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Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

bbc.com

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Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#471

Post by dghughes »

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…

Mastercard seems to be leading the way in fighting this type of behaviour. As of April 2019 they require notification at the end of free trials sending the customer a receipt and cancellation instructions. And Mastercard are looking into preventing recurring charges that you try to cancel.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-cracks-down-on-...

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#472

Post by wdb »

kolp wrote: post #266
wdb wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check if your local library offers ebooks and emagazines it might include The Economist. I am member of the Westminster Library here in London and they have The Economist for reading via RBDigital: https://www.westminster.gov.uk/ebooks-emagazines-and-audiobo... Have to admit RBDigital ain't the best reading experience but good enough to read The week and The Economist for free :) I even have PressReader access so man…

If you have a Kindle, you can read The Economist for free each week using Calibre. The Economist is one the News Sources in Calibre that you can schedule for sending to your Kindle. It arrives each Friday morning with all the articles, without the ads.

Interesting I didn't know that. I have to say I am not a huge fan of reading magazines on the Kindle. The library is basically PDF style

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#473

Post by nickflood »

phyzome wrote: post #306
Jd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started using privacy.com for this reason. You can spin up a separate card number for each transaction type with its own limit (e.g. $100/month or $200). You can also just turn them off at will.

What are the downsides? And what's their business model?

Credit card companies and banks receive 1-3% of commission on all of the transactions made throught he card. Banks normally pass parts of these along to the consumer in the form of cashback or other benefits. Privacy.com just uses these commisions as funding for their service. (I've read it somewhere on their site)

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#474

Post by mqus »

adamtulinius wrote: post #174
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.

Actually we have such a law in the EU. Not sure what it's called, but I'm sure it exists. I believe the wording to be something like it has to be possible to cancel in a similar way you signed up.

I know only a law in germany where you have to be able to cancel your phone contracts with the same medium you accepted them... But I don't know anything about more broad laws.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#475

Post by lovehashbrowns »

wildmusings wrote: post #298
lovehashbrowns wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so frustrating because my credit card declines the most random things. But when a service charges me twice in one week after I've been subscribed and charged the same amount once a month for years, the charge goes through and I have to go through hoops to get that money back. And credit cards do this other obnoxious thing where they update merchants when you get a new credit card. It would be great if they didn'…

I'd rather they update all of my merchants instead of assume that I want to cancel this or that. Citi has a nice feature that shows you all of your recurring charges. Maybe try to use a feature like that? I also have it set up to send a text message to my phone any time my card is used.

Didn't know about that citi feature! I'll look for it, ty. I do have alerts for charges >$x amount but it rarely gets triggered.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#476

Post by wildmusings »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #475
wildmusings wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather they update all of my merchants instead of assume that I want to cancel this or that. Citi has a nice feature that shows you all of your recurring charges. Maybe try to use a feature like that? I also have it set up to send a text message to my phone any time my card is used.

Didn't know about that citi feature! I'll look for it, ty. I do have alerts for charges >$x amount but it rarely gets triggered.

I set x=0 to get all of the alerts. I also found that the text notifications are more reliable than the app-based notifications.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#477

Post by jedberg »

kevas wrote: post #470
jedberg wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, but different states have different rules. Apparently in that guy's state, they won't take shares, only cash value of shares.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#478

Post by jedberg »

kerkeslager wrote: post #311

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…

> Glossing over credits so content creators don't get credit.

FWIW, Netflix gives the producer of the content the choice on whether that happens or not. So it's the producers who are actually choosing to skip the credits, not Netflix. Netflix just gives the option.

> Monopolistic practiced with regard to tethering content creation and content distribution together.

Netflix would rather not do that. Remember, they started as a DVD service. The nice thing was that because of Fair Use, they could have any movie the want on the service. If streaming worked the same way, and they could just buy "retail" copies of movies and stream them, they would be much happier.

They only shifted to the content creation model because they had to, because it was cheaper than licensing someone else's content.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#479

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#480

Post by [deleted] »

silverdrake11 wrote: post #460
efitz wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]
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