Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 519 posts

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#31

Post by mushufasa »

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.

It's probably worse for them if customers cancel, because customers are unlikely to resubscribe to netflix having cancelled versus trying a competitor streaming service. Better psychologically to have an inactive account than to lose an account.

(Also netflix would have to report all those unsubscribes to shareholders, but this way no one cancels and they're framing it positively as consumer-friendly).

So if netflix incentives people to people keep their accounts, they remove the friction from what would otherwise be a high-friction resubscribe.

As long as netflix believes they can get people to come back for an occasional exclusive content hit-show, then they can reactivate the payments for a while.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#32

Post by safog »

sneak wrote: post #25
cortesoft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon did this for me back in 2005 when they introduced Prime. I used the free trial for an order (to get it in two days), but then didn't order anything else and forgot to cancel. They sent me an email that they weren't going to charge me because I hadn't used it, but I was free to sign up in the future if I decided I wanted it. It was so refreshing, it made me a lifelong customer.

They don’t do the same with EC2.

Early days of EC2 were chock full of stories like this - Of kids / engineers running up their CC bill because they screwed up in some way they didn't anticipate and Amazon CS would bail them out.

I don't think this was a cynical marketing ploy designed from the top down either, it was a very natural thing for the company to be customer obsessed and trying to do right by them.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#33

Post by rantwasp »

kylecazar wrote: post #27
cortesoft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon did this for me back in 2005 when they introduced Prime. I used the free trial for an order (to get it in two days), but then didn't order anything else and forgot to cancel. They sent me an email that they weren't going to charge me because I hadn't used it, but I was free to sign up in the future if I decided I wanted it. It was so refreshing, it made me a lifelong customer.

On a related note -- Audible free trial seems.. offered cyclically? I seem to sign up every year or so, spend my credits, and cancel. They keep offering it though, and now I'm considering buying (as I enjoy the medium, turns out), so I suppose it worked.

yes. i’ve done the same thing. they either have a hard time attracting new customers or have a hard time keeping track of who benefited from the trial

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#35

Post by gnicholas »

ec109685 wrote: post #10
WalterBright wrote: post #7

A reasonable strategy would be to stop charging customers who haven't watched in a while, but leave them enrolled as subscribers. If they start watching again, start charging again.

Netflix keeps all your preferences and history, so the account can be reactivated without losing anything.

Only for a few months. After that it’s gone forever.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#36

Post by wuxb »

I'm so eager to know how will people start to think of some bundled call phone plans such as a T-Mobile's family plan that I used for a couple of years. The Netflix subscription is offered "for free" with a "1? dollar value" but of course there is no refund if I don't watch it. Oh wait that's how mobile plan always worked.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#37

Post by mod »

wayupthere wrote: post #15
viburnum wrote: post #8

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

A good way to rank the level of scumminess among SV companies: Signup with a credit card and don't validate your email address or ever sign into your account. You'd be amazed how many companies will happily start charging you.

This could also be explained by poor engineering. It's basically an exception to the rule that might be overlooked.

Shouldn't be the case for a big company, but a smaller one- man startup could easily make this mistake and not be scummy.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#40

Post by jacobwil »

rb808 wrote: post #38

Credit cards only last a few years before theyre expired and replaced. I'd think only very few accounts are unwatched, after 24 months I'd think more than half of CCs would have expired anyway.

Card networks offer services to receive updated credit card numbers for mutual customers now and have for a bunch of years.

If your credit card expires, many subscription providers will get the updated details automatically.

Here’s an article with some details on the topic: https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater-se...

Post reply on HN