Netflix stops charging customers who never watch • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#451

Post by tlobes » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #143

goodside wrote: post #55

Years 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 reaso…

I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. T…

I'm always curious if deceptive actions like these are approved by an individual, a committee, or are perhaps a byproduct of unrelated tasks driven by lazy oversight shrouded by process.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#452

Post by achillesheels » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #12

I 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.

This is a great opportunity to thank Unbounce (https://unbounce.com/) - Years ago I was helping set up patient recruitment for a clinical research lab and forgot to cancel the sub after it was over. I got on chat about a week after the cycle ended and had that one billing cycle refunded. It was only $40 or something but the impression has lasted years probably in relation to all the horror stories I’m reading here.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#453

Post by dwighttk » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

nadavami wrote: post #329

dwighttk wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your credit card 8 years ago had an expiration date beyond 2020?

The major credit card companies have a service where they can notify the merchant of the new details when the card expires. I believe Visa calls it Account Updater. https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-update...

can I get the opposite of that?

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#454

Post by antsar » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

orhmeh09 wrote: post #427

perl4ever wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, Citi's virtual card feature inexplicably requires Flash. I was like "I thought that was dead?"

This was true for Bank of America, too, at least in December 2018.

They killed the feature altogether.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/security-center/accounts-cards...

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#455

Post by jedberg » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #449

jedberg wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got one of those free personal trainer sessions at the gym once. In chatting with my personal trainer, I discovered that he lives in an RV outside the gym, and uses the gym to shower every morning and uses their bathroom so he doesn't have to spend money emptying/filling his tanks on his RV. A solar panel on the roof covered his electricity. Basically by being employed by the gym and living in an RV he had no recur…

Are you in the Bay Area? Mountain View has a lot of people living in RVs, and I've seen RVs in the Walmart parking lot by the 24 Hour Fitness, there.

Yes. This was in Sunnyvale. There is a lot of RV living in Mt. View. For a while Google sanctioned living in an RV in their parking lot for their employees, but they seem to have clamped down on that.

The cops started to ticket people on El Camino too, but I think they stopped doing that during the lockdown.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#456

Post by ehnto » Sat, May 23, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

It'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.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#457

Post by devmunchies » Sat, May 23, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

dylan62 wrote: post #177

Netflix 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.

I recently interview with netflix and talked with the director that manages the subscribe/cancel flows. He said it's an absolute priority to keep the cancel experience as easy as possible. He even talked down an idea to add an extra content or modals before the cancel experience.

I was impressed.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#458

Post by devmunchies » Sat, May 23, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #421

dylan62 wrote: post #177

Netflix 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.

It's easy to be noble when you're making more profit than God. The real test is how they behave when competition heats up.

a premium experience is their best defense against the competition, and they know this.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#459

Post by asdf123wtf » Sat, May 23, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

dylan62 wrote: post #177

Netflix 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.

A lot of print publications will require a phone call or email to cancel even though you can manage all other aspects of your account digitally.

It's a great way to ensure I'll never return as a customer.

On the other hand, the "pause subscription" feature that many services are implementing pretty much guarantees that I'll resubscribe (even if just for a little while) in the future - because inevitably, they'll have something exclusive that I want to watch.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#460

Post by silverdrake11 » Sat, May 23, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

efitz wrote: post #448

mywacaday wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

We need a law that requires it to be no more difficult to unsubscribe from anything then it is to subscribe to that thing. If you can subscribe with one click on the website then you must be able to unsubscribe with one click on the website. The law should make it individually actionable in small claims court for each subscriber that is inconvenienced to recover damages and not allow arbitration clauses to override t…

This reminds me of my gym membership. They said I had to come in person to cancel it instead of by phone. So I cancelled my credit card naively thinking that my gym membership would be cancelled. After a few months I get letters and calls from a collection agency demanding the monthly payments and an additional late fee of $100