Netflix has announced when it will start charging an ‘extra user’ fee.
The days of password sharing and secretly piggybacking on your ex’s Netflix account will soon be behind us.
The subscription service is seemingly knuckling down on those who, for whatever reason, have failed to start up their own accounts.
On Tuesday, the brand announced during its quarterly earnings report that it will shortly be charging customers an added monthly fee to people who have shared their usernames and passwords.
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The decision follows a piloted program which has already been rolled out in Latin America and charges excess fees for what they deem to be ‘extra user’ sub accounts - ie. users placed outside of your immediate household who cheekily log in to watch a series, or two.
The brand announced in their report: “Finally, we’ve landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing and we’ll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023.
“After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts ('extra member'), if they want to pay for family or friends.
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“In countries with our lower-priced ad-supported plan, we expect the profile transfer option for borrowers to be especially popular.”
In short, each name under the ‘Who’s Watching?’ screen will cost you extra pennies if they’re found to be not living with you.
The streaming service has yet to announce how much it will charge customers for the ‘extra user’ service - but if it’s anything like the pilot scheme in Latin America, it will follow a ‘one quarter of the basic rate’ ideology.
Though it's not set in stone, it would work out to around £1.75 extra per month ($3-4 in the US).
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UNILAD has contacted a representative of Netflix for a comment.
But don’t panic just yet - you’ve got until early 2023 to delete all traces of other users on your Netflix login.
The feature has already been rolled out in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
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In the previous scheme, titled 'add a home', which launched in August, there was one home per account, which means that each Netflix account, regardless of the payment plan, included one home where users could stream Netflix on any of their devices.
There was also the option to 'buy additional homes'.
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Topics: Film and TV, Netflix, Money
Gabriella Ferlita