Live data from Hacker News

Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

bbc.com

461–470 of 519 posts

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#461
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be followed in every country, but at least in Denmark the "forbrugerombudsmanden" slams down on things like that, I think that they recently sent out a message that online services should be able to be unsubscribed online as well.

Also that you should sent out an option to cancel, before each withdraw for the membership.

Really? Not done by any of the Danish services I subscribe to

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is why I use Paypal for recurring services when possible. One list of all the items, and you can cancel the payment there easily. Dodgy companies like the New York Times even do offline transactions to successfully charge canceled cards. I was able to cancel it by changing payment to Paypal.

It's funny that you mention NYT and Paypal. I signed up to support, but upon finding out that they still show ads to subscribed users, I wanted to cancel. Turns out you have to call them simply to cancel your subscription, which is the worst dark pattern of all.

I just swapped my subscription to Paypal, then blocked it in paypal. They then spent the next month sending me 8 emails asking me to fix my payment, which I all sent to the spam folder. I'm not a big fan of paypal, but definitely having control over your recurring payments is the best feature.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#463
post #440
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried that with rebel.ca (domain reg) a few years ago. They setup this dark pattern where domains wouldn't expire they get renewed two months before they were due. In my case they froze the account preventing me from moving domains. I called support and they unfroze it. The next night the system it froze again. It became a race, manually moving 200 domains over in 12 hours. They don't allow bulk moves and you can't…

Where'd you move to? Namesilo's been fantastic to me after transitioning from ENOM years ago.

I moved to 10dollar.ca for my .ca domains.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#464
post #285

For 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 ori…

My wife has an old gym membership for 24 hour fitness. She pays $120/year. Never uses it. Figures it's good "whoops, you're homeless" insurance - it's a place you can get dressed and take a shower.

At one point in my life, we joked about this. All of us working at a startup were incredibly frugal, except for one thing: most of us paid for Equinox, and I paid for a trainer.

Figured we could just live in the office and shower at the gym. Actually think I could have pulled it off but I'd probably die alone.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#465
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.

Does anyone else find it unfortunate that this entire topic is devoted to the fact that we find that a company being ethical about their business practice is so out of the ordinary, and we're spending a lot of energy guessing what nefarious motivation might lie behind it?

Yeah, HN's classic cynicism is in full effect here. The truth is that companies are made of people and very often the people just want to make a good thing that's nice and works well.

My favourite is Gusto. Why is Gusto so good? I only use it twice a year or so, the guy buying it isn't the guy using it, and the principal value in their business is integrations not UX. Well, Gusto is good because they want to be good. I'm happy with that explanation.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#466

If 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 princi…

It's nothing novel. It's like a concert ticket entitles you to a 3 hour subscription to an event that you don't get to keep, and a movie ticket means you get to sit in a place for 90 minutes. The event happens and then it's gone. Only your memory remains. You don't get to keep your seat.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual Cards with set expiry numbers will end this game

I'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…

You can get that in the UK through DD but I just set alerts on all my cards for spend over $0 so I get a notification on all spend.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#468
post #8

Probably should be a law to do this automatically after four months or so.

What? No thank you. Having to go ensure I'm keeping all my grandfathered accounts together would be a nightmare. Jesus Christ. I have no problem paying $2/mo for some random feature I've forgotten about.

If you want to do it, set it up so all charges must result in 24-hour notification to customer and option to cancel future charges.

This whole reaction makes me understand why California has all these backwards-ass propositions. Everyone just wants to make any damned random thing a law.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#469
post #201

Misleading 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'…

How 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?

Because you can just freeload, my dude. That's the real answer. Otherwise you can just make the usual arguments about exposure that make it to /r/ChoosingBeggars.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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.

> The stock should continue being held whether a user logs in or not. FWIW ETrade agrees with this. It wasn't their policy that closed the account, it was a law that was in theory to protect consumers... from themselves?

Shouldn’t that have gone to the state’s Auditor & Controller’s Unclaimed Property dept? If you look at California’s Unclaimed Prop., you’ll see shares sitting in there. Heck, I have a few shares I need to claim.
Post reply on HN