There was no way this was going to go smoothly, was there?
Sharing passwords for subscription streaming services is common all over the world, and while Netflix used to act (mostly) fine about it, the company is clearly having some very serious second thoughts, as recently we learned about plans to start testing a crackdown on this practice in some markets. The plan is for Netflix to convert freeloaders to their own subscriptions, or at the very least charge a fee for non-household sub accounts if they’re going to keep sharing them. But as this effort has gotten underway, it sounds like things have been nothing short of a mess.
In an investigative report, Rest of World interviewed over a dozen Netflix users in Peru, and the rollout of this test doesn’t seem to be yielding the results Netflix might expect. Here, sub accounts cost an extra 8 soles, or $2, on top of the existing 24.90 soles ($6.80) subscription. For some of these users, the introduction of this policy, and the price increase that paying for sub accounts would entail, has caused them to call off their subscriptions completely (with some also citing that they’re “not enjoying the new shows anymore” as an additional reason for the cancellation).
Others, though, have continued to share their accounts, either not knowing about or willingly ignoring the new rule — perhaps partly as a result of Netflix doing a poor job at notifying users, as well as and not strongly enforcing the new charges. An anonymous Netflix employee cited in the report notes that she was told to just tell users that they could still share their account without extra charges by using a verification code. (The employee also shares her own Netflix account herself.)
Language is also an issue here, with Netflix defining “household” to mean strictly “the people under your roof,” while for many of these subscribers, the term could represent a broader sense of close family members.
This kind of confusion in the reactions from these Peruvian users is a glimpse into what we might be facing if Netflix immediately started extending this policy around the world — while some users might actually pay for the sub accounts, others will just ignore the new policy, and some might even prefer canceling their subscription instead of paying even more money to Netflix — which is already getting pretty expensive in some places.
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