General Entertainment Netflix to start charging extra for sharing accounts outside of a household

[Kamusha]

Netflix Will Prompt Subscribers to Pay for Users Outside Their Households in New Test to Address Unauthorized Password Sharing (EXCLUSIVE)

VARIETY.COM

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Netflix will soon kick off a test letting primary account holders pay an additional fee for users outside their households.

If I remember something correctly it was previously shared on here that they were considering it. Looks like something they will start rolling out in the near future. Won’t affect me but I haven’t been feeling Netflix that much in recent years.

 

I’ve been getting into Tubi recently and I find their selection more fun, especially for horror and schlock. And it’s free. It reminds me of browsing Blockbuster back in the day, with the mixture of good, bad, and the wtf.

[Chris-]

Sharing streaming service passwords has always been an odd pet peeve of mine. Not because I give a shit about their bottom line, but it’s like…You really can’t pay $12/month or whatever?

[Chairslinger]

Seems like this could backfire.

 

By charging a much lower price for satellite accounts you are legitimizing account sharing.

 

I have never even considered account sharing with friends/family. But with this in place not taking advantage of it with a couple close friends or family would just be wasting money.....

[johnny]

netflix is one of my least used streaming services. i use my brothers account so idk if i’ll get my own account if i need to. i’m way more into hbo max and apple tv. 

[Brian]

Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix, is cited in the article. What an innovation!

[Kamusha]

29 minutes ago, Chris- said:

Sharing streaming service passwords has always been an odd pet peeve of mine. Not because I give a shit about their bottom line, but it’s like…You really can’t pay $12/month or whatever?

Their mid-tier plan is 15 per month, soon to be raised to 15.50. If there’s a way to save 186 a year I’m taking it.

[ort]

I need to cancel my Netflix. I don't use it enough to justify the cost. I can just re-subscribe when they come out with some new stuff.

[DarkStar189]

"A member may be prompted to verify their account only if a device outside of their household logs in to the account; Netflix may then ask the user to verify the login from the device by sending a verification code."

 

So if you are sharing with a close friend or family member, you will just have the nuisance of having to do that. The question is how often? Everytime you load Netflix? Once a week or month? Still doesn't seem like a perfect solution to stop account sharing but I guess it's something. 

[TheLeon]

1 hour ago, Chris- said:

Sharing streaming service passwords has always been an odd pet peeve of mine. Not because I give a shit about their bottom line, but it’s like…You really can’t pay $12/month or whatever?

That’s kinda how I’ve felt. I pay for my own subscriptions, and I’m cheap. If I’m not watching one and/or my budget gets tight, I’ll cancel for a while. No big deal. 
 

But at the same time, (almost) nobody has just one of these services, so we aren’t talking about just $10-15 a month. I think about this every week when I visit my sister and brother-in-law. Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+. We all enjoy things on all of these platforms. They make enough money that they subscribe to all of those and more and not really think about. Most of these services make it easy enough to have different users, so you aren’t jacking up each other’s algorithms. If I just piggybacked on their accounts,  that would be a significant amount of savings for me.

 

The only reason I don’t ask is that this is an area where I have an uncharacteristic amount of pride, apparently. 

[ort]

I was "stealing" a Netflix sub for years... but we barely used it.

 

A friend of mine logged into Netflix from my house and I just kept using it. When it got logged out I just started paying.

 

I'm the sucker that pays for cable and streaming... but our streaming kinda comes and goes in waves.

 

We pay for...

 

Cable

Netflix

Amazon Prime

HBO Max (came with ATT wireless)

Disney +

Crunchy Roll (my son is the only one who uses it)

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, ort said:

I was "stealing" a Netflix sub for years... but we barely used it.

 

A friend of mine logged into Netflix from my house and I just kept using it. When it got logged out I just started paying.

 

I'm the sucker that pays for cable and streaming... but our streaming kinda comes and goes in waves.

 

We pay for...

 

Cable

Netflix

Amazon Prime

HBO Max (came with ATT wireless)

Disney +

Crunchy Roll (my son is the only one who uses it)

Psshhht

 

I pay for cable which includes HBO, SHOWTIME, STARZ and THE MOVIE CHANNEL

NETFLIX

APPLE TV

PRIME (WITH AMC+ and SHUDDER TV)
DISNEY+

HULU (WITH ESPN+)

PARAMOUNT+

PEACOCK

DISCOVERY+

DAZN (for Boxing)

SPOTIFY

 

I'm probably forgetting one or two 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I pay for Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, MLB.tv, and Amazon Prime.

 

It doesn't bother me to obtain a few other things illicit ways.

 

 

[SoberChef]

4 hours ago, ort said:

I need to cancel my Netflix. I don't use it enough to justify the cost. I can just re-subscribe when they come out with some new stuff.

 

I just cancelled mine earlier this morning (was wanting to binge all of Better Call Saul ahead of the final season next month - they don't have season 5 on Netflix yet so that took care of that issue & my subscription (of which I've been a member since about 2005/2006 when it was roughly $5/month)

 

Between Amazon Prime/Video/Music, Hulu, Paramount+, HBOMax, Peacock, Shudder, XBL ... yeah that's a lot a month right there to say the least. This piecemeal/a la carte thing has gotten egregiously out of hand & nigh unsustainable - especially with inflation & the cost of literally everything being outrageous at the moment.

[Kamusha]

The main reason I even pay for Netflix still at this point is that Seinfeld is such a comfort watch for me whenever I'm having a bad day. A wise acquisition on their part because there isn't much more that keeping me around at this point.

[Keyser_Soze]

I don't share mine with anyone so I'm good. Netflix is pretty much the only service I pay for. Don't have cable or any of the other streaming things.

 

Oh yeah, and Viki.

[Ghost_MH]

I pay for...

 

Netflix

HBO Max

Peacock

Disney+  with Hulu and ESPN+

Amazon Prime

Crunchyroll

YouTube Premium

 

I share most all of my streaming accounts with my mother because she's getting old and there's no way she can afford to subscribe to everything in her attempt to know what her grandkids are watching. I don't really mind if they all start charging me more. Will suck as I doubt we're ever actually using any one service at the same time, but as long as it's not as much as a whole other subscription it's fine.

[Jason]

If they want to do this then they need to at least not tie streaming resolution into the price. The way they do it now if you want 4K you you have to pay for 4 screens regardless of whether you need 4 screens. 

[SoberChef]

4 minutes ago, Jason said:

If they want to do this then they need to at least not tie streaming resolution into the price. The way they do it now if you want 4K you you have to pay for 4 screens regardless of whether you need 4 screens. 

 

This exactly! Should absolutely be more tiers (a 4K res w/ 2 screens for $12-15/month would be OK for my personal uses.)

[Dodger]

I need to cancel mine. I barely use it. But my now Ex girlfriends family uses it. Time to shut it off.

[Bloodporne]

9 hours ago, Dodger said:

I need to cancel mine. I barely use it. But my now Ex girlfriends family uses it. Time to shut it off.

Welcome to the club. The person that uses my account the most, including myself, is my ex-wife. 

[brucoe]

So I'm a bit confused at how they're going to handle this. I use my Netflix subscription on a number of different devices (my home, my home computer, my office computer, my phone, etc.). Are all of those considered "loaning" out my Netflix subscription to others that they want to charge more for? If so, I'll probably cancel it for good, as I am not a fan of being overcharged for a service that really should be one specific price.

[silentbob]

1 hour ago, brucoe said:

So I'm a bit confused at how they're going to handle this. I use my Netflix subscription on a number of different devices (my home, my home computer, my office computer, my phone, etc.). Are all of those considered "loaning" out my Netflix subscription to others that they want to charge more for? If so, I'll probably cancel it for good, as I am not a fan of being overcharged for a service that really should be one specific price.

I was going to ask the same thing. I know people who have cottages hours away from home that I’m sure would want to watch Netflix there as well, but not pay extra for what is theirs. I guess they’ll go like Google on any device and see if that was indeed you signing in on that device. Maybe start sending verification codes to enter in on other devices is coming