Helping members who haven’t been watching cancel

[AshRiver]

Quote

ou know that sinking feeling when you realize you signed up for something but haven’t used it in ages? At Netflix, the last thing we want is people paying for something they’re not using.   

So we’re asking everyone who has not watched anything on Netflix for a year since they joined to confirm they want to keep their membership. And we’ll do the same for anyone who has stopped watching for more than two years. Members will start seeing these emails or in app notifications this week. If they don’t confirm that they want to keep subscribing, we’ll automatically cancel their subscription. If anyone changes their mind later, it’s really easy to restart Netflix. These inactive accounts represent less than half of one percent of our overall member base, only a few hundred thousand, and are already factored into our financial guidance. 

We’ve always thought it should be easy to sign up and to cancel. So, as always, anyone who cancels their account and then rejoins within 10 months will still have their favorites, profiles, viewing preferences and account details just as they left them. In the meantime, we hope this new approach saves people some hard earned cash.

-- Eddy Wu, Product Innovation

https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping-members-who-havent-been-watching-cancel

 

I mean saving $15 is not going to save me throughout the week so........This is also another great way for scammers to start another phishing campaign.

[Statik]

Yeah but some people it's nice. Especially if you keep forgetting to cancel, etc, it can add up. I see nothing wrong with this.

[wANKER]

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

[ARikozuM]

This is actually how it should be, but the interval should be much lower, say 3 months, as Netflix seems to have new content on a regular basis. 

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

Some people don't look at anything more than the current balance right now.

[GilmourD]

13 hours ago, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

I used to work in self storage. One day I had a woman come in and say she wanted to cancel her unit. I told her to let me know when she emptied it out so I could inspect it and do the paperwork. She said it was already empty. I came to find out that's because when she rented the unit two years prior she NEVER put anything in it. She was paying $190 a month for an empty unit. And she knew she had it, too, because she had 3 rate increases that we legally had to send notices for.

Short version of that answer... People are dumb.

[poochyena]

Lets think about this from netflix's perspective. I wonder how many people don't watch anything for months, realize this, and then contact support asking them for a refund since they didn't use it for those months. So by just automatically refunding/canceling memberships, they are reducing the help desk requests, and thus, possibly saving money. Thats my idea.

15 hours ago, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

Nope. Its incredibly how bad so many people are with their finances. They will just spend money until their card is declined due to lack of funds. Some people are mentally incapable of saving money.

Though, there are good reasons too. Some people get sick, injured, go to jail or die. When you are bad situation like that, canceling your netflix subscription isn't on the top of your mind.

[Arika]

This thread reminded me to cancel my Netflix. Cheers

[Sauron]

17 hours ago, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

Out of a couple dozen bills one for $13 can go unnoticed... especialy if you have another account for whatever reason that you actually use. That's not going to be a lot of people, the post says it's less than 0.5% of subcribers, but still.

[wANKER]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Out of a couple dozen bills one for $13 can go unnoticed... especialy if you have another account for whatever reason that you actually use. That's not going to be a lot of people, the post says it's less than 0.5% of subcribers, but still.

One of the things about managing your finances though, is knowing exactly what direct debits/subscriptions etc. you have though, surely? 

 

I guess it's just me being ignorant. 

Didn't think there's people who actually just wait for bills to find out what they're paying and when 

[WereCatf]

18 hours ago, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using?

You'd be surprised how many people don't notice such. I don't remember where, but there was even a study about this and the number was quite rather high.

[Sauron]

13 minutes ago, wANKER said:

One of the things about managing your finances though, is knowing exactly what direct debits/subscriptions etc. you have though, surely?

In theory sure - in practice it just gets charged to your credit card and when you look at your billing history you might miss it.

[Bombastinator]

23 hours ago, AshRiver said:

https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping-members-who-havent-been-watching-cancel

 

I mean saving $15 is not going to save me throughout the week so........This is also another great way for scammers to start another phishing campaign.

That’s actually pretty cool of Netflix.  I respect that.

 

much cooler than cbs all access.  They had a 1 week free offer.  I figured out in four days that they didn’t have much I wanted to watch so I looked up how to cancel (it’s always difficult) and did it.  Got a reply saying I canceled but they’re still charging me.  I am very angry at them.  I’m going to have to close down a bank account to make them stop and I wholly blame them. I have complained and they agree that I did cancel but they do nothing. 

[CTR640]

9 hours ago, GilmourD said:

I used to work in self storage. One day I had a woman come in and say she wanted to cancel her unit. I told her to let me know when she emptied it out so I could inspect it and do the paperwork. She said it was already empty. I came to find out that's because when she rented the unit two years prior she NEVER put anything in it. She was paying $190 a month for an empty unit. And she knew she had it, too, because she had 3 rate increases that we legally had to send notices for.

Short version of that answer... People are dumb.

She probably had murder plans and it didn't work out for her the past two years.

[Brooksie359]

On 5/24/2020 at 9:54 AM, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

Well when you are a busy person with hundreds of transactions sometimes it just isn't worth the hassle unless there is something obvious like a big charge. Something as small as a Netflix subscription is likely not to get noticed. Now this is usually more for people who have alot of money and likely don't care as much to look through their finances throughly. 

[TetraSky]

On 5/24/2020 at 10:54 AM, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

From what I'm seeing on the internet... A lot of people are not responsible with their finances. They need monthly reminder such as "Remember to check your credit card statement for any ongoing subscriptions you don't use and get them cancelled!".

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, WereCatf said:

You'd be surprised how many people don't notice such. I don't remember where, but there was even a study about this and the number was quite rather high.

Apparently enough people to keep America online a going concern years after they stopped producing any product at all.  A search was done and most members did not know they had even signed up or were paying.

 

America Online was famous for doing exactly what CBS all access is doing which is making actual cancelation impossible or so very very fitfully as to allow someone to think they had successfully canceled when in fact it did not happen.  It’s possible they forgot that it was a failure, simply gave up an impossible task, or some other thing.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 5/24/2020 at 10:54 AM, wANKER said:

Do people not look at their finances?

You'd be surprised.

 

Financial literacy is low worldwide (and by "financial literacy" I don't mean understanding how to calculate the value of a put option, but knowing what "interest" means), and that only comes to play provided there's attention - which also varies widely from household to household. So, you have inattention, and among those attentive you have only a subset with at least a basic understanding of all the concepts related to their personal finances.

Then sometimes (I've found this varies from country to country or market to market) banks and other financial institutions make things unnecessarily obscure, especially when it comes to credit cards, what's due when, etc.

It is safe to say than more than 50% of the population has only a general sense of what they spend their money on, and the feeling of running out of money faster than expected ("I got my paycheck two weeks ago, how come there's only $X left?") is commonplace. 

[LAwLz]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:54 PM, wANKER said:

Who the fuck doesn't realise they've got an active subscription for $13 a month or w/e that they're not using? 

 

Do people not look at their finances?

If it weren't for the fact that I hate subscription models and avoid them like the plague, I could totally see myself being one of those people.

 

I have automated my finances as much as I can. Whenever I get my salary, I automatically transfer money to several separate accounts (I have like 6-7 different accounts). Then I have as much as possible get paid automatically, so I pretty much never have to actually pay any bills. Everything just gets charged automatically. That, coupled with 13 dollars a month not being that much compared to the thousands of dollars in other expenses, spread out over multiple accounts (some of which are shared and aren't at the same bank as other accounts), it becomes confusing quite quickly and 13 dollars can easily go unnoticed.

And, like others have said, it can be long-term things which gets priority. Someone might fall really ill and be hospitalized. In that case "check if I canceled my various subscriptions" might not be that high on the list of things to do. Someone might die and the account just keeps sipping money from their account. Someone might travel abroad to study or work and leaves everything behind, not realizing that they had a subscription to some service like Netflix when they canceled everything else.

 

The more stuff you got going in your life, the less likely it is that you know 100% for certain where your money is going.

That's not to say that people who have their finances in check aren't busy people, or that busy people have an excuse for not keeping track of their finances. But what I am trying to say is that if you are so short on cash that you actually notices 13 dollars disappearing every month then chances are you aren't in a good financial situation.

 

I don't consider myself a big spender, and despite that I have made over 163 different transactions from one of my accounts during the last 3 months. I certainly do not check every one of them, and I most certainly wouldn't have noticed if there were 166 transactions instead during the same time period.

 

 

 

Anyway, good on Netflix. This is how every subscription service should work.

[mr moose]

I know someone who had 2 concurrent netflix subs (one was a offer that came with a phone) and she couldn't work out how to cancel the other one and netflix only offered an email address that they never check.  In the end she got her bank to revoke the payments. 

[NumLock21]

This just shows that a lot people have no idea how to properly manage their money and that is just sad. What's even more sad is that blog site, where they ran out of characters to fully type out their title.

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Helping members who haven’t been watching cancel

Is Cancel the name of a show?