Have you ever been charged for a subscription you forgot you had, or hardly ever use?
If so, Netflix feels your pain. So in response, the company is going out of its way to cancel inactive subscriptions to the video streaming service.
“At Netflix, the last thing we want is people paying for something they’re not using,” the company said in a blog post on Thursday.
Netflix will begin sending out the notifications to applicable customers this week via email and in-app messages. “So we’re asking everyone who has not watched anything on Netflix for a year since they joined to confirm they want to keep their membership,” wrote company product innovation director Eddy Wu in the post. “And we’ll do the same for anyone who has stopped watching for more than two years.”
“If they don’t confirm that they want to keep subscribing, we’ll automatically cancel their subscription,” he added. “If anyone changes their mind later, it’s really easy to restart Netflix.”
The move is pretty surprising. But it also occurs as COVID-19 has been taking a toll on the economy, and forcing millions out of work. Wu said the company is hoping the cancellations will help people save “some hard earned cash.”
As for Netflix itself, the streaming service saw user growth surge from January to March, due to so many people staying at home during the pandemic. During the period, Netflix added a record 15.77 million paid subscribers for a total of 183 million.
According to Wu, the new cancellation policy will only impact a few hundred thousand accounts, which represents less than 0.5 percent of Netflix’s user base. Why so many people aren’t watching the streaming service, despite paying for it, was left unsaid in the blog post. But Netflix will save their profile, preferences and favorites for 10 months after the cancellation in the event they wish to return.
Further Reading
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