Netflix To Start Cancelling Inactive Customers' Subscriptions (techcrunch.com) 103
Netflix said Thursday it will ask customers who have not watched anything on the on-demand video streaming service in a year or more if they wish to maintain their subscriptions -- and will cancel the subscription if it does not receive a confirmation. From a report: The company said it has started to notify customers who have't watched anything on the service in 12 months since they became a subscriber to check if they wish to keep their membership. The company is also reaching out to those who haven't streamed anything in the past two years, it said. "You 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," the company said.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
A company which actually cares? Who would have thought!
Most just keep taking your money. Some even continue this behaviour when you tell them to stop.
Netflix is certainly an exception to the rule.
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you talk to people working inside Netflix you'd know this is not a nice warm fuzzy happy caring emotional company. That is not their culture. There is some calculated benefit for them.
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
If Hulu is staying in business by keeping low on the radar while they're debiting credit cards of non-customers, then good riddance.
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America's "Top" executives seem to have a penchant for theft as a business model
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Either way, Netflix didn't do this as an act of human kindness. Hulu was only a theoretical example.
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how you slice this up Netflix's motives for cancelling inactive subscriptions are probably better than your cynical reasons why they should *not* cancel them.
Motives matter indeed.
Re: Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
IKR? Netflix is evil because they might force Hulu to not be evil so I will have to pay a touch more to Hulu because I'm no longer evilly taking advantage of others' sloth or forgetfulness.
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Motive matters. It changes whether it's a decent thing to do.
That said, "doing a decent thing will force their competitors to do a decent thing, and this company will win if everyone behaves decently" is not a bad motivation.
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I can cheer the results even if I don't think think it was a "decent" thing. For something to be decent it has to have good motives and a good outcome.
It's fine that this is done for selfish reasons. I'm not judging them for that. I'm just debating whether this is "decent" or just mutually beneficial.
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Motive doesn't matter. A decent thing is a decent thing regardless of why it was done. Just because someone does something in their own self-interest doesn't mean that it prevents it from being in your interest or to your benefit. However, I wouldn't necessarily cheer a decent action done for selfish motives any more than I would cheer good motives that result in bad actions.
Amplifying your comments: The motive doesn't affect the direct benefit to the recipients of the generosity, so in that sense, motive doesn't matter. However, Netflix also wants the positive PR from this move. It's the PR angle that depends on the motive. For example, consider drug lords that give free food to the masses in exchange for their cooperation as a shield against law enforcement. Or Facebook giving free internet to Africans. Or Trump/Congress sending $1200 to Americans. The benefit to the p
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Stop ascribing motive to everything.
This is Capitalism - everything has a motive.
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It probably has something to do with analytics. They know which devices are used to stream, and the general interests of their audience.
The problem is, as long as you're a current subscriber, they keep that information active. Perhaps you're a big Sci-Fi fan, but haven't watched anything on the service. Well, Netflix wants to know how many people would want to watch their new Rom-Com, and your subscription numbers skew it away.
Sure they could window the data and rely on the tastes of those who use it the mo
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Even better.
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It's also a bit of a liability i'd imagine:
data breach? that many more people whose billing data would potentially be exposed
record keeping? storage aint free.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
>storage ain't free
The bill for their _unused_ subscription must more than cover the storage cost of their billing data, and it isn't generating any usage data that has to be stored. Otherwise Netflix would already be bankrupt.
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Agree. Netflix charges the same fee for service if you binge-watch all-day or never log in. It is inconceivable that the binge-watcher's fee covers the cost of the service while the fee paid by the customer that never streams a show fails to cover costs.
A subscriber bill is what, $10/month, $120/year - that covers a lot of overhead.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
People who haven't used their account in over a year are probably dead, so it's probably more about legal risk
Phone bills? Cable bills? etc, etc. Netflix is far from the first subscription service to have customers pass away.
Besides, generally if the customer passes away so does the cardholder, and the account cancels itself.
I suspect the vast majority of these people are still alive, they just stopped watching Netflix, accidentally signed up twice, or signed up but then moved in with someone who had their own subscription. I suspect there's a few things motivating this decision:
1) The number of accounts who fall into this category are a pretty small portion of their revenue.
2) There's probably a lot of occasional users who sign up for Netflix to watch a movie or series but then cancel. This gives those users an "auto-cancel", meaning they might be willing to keep paying.
3) Something like this will come along anyway, by being first they get to set an industry standard that works for them rather than an auto-cancel after 1-month or 6-months.
4) The good PR of setting the standard and being "nice" outweighs the revenue hit.
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
In Canada, even after all these years, Netflix is still the best value for the price. The few other services are either too expensive, don't offer much or require a cable subscription. As usual, Canada is lagging behind other countries.
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In terms of telecommunications and general online services, yes we are. If you think cellphone services are greedy in the USA, have a look at the pitiful options offered by the oligopolies we have up north.
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Can't tell if your comment is sarcasm or not. Canada can fine you for outright refusing to use "her/she" pronouns on a transgender person who is a genetic male. Search "Bill Whatcott" who was fined 55k. Canada is a proponent of censored speech. This is what they said wouldn't happen after the legislation was passed which received so much criticism...
Great irony given your signature.
It's almost as if all countries have down sides! (Score:2)
Doesn't mean they don't do some things well though.
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We lag behind American media services. US publishers sometimes don't bother buying the rights to show things in Canada, or sometimes just take longer to do it. Some of the streaming services either don't bother with the Canadian market or lauch with "partners" who are cable companies.
For a long time the Last Week Tonight clips on YouTube wouldn't show in Canada until several months after being posted, for example.
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No, they don't really care, they want to boost the numbers on their shows and an inactive user doesn't watch any shows.
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No, they don't really care, they want to boost the numbers on their shows and an inactive user doesn't watch any shows.
Neither will a user with a cancelled account, so this doesn't seem like a plausible motivation.
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Perhaps by certain metrics the fluff subscribers are making apparent engagement look terrible? Who wants to brag about a hit new show to potential purchasers of advertising slots and confess that only 1% of the clientele have ever tuned in? If you are moving your revenue model away from the subscription fees and towards advertising, viewer engagement numbers are going to matter to your stockholders. Subscribers who are not viewing are eventually going away anyway, when the credit card on account lapses o
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Even 1% of subscribers watching something would be a pretty big success. Netflix has 182 million subscribers. 1% would be about 18 million subscribers, and probably more people as many subscriptions have multiple people watching. To compare, the average viewers for Friends when it originally aired was 20-25 million. Having 18 million people watch something is a huge success. The 2019 NBA Finals [sportsvideo.org] was 20 million viewers in the USA and Canada and that was actually up from the 2018 Finals which only saw 18.5 mi
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Alright, let me fix this. 1% of 182 million is not 18.2 million, nor 1.82 million. It's 0.182 tons.
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Yeah, my brain must have been broken that day. Even 1.8 million is a reasonable audience for a TV show. Walking Dead pulls in 3.5 million viewers and Better Call Saul can pull in around 1.5 million viewers and both of those shows are considered successful. Source [hollywoodreporter.com].
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Netflix may decided upon it for a compound of many factors - Not only are they one-upping against competitors, if their "check" to their customers also involved call/email that aggressively promote their current offerings, a portion of the idle customers may return to use their subscription. And sell more ads along the way.
At a time where outside travel is restricted, the thought of watching at home something you already previously paid for "for free" (in mental accounting) is very attractive.
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they want to boost the numbers on their shows
How does removing inactive customers achieve this goal?
They don't watch the show either way.
If they need to improve the numbers they could just report their numbers based on active users or suchlike.
an inactive user doesn't watch any shows.
Which means an inactive user brings in money but doesn't cost anything. That's the kind of customer services like Netfilx usually love.
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You have 100 subscribers, 90 of them are inactive.
You produce a show that is watched by 5 of your subscribers. That's only 5% of the subscribers.
You dump those 90 inactive members, 50% of your subscribers watch the show.
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You could easily say 50% of our "active" subscribers and apply a filter if you want to have that data.
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That is a much easier thing to do, but since they're clearly not doing that then there has to be some other reasons.
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what? every inactive subscriber is about $120/year pure profit for the corporation - they would sacrifice that kind of per-subscriber profit because idle subscribers don't increase viewership?
Every closed inactive account will cost them revenue and push them closer to raising monthly fees to make up lost revenue to cover costs/profit targets.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
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Why should Netflix refund more than the previous month's fee because YOU chose not to use the service YOU chose to sign up for and YOU failed to notice on your credit card bill.
At some point, the onus is on you, not Netflix to manage your finances.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)
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No, on what basis would people that chose to sign up for Netflix, chose not to use the service, then, years later, have a basis to sue Netflix?
If I subscribe to a newspaper, but never pick it up off my porch, after a year or so, can I then sue the newspaper for littering on my porch? For taking my subscription fee but never opened the paper? No, and No.
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They don't care. The problem is that users that haven't used their accounts can't agree to the new terms and services or the increases in cost. That's most likely where the rub is - I agreed to pay $10/month and suddenly it became $20 -> class action. For the few thousand of people that have never logged into Netflix in over a year and didn't notice it on their credit card bill, that's a lot cheaper than even the consultation fee for the defense attorney firm.
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Well certainly better than restarting a stopped subscription. And yes I'm talking about Netflix.
Good (Score:3)
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Are you nobody@gmail.com? Because I keep using that address all the time, sorry.
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No, that's not me. It's partially Google's fault to be fair: if you have nobody@gmail.com, gmail will not bounce messages sent to no.body, nob.ody or variations thereon and will actually deliver them to nobody. If there's a good reason for this it escapes me.
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There is. You can track who's selling your address, and/or filter the resulting spam, by putting strategic periods in your address.
I have a common name. My g-mail gets all sorts of interesting things. Elementary school teachers sending class lists. Shady developers sharing their dropbox accounts full of shady financial details. One woman who's home security system sent me notifications every time she entered or left her house or went to bed.
Someone sent me free money (Score:4, Funny)
I sent it back. I hate money.
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I sent it back. I hate money.
I know. Wonder what their share holders think. Seems like a really stupid move.
Not a gym (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently Netflix is not gym, which is a type of business which is wholly dependent on people not using their services. I'm not sure why any business would want less money though...
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Re: Not a gym (Score:1)
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Santa Claus?
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Re:Not a gym (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible that it's a resource issue, but Netflix doesn't maintain servers (at least those related to playback) based on the number of subscribers but instead provisions resources on demand (e.g. through AWS). They dynamically grow and shrink their capacity based on actual usage.
Also, at the time of playback, a ton of the legwork is done by third party CDNs anyway, and the business agreements with CDNs are pretty much always based on usage.
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It’s probably more about resources allocation. Netflix has to maintain enough servers for their subscribers. They still have to have those resources ready immediately when a subscriber watches content even if they haven’t used their account in a year.
Unlikely. I know now company that scales their service based on the maximum load that that could ever possibly happen.
You look at the numbers of the last months and years, you make out patterns (spikes around the holidays, less use in summer, whatever fits your service) then you add x% for unexpected events and that's what you have ready.
And with AWS and the like most services can relatively quickly add more servers, even fully automated.
Netflix already sends email frequently (Score:2)
Netflix already sends email frequently. If users are ignoring that email, one more makes no difference. Unless the email says "This is your 30 day auto-cancel notice" this is just a public relations stunt.
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Netflix already sends email frequently. If users are ignoring that email, one more makes no difference. Unless the email says "This is your 30 day auto-cancel notice" this is just a public relations stunt.
Scam emails purporting to be Netflix just starting looking more legitimate
Terrible for Stock Owners (Score:5, Funny)
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On the flip side, making it easier to cancel means more people are likely to sign up. Hell, no one ever signs up for AOL anymore. Growth is more important than retention.
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Do you even realize that AOL gets over half their subscription fees from people who don't realize they still have an active account?
They don't realize it because they're dead, I assume?
Should be immediate (Score:2)
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Ok smart guy - so where to draw the line? I definitely go a couple of months without watching Netflix at times (life gets busy - work, travel, etc.). I would be pretty pissed if the time that I (finally) have a free moment to watch Netflix... I instead have to go sign up again because it was auto-canceled.
We could argue about how long is the right amount of time - but the point is that they're doing it at all.
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Whatever period they use, it's never going to be good for everyone. It should be a user setting.
Marketing? (Score:2)
So easy, that you feel at ease. Nothing to watch this month? Comforted in the idea that you "can cancel anytime", why not just keep it for some more time?
Isn't that based on the same principle? "Do we use that subscription at all?" "No worries, we'll get a mail if we don't".
Why cancel something that you worry about forgetting, Netflix will remind you anyway
STOP sending us money! (Score:2)
Ah, I see, you just want to rub one over the local cinema.
Translation (Score:2)
We cancel the guys sending us money and not watching.
Both of them.
And we'll get free press all over the world.
Perhaps that some... (Score:3)
of their streaming rights costs are based on concurrent users. If you take a look at a price jump where 100,000 inactive users could cause 20% increase in price, it might be worth dropping those inactive users in order to push for cheaper streaming rights.
I don't know if that's the case, but I can imagine a world where it is.
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I didn't think about that but it does makes sense.
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This would only make sense if Netflix believe that they have hit market saturation, and did not plan on doing anything about it. I find it hard to imagine a huge multinational who realised who would give up the option of expanding and increasing revenue year after year.
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Terabytes saved? I don't know the numbers, but I would be surprised if each user account needed more than a few kilobytes at the most.
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The carbon footprint of an inactive account stored on a hard drive? Ya, keeping those bits nice and warm and magnety really leaves a mark on the climate.
Forget-me-nots (Score:2)
A lot of ancient accounts go on for ever and ever as people forget and don't check their bills monthly. Good for Netflix. I thought I had cancelled an MMORPG once and noticed it was still going a year later.
I'm sure companies even have a word for this small but continuing revenue stream of forget-me-nots. Hey, that's it!
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
ll (Score:1)
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it's your job to cancel it (Score:3)
Re: Probably thanks to me (Score:2)