Netflix Plans To Charge Customers Who Share Passwords Up To $2.99 More Per Month
Streaming giant Netflix has announced this week their plans to charge existing customers more money to be able to share their accounts with other people. This news follows a huge fall in subscribers in the second quarter earnings report according to NPR. Netflix, also according to the website, lost approximately 970.000 subscribers during the period, just short of the 2 million predicted in April.
Adding to the rise in monthly prices in several countries for the past few years, the company decided to start charging another US$2.99 for each person added. It is a considerable amount of money when remembering that Netflix operates not only in the U.S. but in lots of other countries that are at a total disadvantage with the American dollar. This could make a subscription to the service an even bigger expense for customers as the prices of daily products become higher as well. According to the BBC, Netflix plans to start this new fee in Central and South American countries such as Argentina (in this case it will be 219 pesos or US$ 1,17), Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Guatemala. They will not stop there. They are already planning to expand this “feature” to other countries in the world.
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This could lead Netflix to a bigger turmoil than it already is. Although it can be considered a model of streaming services across the globe, setting a standard for other companies, Netflix is losing space in this market. Other platforms like Disney+ and HBO Max stopped selling their content to Netflix and started their own. Disney+ was an instant success because of the number of different IPs they already possessed (like Marvel and Star Wars), and HBO Max has earned its spot at the top recently by adding a great number of already existing movies and series from the HBO channel and DC’s catalog.
Another issue is the growing problem of the number of shows being produced at the same time and the ones that are successful and profitable. Since the beginning of the year, several different projects were scrapped, and priority shifted towards the ones that didn’t create a deficit for the company. Considering all of this it seems contradictory for Netflix to increase fees and charge extra money for sharing account information when they are not fulfilling their customer’s expectations. The streaming service has not set a solid plan for stabilizing its fall from grace.
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