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Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

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331–340 of 519 posts

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could leave your account open, wait 10 years, then sue you for not paying your bills.

They could do that, yes. They could also open an account automatically in your name and then sue you over it. I expect both would be equally successful.

The former could be a natural consequence of neglect + shareholders asking why the cash influx is too low considering the number of actual subscribers.

The latter would be fraud.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#332

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…

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Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#333

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…

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.

As a private consumer, likely the law of your place of residency applies and they may be obligated to honour all kinds of cancellations, e.g. in California. https://www.cnet.com/news/companies-must-let-customers-cance...

Depending on the law if your jurisdiction, an email may be enough. Then cancel any future charges on your CC.

IANAL. IANYL.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a paper mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription." What is it with French companies? BlueCity, the UK arm of the French "Autolib" car sharing service, had this same ridiculous "send us a letter in the post to cancel" policy. Since they charged to a credit card rather than use dir…

Can you not call the bank to block the card on account of fraud and get a new one? The subsequent payments would surely be declined...

It's quite a hassle, you don't have your card for a few days..

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#336
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…

Planet money had a story where a similar superficially good idea ended up with Etrade selling a man's Amazon stock and deactivating his account after he didn't log in for a certain period of time. He was able to reclaim about $8000 for stock that would be worth ~$100k today.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#337
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's illegal in the EU. So you could just send them a cancellation email and stop paying.

That’s the problem with credit cards. Once they have your number, it’s very difficult to “stop paying”.

Do people really have the same credit card number for that long? I feel like every year I end up with a new card for one reason or another and suddenly I have to track down all the places that can no longer process my payments.

I learned that you can request a replacement card with the same number, which I was initially very excited about. But when you get the new card it has a different expiration date, so it still needs to be updated most places.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it exists, it is not followed. In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a paper mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription. Even if you subscribed on the website, for a 100% online subscription. It's really shady.

That's illegal in the EU. So you could just send them a cancellation email and stop paying.

You can but they won't stop charging your card. They have the credit card number, so the only way would be to change the payment method to an invalid card.

Another comment actually says that he managed to create a virtual credit card, change the payment method, and delete the card. Quite clever. It's a shame that methods like this have to be used instead of just the click of a button.

Re: Netflix stops charging customers who never watch

#339
post #29

Perhaps to eliminate old accounts that have the discounted subscriptions?

This is where my mind went too. I don't think Netflix has generally grandfathered-in pricing, my bill has always gone up when their advertised price does. If there are some folks who are getting a year or so of promo pricing, I don't see how cancelling their accounts is advantageous.

My family is sharing an account with grandfathered pricing. Edit: seems like they ungranfathered everyone recently
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