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MoviePass Accused Of Un-canceling Subscribers Without Permission
MoviePass looks to be running into even more trouble as it's been revealed that some subscribers who canceled their membership have now been un-canceled without their permission. MoviePass was launched in 2012 but wasn't widely known until 2017 when they dropped their price to $9.95 a month for unlimited movies.
MoviePass' price drop caused thousands of movie buffs to flock to the service since $9.95 is around the price of one ticket at a typical movie theater, depending on what time of the day it is. While the price drop was an incredible deal for subscribers, it was always a mystery on how MoviePass was making money since they were still paying the full price of the tickets purchased through their app. So, it wasn't a surprise when MoviePass ran into financial trouble, as they recently had to borrow $5 million to keep the service up and running after an unexpected service outage. MoviePass will soon be changing their business model to limit users to seeing three movies a month, and it's this plan that is likely to blame for the accusations that MoviePass is un-canceling members.
As reported by Business Insider, some subscribers of MoviePass noticed that they had gotten an email saying that their new plan with the ability to see three movies a month would be starting on August 15, even though they had already canceled the service. A notice at the bottom of the email reads, "Please note: if you had previously requested cancellation prior to opting-in, your opt-in to the new plan will take priority and your account will not be canceled." Business Insider also reported that some people who had tried to re-cancel their account received an error message and was not able to get themselves out of their subscription.
This is possibly happening with subscribers who recently canceled their membership whose renewal dates are after the 15th, though it could be for any number of reasons. If it is, then that means these members are automatically being enrolled in the new plan since their renewal date is after the conversion to the new three movies a month plan. As for the inability to re-cancel subscriptions, it's possible that it's just a glitch in the MoviePass app. Regardless of the reasoning behind this issue, it has been frustrating for users especially since MoviePass has been constantly been changing their terms of service in recent months.
In April, MoviePass announced that subscribers could no longer see a movie more than once with their MoviePass card, which was initially part of their policy but was amended in order to obtain more subscribers. Things escalated even further in June and July when MoviePass introduced their high-demand pricing method for popular films and then revealed that they would be completely blocking users from seeing major releases for a set period of time after the initial release. MoviePass' stock has been plummeting for some time now, which they are attempting to fix by regaining their financial losses through new policies. MoviePass memberships will undergo this conversion on Wednesday, but it's unknown whether this will completely fix their financial situation.
