
Netflix stops charging customers who never watch - d99kris
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52777365
======
goodside
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 reason until they logged in again by their own
initiative. The site had determined that, on average, contacting these users
had a net-negative effect on retention — i.e., they would be reminded that
they were paying for an unused service and cancel.

~~~
sytelus
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. The credit card companies literally have
no control over who can charge us.

If anyone at stripe is reading this, I think this is golden opportunity for
consumer focused payment service. One should be at least able to block a
merchant from charging my card. I can do that for spammer email but can't do
that for spam charge on my card - in 2020!

~~~
mywacaday
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.

~~~
adamtulinius
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.

~~~
elcomet
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.

~~~
lucasverra
yeah, when i saw that i got so mad that I created a virtual credit card,
changed the billing method, and then deleted the card. You can not imagine the
big smile on my face when i received the email "we cannot charge you"....

Reaaaaaally big smile on my face

~~~
danlugo92
How can i create such a virtual card?

~~~
mathewsanders
There a few options for virtual cards. Ive been using
[https://privacy.com/](https://privacy.com/).

I’ve been using this not only for subscriptions, but also when I’m making an
online purchase at a store that I think may not have the best security in
place.

~~~
seesaw
I only use virtual cards for online payments. I use Citi and they have an
option to generate a card with specific amount and expiry.

~~~
perl4ever
Last I checked, Citi's virtual card feature inexplicably requires Flash. I was
like "I thought that was dead?"

~~~
orhmeh09
This was true for Bank of America, too, at least in December 2018.

~~~
antsar
They killed the feature altogether.

[https://www.bankofamerica.com/security-center/accounts-
cards...](https://www.bankofamerica.com/security-center/accounts-
cards/shopsafe/)

------
cdolan
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 original AT&T
unthrottled and unlimited plan goong on an iPhone, then iPad, until my credit
card expired and the payment lapsed. Of course my account want instantly
closed and my grandfathered plan unavailable.

Did I use more than 30 GB a month? No. Could i buy that plan again around
2017-2018? Nope. I was happy to secure that for $20/mo.

Do I want companies to have more red tape and penalties, such that they
proactively shut down accounts from legacy plans? Absolutely not, get off my
lawn.

~~~
fedups
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](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159)

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
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.

~~~
jedberg
> 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?

~~~
kevas
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.

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

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
This could work for you, in the chance an investment didn't pan out and you're
liquidated at the top. But for long periods of time, cash loses value to
inflation. Seems off that states wouldn't accept shares. They're not as liquid
as cash, but not far from it.

------
dylan62
Netflix impressed me recently with how easy they made it for me to cancel my
subscription. It means I will have no hesitation to re-subscribe in future,
should I feel the urge.

I just wonder how long it will last. It sometimes feels like all the big
successful consumer companies become accountancy-driven scumbags sooner or
later. Fingers crossed Netflix can buck the trend and stay a nice company to
deal with.

~~~
skohan
I would think this might be triggered by a decline in revenue. When Netflix
can't continue to grow organically into new markets and the share price starts
to suffer, they might resort to less friendly tactics for increasing the
revenue per customer.

~~~
hrktb
It might also come from detecting recurring patterns and trying to facilitate
them.

Before the simplified version, we already used to only register to Netflix
during long vacations, binge watch whatever we wanted (typically Black Mirror
and Sherlock) and cancel the rest of the year.

Now that it’s way easier, there’s less friction in reenabling the account when
there’s a series we want to watch and set the subscripting to cancel again at
the end of the month.

------
raiyu
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.

~~~
cortesoft
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.

~~~
btrettel
Amazon definitely doesn't do this now. Amazon sometimes offers me a free Prime
trial and they make it fairly clear that if you don't cancel before the
conclusion of the trial, they'll automatically subscribe you to Prime and
charge you. I'll sometimes take the trial but I always mark my calendar to
cancel before the renewal.

Personally, I consider this to be a dark pattern and it makes me reluctant to
sign up for any trial or even subscription services in general. I'm glad that
Amazon is upfront about it but would prefer that they didn't do this at all.

~~~
frosted-flakes
I'm pretty sure they let you disable auto-renew immediately after signing up.

What's sketchy is that Amazon's Audible deletes all your unused book credits
if you unsubscribe. If you don't know what to buy with those credits and you
want to unsubscribe, you face the decision to keep buying credits, or lose the
credits you already paid for.

Fortunately, there are a couple of workarounds. There's the option to pause
your subscription for 3 months, or you can buy a book, cancel the
subscription, then return the book to recapture the credit once you find a
book you _actually_ want to read.

~~~
bluntfang
last i checked, they let me cancel prime effective immediately, not allowing
me to continue my year that i purchased. There isn't an option to stop auto
renewal.

------
leonroy
A few years back I started to get a $12 charge from Lastpass on my Paypal
account. I cancelled my account at Lastpass over 6 years ago so was puzzled
why, especially since they don’t offer any sort of $12 service.

It took a lot of emails and complaining before Lastpass told me that it was
due to me being an Xmarks (bookmark sync service) customer in 2009! Apparently
they owned Xmarks briefly. Why the charge started a few years ago they have no
idea.

Despite repeated attempts to cancel the charge via Lastpass and Paypal it
still happens every year. Apparently neither company can stop it - so every
year I complain, get the charge refunded and have to swallow the exchange rate
fees on my credit card. Maddening and leaves me with zero good will towards
either of these companies.

~~~
FrojoS
Is there no way to block them on PayPal??

~~~
juliand
If it's a recurring payment then yes, it should be under PayPal's My
Preapproved Payments.

------
NKosmatos
I don’t understand how people leave subscription or renewal charges unchecked
in their credit cards. I can understand keeping a subscription unused but
still acknowledging and paying for it (for whatever personal reasons), but
having a charge in your credit card without knowing what exactly it is or why,
sounds a bit strange to me. Could be that I’m not rich enough and I’m still
paying attention to every single €/$/£ being charged :-)

~~~
gear54rus
One of the reasons subscription model is cancer: they hope you'll forget it's
on.

~~~
mav3rick
Virtual Cards with set expiry numbers will end this game

~~~
vbezhenar
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 money (I don't use credit
cards, only debt cards).

~~~
scrollaway
You're describing something called direct debit
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit)).
In the US, you may know it as ACH, but the american version of direct debit is
a far cry from EU direct debits.

When setting up a DD, you can give a european company your IBAN. They will be
able to make withdrawal requests, directly to your bank account. Your bank
will usually give you full control on what you can do with those. For example,
my bank Bunq ([https://bunq.me/](https://bunq.me/)) allows me to accept once,
or automatically accept any debit request up to whatever amount I choose per
period from that same merchant.

Direct Debits are _free_. You bypass credit card fees (which in Europe are
much lower than in the US in the first place but still percentage-based). They
are also usually real-time (though slower than the credit card network, and
depending on banks and fraud checks there can be latency of up to a couple of
days).

------
billfruit
It would have been better if they don't collect the charges for a month if you
haven't watched even a single thing on Netflix for that month.

~~~
dawnerd
That’d actually keep me subscribed longer I think. Right now I’ll batch stuff
up and binge it all in a month and then cancel for another how ever months it
takes.

------
IMAYousaf
It's so funny to see this at the top of HN when right below it I saw this
thread:

"Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837)

White Pattern? vs. Dark Pattern

------
kerkeslager
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
principles and logic rather than grudges.

Of the subscription services out there, it's my impression that Netflix is one
of the best. They avoid a lot of dark patterns, and this latest action of not
charging customers who don't watch is a very upstanding action, especially
since it cuts into their profits in a really direct way.

There are still complaints I have about Netflix[3], but the real heart of the
issue is that this _cannot_ last forever. There's simply too much counter-
incentive for a company to walk away from a revenue stream like this. And with
a subscription business model, there's nothing to keep them honest, because
Netflix has all the control.

[1] This is a term I'm basically inventing on the spot, based on something
I've been thinking about lately. Physical print newspapers were subscription
based but they weren't revocable-access: you received the newspaper on
subscription, but once you received it, you owned it. This differs
fundamentally from web-based subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if
you let your subscription lapse, the site revokes your access to content which
you previously had access to.

[2] Most people around me have Netflix subscriptions, so I end up watching a
lot of Netflix with people, despite not having an account myself.

[3] a) Patterns that manipulate dopamine response. b) Glossing over credits so
content creators don't get credit. c) Monopolistic practiced with regard to
tethering content creation and content distribution together.

~~~
Hello71
> Physical print newspapers were subscription based but they weren't
> revocable-access: you received the newspaper on subscription, but once you
> received it, you owned it. This differs fundamentally from web-based
> subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if you let your subscription
> lapse, the site revokes your access to content which you previously had
> access to.

But with online subscriptions, you also gain access to historical content: if
you sign up for a traditional newspaper, you don't immediately gain access to
previously published papers, only those published subsequent to your
subscription. Modern online subscriptions are more similar to traditional
libraries, providing access to historical as well as future content.
Presumably this is a major factor why Netflix and other services insist on
calling their collections "libraries", despite being otherwise dissimilar. I
think it's an interesting question though: would people pay for a Netflix
subscription that provided irrevocable access, but only to current and future
content? I would say probably not: a significant portion of the value
proposition of Netflix is due to their historical content: "you can watch
anything you want" (that we have), regardless of when it was published. Would
you pay for this service?

~~~
kerkeslager
Well, I only brought up physical print newspapers to explain what "revocable
access" means, not to make any sort of argument. Arguments by analogy aren't
valid logic anyway.

Non-revocable-access subscriptions are, in my opinion, just a convenience
layer around the ownership model. The man function of these subscriptions is
automating the buying of something you buy on a regular basis anyway. There's
an element of vendor lock-in in some models, but not all.

There are plenty of examples of the ownership model gaining access to an
extensive archive: it used to be that you could buy the Criterion Collection
on DVD, for example. Presented this way, however, it becomes immediately
obvious that people don't actually want to pay for the entire archive, at
least not at the price the owners of the archive wanted to sell it at. You
don't want the entire Netflix archive, you only want a few movies and shows
from it. The primary problem here is that archive contents are massively
overpriced: nobody wants to pay $8 for every DVD in the Criterion Collection.
In an ownership model you have to let people pick and choose the parts of the
archive they want and buy only those, or if you're selling the entire archive
in one chunk, the price per-unit has to be low enough to justify making the
buyer pay for vast swaths of content they don't actually want.

Steam does a good job with this: they generally price their older games at a
price that people are actually willing to pay, and their bundles tend to be
intelligently grouped so that if you're interested in one of the bundled
games, you're probably interested in at least a few of the others.

------
jaakl
It is not just ”altruistic”. The idea is clever: they loose <0.1% inactive
users but will win new ones blocked now behind worry ”what if I will not
really use it”. Their bet is that the second group could be larger than first,
and by order of magnitude. And if not, then it is still not so expensive
marketing. I wish ’use only if you really use’ would become norm.

~~~
sfj
> I wish ’use only if you really use’ would become norm.

I wouldn't look at them as an shining beacon. They only cancel if you haven't
watched it for a year, and none of your money is refunded, so it's not that
great of safety net.

~~~
s1artibartfast
It is still pretty great. A lot of people would happily exchange one year of
fees for having to unsubscribe. Think of the application for the deceased or
incapacitated. Running down every subscription a deceased parent could have
had is a huge pain.

~~~
sfj
Why not just cancel their cc?

~~~
s1artibartfast
some things roll over to collections, which can also be difficult to unwind.

------
notadog
Link to the Netflix blog post: [https://media.netflix.com/en/company-
blog/helping-members-wh...](https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping-
members-who-havent-been-watching-cancel)

------
adav
In the UK at least, Netflix is often used by fraudsters to check stolen credit
card numbers. I bet Netflix were fed up with expense of dealing with all the
fraudulent transactions. Or if not the expense, Netflix doesn’t want the
negative press that they’re profiting from all these unsuspecting victims.

------
have_faith
Could this feasibly be law? what are the potential down sides? That is a
company has to stop charging for a service if the service isn't used for a
specified amount of time, 12 months or so etc. Like a gym couldn't just keep
charging you if their records show you never turned up.

~~~
minikites
Why should the government interfere in market outcomes?

~~~
kappuchino
If that is not a rethorical question, here are my thoughts: Consumer
protection laws/rules can actually help establishing a better marketplace.

Example: DSL Connectivity.

If there are only a few market participants and the allowed lenght for
contracts is 24 months, it will be 24 months. This is bad for a number of
reasons to me: \- First, a different (and hopefully better/cheaper/cleverer
serivce needs to "endure" that only 1/24th of the customer base per month
_could_ change. That is also the problem for customers who have issues with
the Provider. \- Second, this gives incentives for what I call "dishonest"
offers: Marketed as "half off", its only half of the first year (or only six
months), then full price for the rest. Hacker News is full of people who are
good at math, but this appeals mainly for people who are not. Or who don't
have the choice when they are already short on money. \- Third: Part of the
calculation is the rate of people who might not use the service to moving,
death, etc. - and I don't want the company or me be part of that.

When it comes to other types of contracts (mobile operators, gym services,
...) the stabiltiy of income is still guranteed with shorter spans if you
provide a great service. This is proven by markets where these types of
protections exist.

And netflix shows that you can even go month by month. I believe thats also
because people can buy dvds/blue rays, rent/buy online, go to cinemas, etc -
so there are a lot of competing options, forcing you to excel in service. And
thats vs. "free" bittorent, rogue streaming, too.

------
jmpman
I just got an email saying that account was cancelled. For some reason I
signed up for a second account, so I could get DVD service, received the DVD
and never cancelled. Should probably return the disk... if I can find it.

------
jzer0cool
This is why Netflix is a honest company. 1\. Reasonable prices for
subscription (when you watch). 2\. Does not "charge/steal" from customers.

In contrast, I an older article how this one phone company charged an elderly
women in rent for a rotary phone.

> [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t-
> charges-e...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t-charges-
> elderly-widow--14-000-in--rent--for-rotary-phone.html)

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

~~~
wayupthere
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.

~~~
jonas21
How is that scummy? You bought something, and they're charging you for it.

~~~
croshan
How can you cancel (without cc chargebacks) if you typed in the wrong email
address?

~~~
jasonkester
Email and ask.

I routinely cancel subscriptions for S3stat customers who have forgotten which
old employee first signed up for the service, or just don’t want to bother
logging back in to do so. A name, or even company name is plenty.

------
zerd
Imagine if gyms did this with memberships. They'd lose a fortune.

~~~
thiscatis
Because it's against their business model. They want you to subscribe and not
come.

~~~
raverbashing
Because not alienating customers is bad for business apparently

No wonder "no contract" chains are growing in some countries.

Less BS for the consumer, even if they have to "pay more" (i.e. the actual
cost of the service).

(But yeah in the case where you actually want to pay for a gym membership and
not go, those seem optimized for it)

------
notadog
> Netflix says it will now start to cancel accounts that have watched nothing
> in more than a year, but have still been paying subscription fees.

> Netflix said less than half a percent of its user-base falls into that
> category.

> Almost 16 million people created accounts in the first three months of the
> year, nearly double the new sign-ups it saw in the final months of 2019.

~~~
notadog
With 182.8 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, that means that
less than 914,000 accounts have watched nothing in the past year.

~~~
ilaksh
Not sure I believe that. Even if it's true, it means they include everyone who
watched a _single_ thing.

I feel like they are doing the minimum change necessary to try to reduce legal
problems. They have actually probably had a lot of people try to sue them for
charging them for a service they have not used for months and months, when
they forget about it and then notice the charges.

~~~
cma
Probably also reducing chargebacks to get a lower fee from CC companies.

------
AstralStorm
It's also a good security practice - their payment, account and other personal
data can be offloaded to cold storage. Both harder to damage and harder to
take over.

------
rb808
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.

~~~
jacobwil
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...](https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater-services-
auto-pay-1585.php)

~~~
rconti
Thanks for the link. I've also had the utterly bizarre experience of a service
charging my old card number for MONTHS after it expires, have the charges go
through, THEN tell me my card is expired 3-6months later and force me to
update.

Probably a related thing where they want to keep receiving revenue from me
without interruption to my service, but ultimately need to confirm it's not
fraud?

------
ehnto
It's a really weird problem to have, I've had it in one of my products.
Someone signed up and I was super happy to have a paying subscription. The
first month or so I could see they hadn't yet made use of the service. No
worries, maybe they just hadn't got around to it. Couple more months, still no
use, what to do? Could it be fraud, but how does that work? No one gets
anything from me, and I get all the money?

Do I cancel their subscription? Is that the right thing to do from a customer
service perspective? I have no idea. Sending an email that says "Hey, um, did
you do this accidentally?" is a bit unprofessional. I tried contacting them to
no avail, to see if they needed help setting up to keep it professional but
still remind them they have this recurring subscription they might not want.
Eventually I ended their subscription and left a professional sounding "We
noticed you're not using our service, so we have paused your subscription."
email and ended it.

I still sometimes wonder if it wasn't a friend or friendly stranger who wanted
to support me, and if it was I must sincerely thank them.

------
zwily
Slack does this too, every month. (Maybe it’s more common in enterprise
offerings?)

~~~
jaggederest
Yeah I appreciated it a lot. They also prorate by active users, so if you're
paying for 50 users and only 20 were active, you get a 60% discount. Super
solid as a way of doing business.

------
pjmorris
Good on them.

I spent ~five years with a Netflix subscription that I never watched. I'd joke
that I ought to get a Christmas card from them, because I was one of their
very best customers.

Even now, I'll flip back and forth between paying and not paying, because I
only use the service occasionally. I suspect it's less hassle for them to keep
people like me on the books than have us fade in and out.

------
andy_ppp
Can we talk about Apple subscriptions please... I understand the desire to
make money by Apple but these trials that no one uses and then being charge a
hundred quid for a year’s subscription... even if Apple makes a lot of money
operating the racket it’s deeply wrong.

Well done to Netflix on this I really cannot see an upside apart from the
awesome brand loyalty they increased by doing this!

------
carapace
Ha! I have to go cancel my Webfaction account.

They're a decent service but they were acquired by GoDaddy (who I think are
douchebags) so I stopped using the service. But I have been forgetting to
actually cancel it for _years_ now.

For a while they were changing me ~$10/month. Nice for them and not painful
enough for my lazy ass to jump though whatever hoops they may have set in
place to cancel.

Then one day I let the balance on the debit card they have on file for me fall
to zero, so their auto-debits were failing. Eventually they sent me an email
saying that they would stop charging it, but... They will (and do!) try again
from time to time. Just to see if it will work.

Rather than just cancelling the service (that I haven't touched in at least
4-5 years) they leave my account in a zombie state and periodically attempt to
harvest it again.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED) cheeky bastards, eh?

------
notadog
It would be nice if other subscription based products did this also.

------
sitkack
For those reading at Netflix, thank you!

I worked for a game company and we had a small number of folks who bought lots
of games and never activated them. I lobbied management that it was unethical
to keep these peoples' money, it was unethical, I was laughed at.

Now that that is out of the way, can we talk about parental controls?

------
svara
They know how to treat their customers. Meanwhile, cancelling a Wall Street
Journal subscription online is simply impossible, they have you call their
hotline. Unless you're in California, in which case you can cancel online.
It's ridiculous and frankly should be illegal.

~~~
ricotico060
Couldn’t agree more, tried to cancel my membership a week ago and just didn’t
because the process was so long

------
leppr
This is a good move, but still fairly lax (I'd personally like a reminder
after as little as 2 months). This difference in preference by users and the
top comment with an example of the reversed strategy used by a shady dating
site, surface the point that pushing this responsibility to the providers
doesn't scale.

What we need is good UX for users to manage their various recurring payments,
and cancel them by easily blocking payments to specific companies. That's one
thing Paypal for instance does right with its "automated payments" dashboard.

The current system of customers having to trust companies by default doesn't
work in a market where antisocial behaviour is not more heavily punished.

------
_hao
If I have to give out my card details anywhere especially for a subscription
based service I look beforehand on how I can cancel it. Companies have no
shame in leaving you forget a subscription going on forever. That should be
punishable by law.

Also my main bank is now Monzo (based in the UK) and there I get a
notification on my phone for every transaction I make. I also see a list of
all the committed spending for a month which includes all subscription based
services I have (some of them I had to mark myself as such because Monzo can't
distinguish if they are recurring or not). To be honest I think every mobile
bank application should offer this out of the box. It's 2020...

------
gonational
If you send the message that “ _don’t worry, if you don’t use your account,
you won’t be charged_ ”, it has the effect of making people think of Netflix
as an account they can just keep forever.

My guess is that they put together data internally that showed e.g. 3% of
users become dormant for longer than a quarter, while 5% of people cancel
their accounts after a quarter or two of low or no usage, due to the feeling
of not getting enough value out of it.

Imagine being able to reduce those cancellations at little or no cost to the
bottom line, and turning it into positive PR.

------
kalium-xyz
Perhaps to eliminate old accounts that have the discounted subscriptions?

~~~
cmckn
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.

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

------
MindTooth
LPT: each year order a new card.

Been doing this for many years. If something that unexpectedly gets charged, I
know right away or I just goes away. This way I have to some degree regained
control.

~~~
woutr_be
I wanted to do this as well, but it honestly takes so much time to change
payment details on a lot of services. All my utilities for example are on auto
payment through my credit card, I need to go to a physical store to change
that. It's one of the reasons I haven't cancelled one of my credit cards, even
though I haven't used it in years.

------
wrycoder
I have a DVD and a streaming subscription. I use the DVD fairly often, but the
streaming rarely. There’s very little I want to watch available on streaming.
I really should cancel.

------
INTPenis
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're restricted to such a small library?

~~~
chki
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?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
You somehow think that not pirating would translate into paid movie/TV show
watching? IIRC, pirating actually means more folks watch the shows - which
translates into folks talking about the shows (Free advertising). Besides,
lots of folks subscribe to one streaming service (like Netflix) and pirate the
things that aren't available.

If Netflix (and the producers of shows and films) want folks to watch, they
need to improve. One could start by removing geographic restrictions and
merely cull their library for legal reasons (X topic is restricted in X
country: Y topic is only available after 8pm).

Also, Netflix doesn't rely on cinemas for its films. The other production
companies can follow suit if they decide they want to. The companies can find
ways to finance things and reduce piracy, but so far... nope. They are still
dragging their feet.

------
rob74
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #188: "A fool and his money are the best
customer". Kudos to Netflix for doing this, but I can entirely understand that
they are the exception rather than the rule here. After all, if people don't
care about a sum of money they pay monthly without getting anything for it,
the only reasonable explanation is that they earn more than enough, so they
can probably afford to continue paying it...

------
trashburger
Wouldn't a better model be to not charge the user for that month if they
haven't watched anything? So you would only pay for months where you actually
watched things on Netflix, and you wouldn't find that your account was
suddenly deleted.

Also, maybe the title should be "Netflix will delete the accounts of customers
who never watch", because that describes what Netflix will be doing more
accurately.

~~~
lacerrr
They will be keeping the account data, so you don't need to start from scratch
if you sign up again. It's more of an account freeze/deactivation than a
deletion.

------
ASVVVAD
Those are most likely accounts made for the free 30-day trial They're _very_
common and they're given away to on social media sites etc.

------
Hamuko
I cancelled my Netflix account after almost never watching it and now they
keep sending me emails to reactivate my subscription for the low low price of
7.99 euro a month. For some reason they think that I want to come back to
Netflix to watch shows at standard definition since for 7.99 you can't even
get 720p, even though when I was subscribed, I had the 4K plan.

~~~
foepys
That's just to reel you in. You might think that they discounted their UHD
offering for you. So you check and Netflix got their email engagement click.

~~~
Hamuko
> _You might think that they discounted their UHD offering for you._

Yeah, that's what I assumed when I opened the email. Rather scummy in my
opinion.

------
mrharrison
I remember during the last recession (2008) everyone I knew was going through
their credit card statements and removing subscriptions/unneeded charges from
their bills. It makes me think that Netflix has the foresight to see this next
recession as quite bad and create some good press and become the good guy. Who
wants to cancel the good guy??

------
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.

------
djhworld
I subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to
enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now
that I'm working remote.

I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half
tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can
they?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
My understanding was that the correct way to cancel subscriptions payed with
PayPal is via the PayPal website.

I recall one service pointed me to PayPal to cancel a subscription, and that’s
how I’ve managed them since.

Edit: spelling

~~~
djhworld
Ah, ok thanks.

Well, I've just cancelled it. No turning back now!

------
solarkraft
Reading this I kept thinking "What? What? Why would you do this?!"

Less than half a percent isn't that much relatively, but those are still many
millions.

It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have
share holders who are not interested in that stuff.

So what could have pressured them to do this? Regulation?

~~~
bergstromm466
> It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have
> share holders who are not interested in that stuff.

100%. It might have something to do with wanting more clear/precise analytics
numbers. Non-active members might weigh down certain metrics in some way, so
removing these members likely allows for 'fuller' analytics/measurements,
which is important to their core business. Netflix is now also a very active
producer of content itself, instead of it's previous business model of
licensing/'renting out' others' content, so clearer and probably higher
engagement metrics (once non-active memberships are removed) helps one of it's
core competences.

It's purely a business move. Their blog post is PR.

------
destory-everyth
This reminded me to cancel my cable subscription, I only had it for the EPL
and F1 and they did not make any concessions for the fact they are not playing
live sports. I also put my mobile plan to cheapest possible because where I am
(Singapore) I can't really leave my place for past 2 months

------
kartickv
I think this would be a good thing to try -- hopefully it will remove one
barrier to subscription the fear that you'll be paying every month whether you
use it or not.

------
nodesocket
If you don't follow you finances and continue to pay Netflix for a year of
service without use, I personally don't think they have any obligation to
cancel your account. As somebody who has run SaaS services and seen countless
baseless e-mails (even worse chargebacks) come in from users who "forgot" to
cancel service and then were irate about it, this doesn't help the customer
"entitlement" problem I see. Let me explain what I mean in terms of customer
"entitlement". A few of my friends will go out of their way to call and
complain to companies for mistakes they themselve make, demanding refunds,
discounts, reward points, and often they get compensation. As a business
owner, this sort of behavior really infuriates me. These types of users are
taking advantage of situations because of their own failing, and thus are now
blaming the companies expecting something in return.

~~~
jpalomaki
Maybe this is why it makes financially sense to automatically cancel forgotten
accounts at some point.

You would avoid some of the support costs, some chargeback costs and cost with
negative publicity (people complaining about ”fraudulent” charges on social
media).

On large enough scale you can likely do some calculations and eventually A/B
testing to figure out what does this mean financially.

------
madballster
That is shocking. In my experience, well over 20% of all revenues of an online
subscription service can come from stale users who keeping paying but never
login anymore. They're gold to the bottom line.

~~~
notadog
For Netflix though, it applies to less than half a percent of their
subscribers.

------
WalterBright
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.

~~~
ec109685
Netflix keeps all your preferences and history, so the account can be
reactivated without losing anything.

~~~
tzs
I wonder if it is different if you were never a paying user? I did the free
trial in February 2019 and then cancelled. If I try to login now, it starts
going through the whole set up a free trial for a new user process, with no
indication that it recognizes my account.

In fact, if I try to login with the email address I used for the trial and any
random thing for the password, it goes to the new user trial setup.

If I hit thee "need help" link on the sign in screen and try to initiate a
password reset, it tells me there is no account for my email address.

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
Given there is no cancellation nor sign up fee for Netflix I just cancel it
every time that I sign up, so I buy a month of access instead of keeping a
live subscription

------
xyst
Typically companies want to keep these dormant accounts because it’s literally
free money. It’s nice to know that Netflix isn’t a parasite.

------
sahoo
You can always ask your credit card provider to send you a replacement card or
the charges move to the replacement card

------
kerng
I wish 24 hour fitness would do the same. They keep charging me even though I
called them multiple times to cancel.

------
krick
That's great, but why would they do this? I don't understand. Is it just a
seemingly costly PR-capmaign?

------
foobar_
This is absolutely ridiculous. As a profitable company the duty of the company
is to make money for the share holders and board members. The customer is a
dumb expendable resource to be exploited. Netflix stock price is down because
of this. Not only should Netflix not do this, it should charge pregnant women
extra because they are watching with an extra person /s

------
mvkel
Is this for accounting purposes? They can’t recognize the revenue without it
being used?

------
holstvoogd
Already getting netflix phising mails regarding it hehe

------
29athrowaway
What happens with your subscriptions when you die?

~~~
londons_explore
A few scummy companies put _huuuge_ termination fees in the case of a
customer's death. In one case it was equivalent to 100 years service for a
phone setup my grandfather had!

In most cases I bet they get paid - usually whoever is overseeing a loved ones
estate really doesn't want to be going to court etc.

~~~
Tempest1981
So if his setup was $10/mo, the termination fee was $12,000?

~~~
londons_explore
It was a $3 per month business VoIP phone number redirecting service, and the
termination fee was $3000 if you didn't use the correct termination procedure,
which involved knowing a password in a web form only my grandfather knew, or
passing a 'my password is my voice' phone login. They also allowed termination
by a letter to their HQ, with a $3k fee. I think the fee was more of a "we can
only offer low prices if everything is automated, so we charge a stupidly high
fee for anything we can't automate".

I don't want to name the company, because the dispute is still ongoing.

~~~
wccrawford
On the other hand, if you lose the dispute, you should absolutely post about
it here and let everyone know.

------
Havoc
Refreshingly reasonable stance

------
alkonaut
Imagine if gyms did this.

~~~
notadog
The difference between Netflix doing this and gyms doing this is gyms rely
heavily on people who join and don't go (even specifically targeting that
audience), while for Netflix it is less than half a percent of their users.

If anyone is interesting in learning more about the economics and psychology
of gym memberships, I highly recommend Episode 590: The Planet Money Workout
of the NPR podcast Planet Money.

------
bergstromm466
Wow I love atruistic corps. So lovely to see this. [read with a sarcastic
Ricky Gervais voice] [1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020](https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020)

------
alanlovestea
Be careful, exactly 10 years after I cancelled my Netflix, Netflix started to
charge my card again. I contacted Netflix, but they cannot did anything about
it. I ended up having my card issuer to issue a new account number to me.

~~~
jonathanlydall
The most likely explanation is that your credit card details were compromised
and someone was using them for “free Netflix”.

