Netflix Testing Out New Fee To Crack Down On Account Sharing

As we all know, big companies love their money, and Netflix is no exception. However, there comes a line that crosses over into money-grubbing, and it seems that Netflix is heading in that direction. What am I talking about, you might ask? I’m talking about their new way to make money off of account sharing.

No More Account Sharing (Without a Fee)?

Netflix has just come out with the news that once more they are testing out ways to force people to spend more money on them. This new scheme will basically require subscribers to pay a $2.99 USD fee just to add any new users outside of their household. Worse, this new fee scheme only allows each subscriber to add up to 2 additional users. While they don’t mention exactly what will happen if you want to add more than 2 users, presumably, they will not allow this. Any additional users will supposedly have to start their own paid subscriptions. At full price. Which starts at $9.99 USD per month for a basic account, and goes all the way up to $19.99 USD per month for a premium account.

At the moment, Netflix is, fortunately, still in the middle of testing this. Unfortunately, they want to roll out this new payment scheme in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru over the “next few weeks” as part of testing. The costs to add new users will be 2,380 CLP in Chile, 2.99 USD in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru. The only “good news” (if you want to call it that) is that existing users can transfer their profile info to these new sub-accounts. It honestly feels more like cold comfort than anything else though. If any of you readers live in any of those 3 countries, my sincerest condolences.

Netflix: Once More Proving That They Love Their Money

It’s funny. Netflix does actually try to justify this clear display of naked greed. Granted, it’s not a very good justification, but they try. Here are their exact words, with the second paragraph taking place at the very end:

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans. While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.

We recognize that people have many entertainment choices, so we want to ensure any new features are flexible and useful for members, whose subscriptions fund all our great TV and films. We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world.”

Let’s take apart Netflix’s explanation, shall we? They basically state that while they know that sharing accounts is popular, they don’t like it. The reason they don’t like it? It affects “our ability to invest”. Yup, they said it right there: they just want more money. It doesn’t matter why. They want more money, and they don’t care how they get it. Literally, the only thing we can hope for is for the new scheme to generate so much outrage in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru that Netflix is forced to drop it. Or if they try to implement it in the US, the resulting outrage is high enough for them to drop it. Well, one can hope.

Source: Netflix, The Verge

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