Netflix Testing Password Sharing Plan That Costs $3 Extra in Latin America

[icanhazmac]

Whatever happened to the 'honor system'?

I hear ya but this is not the first thread on MR about Netflix and password sharing and the number of members here that try justify theft by blaming Netflix and their service/pricing is astonishing. If you do not get value from the Netflix subscription at its cost.... cancel it and complain to Netflix, don't steal by sharing passwords.

Theft is theft.

 

[Chaos215bar2]

If I’m paying $20 a month for 4 simultaneous streams, why can’t one of those streams be for my mom? If they are going to play these games, I want a plan with Ultra HD and 1 single stream. I’m not going to pay for 4 streams that I can never use just to have 4k. If they do this, I’m canceling my Netflix subscription.

This. Only I already cancelled my subscription in anticipation.

I'll renew for a month at some point to finish up the few shows I care about, but barring a complete change in Netflix's strategy, seriously embracing quality once again at the expense of some of the vast numbers of cheap-to-produce shows I'll never watch, I can't see that I'll ever become a regular subscriber again.

Well, actually I can think of one way. Give me an official way to share my 4 simultaneous 4k streams, with separate accounts and passwords. The whole deal. But of course Netflix is only interested in pushing things one way here, and it certainly isn't that way.

 

[nerdrage]

People in Latin America will be better off canceling their Netflix membership. There are other affordable options available.

Latin America is Netflix's lowest-ARPU region. That's why they're trying to eke out more $$$.

ARPU of Netflix worldwide by region 2024| Statista

In the fourth quarter of 2024, Netflix revealed that its average monthly revenue per paying streaming customer in North America amounted to 17.26 U.S.

www.statista.com

But the timing is interesting. Tomorrow Netflix reports quarterly earnings and I bet it's going to be ugly. They're issuing this statement in advance to try to distract from the carnage.

 

[FelixDerKater]

When do the cell carriers start verifying how many people on a cell plan are actually family?

 

[ackmondual]

1) the pushback on this reminds me (sort of, take this lightly please) of apple setting up iTunes and music store and people like - woah woah woah, I can get it off napster/limewire for free! ...digitally aging myself here...
2) Netflix has a right to try to squeeze as much money as they can. I'm sure they've done some ROI research and know some people will cancel but enough won't and enough will pay the extra $3 they'll prob come out ahead.
3) but, tbh, still a stupid idea.
4) I'd like some assurance in the least I'm not getting flagged when I travel for work and watch something on my iPad in a hotel room away from home. "for more than 2 weeks" is a little ambiguous. more than 2 weeks total or in one stretch? it's still my account and still me. how they gonna figure that out? I'm away from home for work approx 45 days per year for example.

I've seen this in... life really. A restaurant my family used to frequent noticed our dinner entrees used to come with both potato, vegetables, and salad bar. They then cut out veggies, and the salad bar ended up being an extra charge. They closed down in due time. It's tough b/c you have to wonder if it's a "chicken or egg" situation... sometimes raising prices and/or lowering benefits helps you, sometimes it hurts you.

Oh, also stopped buying orange juice when the price kept going up, and they reduced the carton from 64 oz. to 59 oz.! It wasn't even b/c of the high sugar content, nor b/c it was just "engineered flavor packets" (although those didn't help)

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I know a lot of people (myself included) who are barely just hanging onto their subscription because we could share cost with the same account. If they add this fee I don't think a lot of us will see enough value to keep it going.

 

[Macative]

There is no such thing as password sharing.

If I pay for 4 streams at the same time, and I use 4 streams at the same time, on 4 different devices, I am 100% within my rights as a user per what I've paid for per what Netflix has sold me.

They cannot decide what constitutes "sharing" an account with (who?) someone vs. using it "myself" 4 simultaneous times. Physically not possible for them to distinguish between "legitimate" usage and what they call password sharing (which doesn't exist).

They have completely lost the plot.

 

[ackmondual]

Welcome back Piratebay!

I don't believe this'll have any significant impact. The group of people that used to pirate, stopped, and will go back to it doesn't seem that large. Then there are people who were always doing it.

Then there are those who were against pirating for various reasons. For the folks that are into convenience, even though pirating shows and movies isn't a tall hurdle, I doubt they'll bother to start paying monthly for VPN and learn how to set that up when things were "one click away". Especially if they have kids in the family. Then you have those of "morality". Is an extra $3 a month going to be "the straw that breaks the camel's back?". Perhaps, but they have plenty of other options too without requiring pirating.

 

[icanhazmac]

There is no such thing as password sharing.

If I pay for 4 streams at the same time, and I use 4 streams at the same time, on 4 different devices, I am 100% within my rights as a user per what I've paid for per what Netflix has sold me.

They cannot decide what constitutes "sharing" an account with (who?) someone vs. using it "myself" 4 simultaneous times. Physically not possible for them to distinguish between "legitimate" usage and what they call password sharing (which doesn't exist).

They have completely lost the plot.

Netflix begs to differ and if one agrees to their TOS and/or EULA by using the service....

What is a Netflix Household?

A Netflix account is meant to be shared with people who live in the same location with the account owner.

help.netflix.com

Theft is theft.

Just to be clear, I think they charge too much for what they offer as well. At this moment I still pay for their service but I will cancel it before committing theft.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

So maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but charging only three extra dollars on top of the monthly rate sounds like an OK solution.

The thing is, they already did a $2 price increase a few months back on the 4k plan and adding another $3 now is going to be a $5 increase just during this year. A $14 service just a few years ago is now going to be $23. With their content gradually becoming less attractive and many of the staple shows like The Office and Friends having already been taken out, a lot of people won't see that much value in keeping a subscription anymore.

 

[residentgalah]

Seems like a pretty good way to piss off a lot of legitimate subscribers quickly and lose even more money.

 

[ackmondual]

I think I am the only person on this forum who still enjoys their netflix sub even if it is getting a bit pricey.

Heh... I'm going to try out Netflix sometime soon (roughly next few months), as they're one of the only major SS I have yet to try (other being HBO Max). I think I'm the only one who's never had NF , unlike many others who've had them for well over a decade, if not back when they started off mailing DVDs.

 

[techfreak23]

This will be a great way to shoot themselves in the other foot. Spotify tried to do this with their family plan by adding a GPS location check to the app. They rolled that back real quick after the backlash. They do still have an address verification when the family members are added, but it just needs to match the primary account holder's address.

I get they need to make money and need more subscribers, but their tiers are the most ridiculous on the market. NO ONE else charges more for HD content. Some have ad-supported tiers, but they don't restrict quality. How did Netflix expect people not to share accounts when the only way to get 4k content is to have the "family" plan? Also, how is this costing them anything other than those people not having their own subscription? The infrastructure costs don't change, but this is clearly a money grab, just like their initial money grab with 4k being exclusive to the most expensive tier. That obviously backfired on them...

As a side note, they should switch to weekly releases instead of releasing all seasons at once. It was awesome in the beginning, but that's also a loss for them. People are less likely to keep their subscriptions long-term like they are with Disney+.

 

[ackmondual]

This is incorrect. Frndly TV also charges by streaming quality (SD plan is $6.99, HD plan starts at $8.99). Netflix is the only major service that does this, but not the only service.

Good catch! I recall that Curiosity Stream has separate prices for HD vs. 4K ($3/$20 for HD, $10/$70 for 4K. Monthly/annual pricing) ....

If it's out there, it's in here

Curiosity Stream has thousands of documentaries that enlighten, entertain & inspire. What are you curious about?

curiositystream.com

For those who are happy with HD, you also have to wonder how much extra those us here are paying when a plan includes 4K by default.

 

[jdphoto]

I think this is going to back-fire on Netflix (obviously not alone with this opinion in this forum) but I think it'll back-fire in two ways.

• People will cancel their subscription as a result of the price hike and take their dollars elsewhere; popular sentiment in this forum and I think with generally high inflation in all parts of the economy more folks in general will be open to the idea
• People keep their plan and absorb the extra fee, but double down on sharing now that they pay for it. Maybe they were paying $20 for 4K and 4 streams and actually not sharing (just paying for the 4K) or maybe they only shared with one other house hold. Now they'll more actively seek out others to share the cost with, even join up with friends or family who paid separately already and merge into one account. $20 vs $25 will be easily handled on a per-household basis if they add another paying member to their stream sharing setup.

With the combination of the above, I'm actually not certain if Netflix will come out ahead, but hard to say; they have a lot of telemetry and user behavior trends they can look at.

 

[bob_the_gorilla]

Bizarre that they think this utter bonfire of goodwill is going to be worth it, for what’s going to be marginal gains in revenue… and that’s assuming they don’t provoke too many people to reassess the value in having any membership at all.

Suspect they don’t realise that many people will feel like they’ve already been upsold once for the sharing capability, by buying “more streams” that they otherwise wouldn’t require. The value in the plans just isn’t there, and the competition is too fierce (cough, Disney).

 

[BipedalOS]

And how exactly will they determine who is sharing a password with another household versus those who travel extensively for work and use Netflix on a mobile device while away from home?

I'm no password sharing thief but I travel a lot and tend to stay in the same areas when traveling, just try to charge me for that and I will cancel promptly!

Also wonder how they plan to deal with VPN customers as our IPs can be all over the place.

Someone traveling is likely using the same device.

They are likely assuming a house has 4-6 devices, not 20+.

 

[Gasu E.]

I would presume some type of IP / MAC Address tracking.

If you travel, your IP will change with each new access point so it should not be difficult to conclude you are using your own device based on these fluctuations.

If you give your account credentials to a different household, that IP range will not change often and being different from the IP range of the devices in your home, it should not be difficult to conclude you are account sharing and trigger the additional fee.

Yeah, they are not dumb enough to start charging people $3 mystery fees automatically. That wasn't what people signed up for, and would trigger a massive class action suit, as well as a few state AGs breathing down their necks. Their only legal recourse is to just cut off streaming to the second, unauthorized IP address, which would be in keeping with their current Ts & Cs.

 

[Gasu E.]

With #2, Netflix is now starting to enforce the "officially" part in order to generate more revenue to help compensate for subscriber loss now that streaming is so much larger than when Netflix's streaming service started and they were effectively the only option.

"We have more competition than before, so let's RAISE our prices!" Pure genius!

 

[npmacuser5]

They needed to clearly define family members. Apple has done it with their Apple ID family plan. No password sharing, allowed through the share port. Managed by one family member. Netflix created this problem by their laziness to address it when times were good. Now they need to define it clearly.

 

[gdimanzo]

I've received the email from Netflix and it says:

Buy an extra home. For ARS219/month (pre-tax) more each, enjoy Netflix from another home.

Argentina's sales tax is 21%. So the cost per house is ARS265 ($2 US dollars at official exchange rate).

Starting August 22nd.

 

[Gasu E.]

But that's the issue for people like us who don't watch at the same time on different devices. Would like to have quality and number of streams each charged separately. We only need one at 4K. Heck depending on how well our ATV and TV upscale, it might be worth going down a quality tier to save more

Or storing up shows and subscribing for 4 months out of every year.

 

[AppleTO]

I still don’t see how this could possibly be enforced with any sort of accuracy.

 

[ian87w]

Well, part of the problem is also charging for higher resolution content. Who does that?

This. Many people don't actually need 4 simultaneous stream, but they do want HD or 4K. So when you force them to pay more for 4 simultaneous stream just to get 4K, people will get creative and will find ways to subsidize their cost. Thus the password sharing. Netflix is the one nudging its own customers to this behavior.

I agree that they should do 1080p as the standard. Only keep 480p for carriers deals or mobile only only plan. The rest should've been in HD at the least.

I don't know adding $3 will work though. People will balk if they are forced to pay more just to use the service they already paid for. Maybe Netflix should just get rid of their current tier. Simply have 2 tiers, HD and 4K single stream, and have add-on like $1 or $2 for any additional stream the person needs. Seems simpler than what they're trying to do now.

 

[Kenjutsuz]

I would presume some type of IP / MAC Address tracking.

If you travel, your IP will change with each new access point so it should not be difficult to conclude you are using your own device based on these fluctuations.

If you give your account credentials to a different household, that IP range will not change often and being different from the IP range of the devices in your home, it should not be difficult to conclude you are account sharing and trigger the additional fee.

Finally..Quit sharing accounts...pay or don't use services