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Sharing Your Netflix Account

help.netflix.com

71–80 of 267 posts

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#71
post #25

I'm not sure I care that they are trying to get people to stop sharing accounts. At large, that feels fine and I'm always curious the lengths people will go through to not pay a small subscription fee. Especially for things they actively use the heck out of. (Notably, I seem to only know of people that do this where both sides of the share watch a ton of television.) I am not at all looking forward to it again thinki…

I can't think of a way they can enforce almost anything without annoying a bunch of people with false positives. If someone has a secondary home like a chalet they go to from time to time, they'd have to pay for a second account?

No, because they do explicit vacation passes. If you literally maintain two households --- or, like my family, have a kid in a college apartment --- you're probably going to have to spring for a second account. Which, fair enough: the college apartment also requires us to spring for a second ISP bill, second utilities, second toaster; it was nice to get away with not duplicating the Netflix bill, but not reasonable to feel entitled to it.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#72
Why not just let me pay more for a seamless experience where I can share X number of profiles outside my household? Instead, next time I'm at my parents I have to spend time setting up all their devices again?

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#73

I'm still waiting for Netflix to update their profile transfer tool to allow moving profiles to a new account. I was sharing an account and now also have my wife's account. I'd really like to be able to move my profile from the old account to my wife's account to avoid losing history, but the tool currently only allows moving to a completely new account. I really think such a feature is necessary if Netflix really wa…

Would it really be that big of a deal to start over?

I get the annoyance of starting over on something like YouTube or Spotify where you've built up libraries of people/artists you follow, videos/music, playlists, etc. But Netflix is just watch history basically. You can't even really trust stuff in "My list" to stick around because their library of content rotates so much. And it's not like their recommendation system does much more than recommend whatever is new and popular. I feel like you could watch 10 movies on a new account and it'll dump you into a bucket of recommendations identical to where you were before.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#74
post #56
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason you can't "share" your cable with your neighbors. Nobody cares that you're related. If you live in different households, you were obviously meant to get different accounts.

> you were obviously meant to get different accounts Here's a tweet from netflix itself about how great it is to share accounts: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712

Give me a break. Netflix has been saying they were going to shut this stuff down for at least 2 years now.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#75
post #25

I'm not sure I care that they are trying to get people to stop sharing accounts. At large, that feels fine and I'm always curious the lengths people will go through to not pay a small subscription fee. Especially for things they actively use the heck out of. (Notably, I seem to only know of people that do this where both sides of the share watch a ton of television.) I am not at all looking forward to it again thinki…

This is the thing, I pay for a family plan with 4 concurrent streams. I allow my mom and brother to use this account. They barely use it. But the service isn't worth $20 to me if they cut them off. I will just cancel it, and they wont pick it up either. If you sell me 4 concurrent streams, then I want to be able to use them regardless of physical location.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#76

My Mom lives on the West Coast while we live on the East. She's almost 70 and on a fixed income, so I pay for Netflix access for all of us and I'm happy to do so. However, if they block her access I can't see any reason to keep my 4k plan. I can get anything we want on a Plex server and give her whatever she wants to watch that way. I was already on the fence with the lack of content on Netflix, but this may just be…

So your thesis is that piracy is cheaper. Ok thanks.

Plex isn't necessarily piracy.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#77
post #37

Second they enforce this, I'm unsubscribing

Netflix making this change pushed me back to piracy. The setup costs more than a netflix subscription, they just don't want my money I guess.

If “the setup costs more than a Netflix subscription” (presumably your piracy setup), why do you do it? It doesn’t seem rational.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#78
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a way they can enforce almost anything without annoying a bunch of people with false positives. If someone has a secondary home like a chalet they go to from time to time, they'd have to pay for a second account?

No, because they do explicit vacation passes. If you literally maintain two households --- or, like my family, have a kid in a college apartment --- you're probably going to have to spring for a second account. Which, fair enough: the college apartment also requires us to spring for a second ISP bill, second utilities, second toaster; it was nice to get away with not duplicating the Netflix bill, but not reasonable t…

Probably will impact folks that travel and want to watch while away from home. Specifically, those where their family did not travel with them.

That said, probably easy enough to deal with that, as I'm guessing most of them take a common device with them? Not sure.

But, yeah, your example is pretty much how I view this. Was nice for a few cases where it was working. But hardly earth shattering.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#79
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly what Hulu started doing. You have a “home location” and if someone logs in from far enough away to trigger their systems, they’ll have them set that location as your new home. You’re only allowed 4 of those changes per year without calling some support line so it seems pretty effective.

How does that work for Hotels or if you regularly travel between two locations?

For Netflix, you get a travel pass. But, more importantly: the allow condition is probably disjunctive: trusted device OR trusted location. If you're just watching on your laptop or iPad, you're probably fine no matter where you are.

Re: Sharing Your Netflix Account

#80

My Mom lives on the West Coast while we live on the East. She's almost 70 and on a fixed income, so I pay for Netflix access for all of us and I'm happy to do so. However, if they block her access I can't see any reason to keep my 4k plan. I can get anything we want on a Plex server and give her whatever she wants to watch that way. I was already on the fence with the lack of content on Netflix, but this may just be…

So your thesis is that piracy is cheaper. Ok thanks.

Their thesis is that he isnt using more concurrent streams that he is paying for and if the company wants to start putting additional limitations on this concurrent streams, its not worth the headache anymore.
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