Netflix Testing Add-On Payment for People Who Share Accounts Outside Their Households

[JohnyTango]

I presume they will do it by IP address range of the devices connecting.

So all the devices in one physical address will count as a "household" and if other devices connect with a different IP address range, they will be defined as a separate "household".

Of course, this is going to be an issue for those in a single "household" who use VPNs to access Netflix content not available in their home country.

It really doesn't matter what a household technically is, it matters what it is in legal terms. That differs per country. In The Netherlands it is quite liberal and from a legal perspective close friends count as member of a household

 

[blindzero]

It's like broken families aren't even a thing. This is BS. Sorry son, you only get Netflix when you're at my house.

 

[HylianKnight]

Netflix has been the streaming whale for a long time. And not unlike some whales, Netflix is getting a bit too close to shore. If it keeps swimming in the same direction of never-ending price hikes, it will beach itself and rot.

 

[obamtl]

When we sign up to Netflix, we agree that “Only people who live with you may use your account. Watch on 4 different devices at the same time with Premium, 2 with Standard and 1 with Basic.” If they charge for accounts shared by more than one household, it’s hard to fault them. How will they determine it’s different households though? If the VPN is one, will they think it’s someone else? If they get this wrong, it’d be a pain for users.

 

[chublet]

I work away from home on an irregular shift pattern, different days and times. I have a property that I stay when working in that my Netflix account is registered to, but my family also use it at our main home. I also use it when working away from home around the country, and the children us it also on their mobile drives when out and about. I pay for 4 streams. As far as I am concerned that is a legitimate use scenario as I pay for four streams for four people, but it is used from loads of different places.

How the hell will that work out?

 

[kasei]

I cancelled my subscription last month when they raised it to $19.99. Why charge extra for 4K streaming when their competitors don't.

 

[imamacperson]

Bye bye Netflix. I don't need your services anymore.

 

[vipergts2207]

I dumped Netflix a month ago when they announced their last price increase. They have the highest price of all streaming services and certainly don't have the best content. And charging extra for 4K is asinine. Others give me 4K and HDR for less. I'm one of those who rotate through the services, usually only keeping 3 or 4 at a time. Just dropped HBO Max 2 weeks ago as well. Right now I've got ATV+, Hulu, and Disney+. Will probably sign up for Paramount next.

 

[MacCheetah3]

"alienate people for paying for their service" .... They aren't alienating people for paying for their service. That's what they want. People to pay for their service. What they don't want is, Mom and Dad in Florida paying for the service sharing their password to son in Wisconsin and Daughter in California. Daughter in California sharing the password to Grandson in college in North Dakota.

I really don’t see the issue with this, the idea is to get money from the people you share with. Therefore the actual subscriber pays no more, so what is the issue?

If you share with people who live with you that’s allowed, if they don’t why would you pay extra to share your paid subscription. Yes it was nice to share, but it doesn’t benefit you, the subscriber. It was just a bonus for your freeloading friends (joke).

Implementation would be the hard bit, my kids are all living at home, they have phones and iPads, we also use when abroad on holiday. Therefore they’d have to look at patterns of usage. Plus other examples given when kids in a colleage dorm, unless the current T&C’s define that as a separate home.

Except that’s what limiting “screens” presumably prevents.

Though they don’t have screens on limit per account? Say you are sharing between 3 people but only paid for 2 screens at a time, one person is left out. These guys are going to nickel and dime their customers to oblivion.

I understand doing this if they didn't limit the number of streams, or didn't charge different prices for more streams. But as soon as they started charging more depending on if you have 1 stream, 2 streams, or 4 streams it shouldn't matter anymore who is using my streams or where are getting used.

 

[w5jck]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

 

[Ankaa]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

You have it backwards, because if that was the case, more likely than not Netflix would get $20/mo or $0/mo as they would probably opt to just not subscribe to Netflix at all.

Don't be so green about others. Your conflict isn't with them, it's with Netflix making you pay $20/mo.

 

[Deguello]

They‘re going to do what they’re going to do, but going beyond the stream limit would feel like a cash grab even if the TOS allows it. All the more so given that my kids can download so much to their iPad here and watch it anywhere, anyway.

The stream limit seems like a solid boundary on sharing and it isn’t subject to all the problems of trying to sort out myriad usage patterns.

 

[Deguello]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

The flip side is I pay for four streams and whether they all come from my house or 20 or 35 or 1500 miles away doesn’t cost Netflix one penny more.

 

[paulypants]

I presume they will do it by IP address range of the devices connecting.

So all the devices in one physical address will count as a "household" and if other devices connect with a different IP address range, they will be defined as a separate "household".

Of course, this is going to be an issue for those in a single "household" who use VPNs to access Netflix content not available in their home country.

So if I take my iPad, iPhone, or MacBook with me outside of my home to a hotel, friends house, parents house, coffee shop, etc. I would need to pay another fee because the IP address is different than my physical home? Seems like a bad idea.

 

[Starscape]

Didn’t Netflix increase their pricing on all plans recently? That service is pricing itself out of the market, and their content is just not good enough to keep a recurring subscription. I usually buy a month every 3 or 4 months, watch whatever is good that has been added over that time, then pause my subscription again.

I’m not sure how they’ll enforce that new pricing strategy. I suppose keeping track of IP addresses and their locations is the way, but using a VPN would quickly bypass that system.

 

[danny1305]

If this ever gets implemented, I along with many others will be cancelling our subscriptions.

I’m sure they are shaking in their boots

 

[Wags]

Entertainment industry as whole getting greedy. The end consumers continue to get hosed by ticket prices, tv and network pricing because of their absurd contracts that we end up paying for.

 

[paulypants]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

So, I pay $15 a month for Netflix. And I use it at home and away from home on my multiple devices. Are you saying I should pay more whenever I decide to use it on my iPad or MacBook Pro at my parents house? At a hotel? Somewhere else? Will the $15 now only get me use within the 4 walls of my home address? That's ok to you?

 

[LivingMyBeachLife]

Except that’s what limiting “screens” presumably prevents.

Screen limiting is for simultaneous usage. It does nothing for using the account in multiple locations as I described.

NOTHING is prevented if you have 5 screen limit and at any given time, 4 are used simultaneously from multiple states. NOTHING is prevent if you have 5 screen limit and 5 screens are being simultaneously from multiple states.

The only thing that happens is if you have a 5 screen limit and the 6th person tries to login and cant', they are sending text messages asking someone to log off or if the account owner they are probably gonna boot someone.

 

[Deguello]

Didn’t Netflix increase their pricing on all plans recently?

Mine went up last month.

 

[vipergts2207]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

It would be one thing if they implemented this and then lowered the prices of each tier of service. But I'll be shocked if they do that. They'll keep pocketing the newly increased price of $20 from you regardless of additional subscriptions that will come from new standalone households.

Pricing of commercial-free 4K tiers where applicable:

Peacock: $10
Paramount: $10
ATV+: $5
Hulu: $13
Disney+: $8
HBO Max: $15
Amazon Prime: $15 (and this includes the free 2-day shipping)
Netflix: $20

Netflix is getting absolutely greedy. For what they're charging, they should be widely regarded as offering the best content available, but they're not.

 

[daleroe]

I suspect this decision is going to bite them in the arse.

A lot of people are barely hanging on to having a Netflix subscription. I cancelled mine recently; they keep raising prices and removing old standbys that I loved having access to, like Star Trek: TNG.

This is just going to piss more people off. There is literally no difference between multiple people in the same household watching Netflix and multiple people in different locations.

There might be *practically* no difference between multiple people in the same household watching Netflix and multiple people in different locations watching, but there most certainly is *literally* a difference.

 

[SpotOnT]

Entertainment industry as whole getting greedy. The end consumers continue to get hosed by ticket prices, tv and network pricing because of their absurd contracts that we end up paying for.

The funny thing is that what killed piracy in the first place wasn’t a police crackdown or tougher legislation, it was how easy and affordable streaming services had become. Pay $10 a month and you could pretty much watch anything, anywhere, anytime.

Now the market is becoming all fragmented again (oh you like this show, well you will have to pay an extra $7 a month for that channel), and the prices everywhere just keep going up, and now companies are talking about adding extra hurdles for paid subscribers…..

People will just switch back to piracy and paying $0 a month.

 

[4nNtt]

If they are going to limit simultaneous viewers it should really be none of their business where the address is. A lot of people have multiple addresses for various reasons.

If they want to prevent sharing with close friends, then maybe they should just create some sort of group plan where everyone gets a discount depending on the number of people that bundle together. They could create social features among group members. Share what your friends are watching, etc. It is mostly single-person households, people in a relationship that live separately, etc. that are doing this anyway. Maybe add a single-householder plan with only one simultaneous viewer and allow only one login profile at 4K quality for a discount.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I agree with Netflix, and I’m surprised they were so generous for as long as they were. It isn’t fair to people like myself who have to pay $20/mo when others share their $20/mo service was multiple people, each of which live at a separate address, and all of which should be paying $20/month like me. I know one guy who shares his account with a cousin living 20 miles away from him and a brother who lives 35 miles away. Netflix should be getting $60/mo from the three households combined rather than just $20/mo. That only makes them raise their rates higher. So don’t be a @#$&ing cheapscate, fork over the $10, $15, or $20 monthly fees for each address!

Fine, then I require Netflix to immediately roll back to 2013 or earlier pricing.