on a button like that (or even two—renew and confirm) and not remember it at all. My dad had a freaky call with what he believed to be Paypal customer support about a scam email, in which they wanted him to give them remote access to his computer. He swore up and down that he didn't call the number in the sketchy email, that he'd looked up the number, but on further investigation he definitely did call the scam number. My dad is a perfectly healthy middle-aged adult, but still misremembered what happened. [0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124418 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124418

atum47 3y ago
I'm trying to access the chat history, but I realized I'm a fool that did not took any screenshots. The conversation is probably stored in a internal chat of theirs instead of in my email.
atum47 3y ago
I mean, they have a lot of complaints about the same issue: https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/conta-reativada-sem-autorizacao_mU-o477qYht2FV69/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/conta-reativada-sem-a... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelar-assinatura_RiDPRBf_lhmOfSF_/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelar-assinatura_R... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelei-a-minha-assinatura-e-mesmo-assim-fui-cobrado-novamente_gWiGYXmLwdi_0X17/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cancelei-a-minha-assi... https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cobranca-no-cartao-mesmo-apos-cancelamento-da-conta_cN4gzBW5KLYFtmnG/ https://www.reclameaqui.com.br/netflix/cobranca-no-cartao-me... I mean, sorry about the topics being in PT-BR, but they seem to be doing that with a lot of customers...
- 3y ago

dangus 3y ago

> By simply watching after the final date they gave us… Yeah if I stay in my apartment after my lease expires my landlord is gonna charge me rent. Obviously, Netflix shouldn’t have let you in, but… > I have talked to my father, he did not clicked anything. I learned long ago not to trust technological recollections coming from my parents. Ironically, Netflix was actually right about password sharing: someone else with your login credentials can do whatever they want. For all you know your dad is mad that he’s losing Netflix and hit the renew button. Of course, it would be nice if Netflix would create a family sharing mechanism like Apple and Google have.

jrockway 3y ago
If you cancel your lease and then stay in your apartment until the lease expiration date, they aren't going to renew your lease. You paid for the entire month, you're allowed to stay for the entire month.
- dangus 3y ago
  “After the final date” is a key phrase in the comment I replied to. The word “after” is there. If you stay a day past your lease your landlord can charge you the next month’s rent. If you take a wrong turn and accidentally enter a toll highway you’ll get charged a toll, automatically in many places. If you forget to turn your faucet off you’ll pay for water and sewer usage even if you said you didn’t need the water. I’m not defending Netflix for willingly making the process this way, but at the same time individuals also have the responsibility to follow some basic instructions and stop using things that they want to cancel.
  - monsieurbanana 3y ago
    Just as a thought exercise, if you were actually defending Netflix, what would you change in your comment?
    - dangus 3y ago
      Do my words have to change for my intentions to change? If I say “that’s so hot” I can be talking about sexual intercourse or my microwaved hot pocket. Same words, different intent, different meaning. Netflix being wrong and the customer being wrong are not mutually exclusive. At some point it has to be acknowledged that adults are responsible for navigating the world and paying attention.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

Not that I am accusing Netflix of anything, but at least one time I deliberately told the company to never store my credit card number. Despite repeated requests on their part. One month I altered something in my account and they immediately dinged my supposedly-not-saved credit card information.

stn8188 3y ago

I just went through something similar. When I canceled my Netflix a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that it would be very easy to restart the subscription for anyone who was still logged in, so I logged out all devices and attempted to remove the credit card. Interestingly, they won't let you remove your credit card unless you have another payment on file even if you don't have an active subscription. I just changed the password so nobody who I previously shared it with could accidentally log back in. The most ridiculous thing is that about a year ago I specifically bumped up my plan to the more expensive one because we were sharing with some family members. As a result of them enforcing this sharing rule, we ended up canceling and they get nothing from us now.

Alupis 3y ago

As someone who's done tech support in previous lives... I can say with 100% confidence users will always claim they "didn't do anything" when there is no other possible cause for the situation. "I didn't click anything!" usually means 1) They're embarrassed to admit they clicked something or 2) They are embarrasses to admit they didn't read some prompt before clicking through it. Even if the user doesn't remember clicking something, or doesn't remember what that something said before they clicked it - they still clicked it. Think about it for a second. Think about how software works, how billing works, and how the law works. What you propose, a hidden re-billing mechanism, would invite so many lawsuits it wouldn't be worth it. Not to mention the fraud allegations, bad PR, etc. Your dad signed in, was prompted with something saying he needed to re-activate billing to use Netflix, and he agreed. It's that simple.

rightbyte 3y ago
When I was a teenager I was charged for watching porn at a German hotel just by switching channels and watching the porn channel for too long, maybe two minutes. I think those kind of scams are quite common when they already have your credit card. To make the story more relevant for your point my father payed the bill at the checkout and I denied watching porn at all. He got mad at the hotel and wrote legal complaints to the HQ to get the porn money back ... dunno if he succeeded.
- Alupis 3y ago
  That's like saying "but I only opened the mini-bar bottles for a little bit". You were certainly warned what would happen, and likely had some sort of parental advisory warning you clicked through. IDK German law regarding these things, but in the US you usually have to manually opt-into "adult" channels when at a hotel. The fact that you denied watching it at all really serves to make my point, though. Users deny deny deny... but they still did it, didn't they?
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    It was in like 2002 so I dunno how the TV reported what channel was viewed technically. I remember that I knew it was a pay channel, but I thought it would go dark after a sneak peak unless I called some pay number for a code or something, like the pay TV channels on the satellite TV at home.