Another weekend, another outage and unannounced change to service from MoviePass, and its parent company Helios and Matheson.
After two weeks of horrible press, with numerous changes to its popular $10 per month service, the subscription company strikes again, with another reported outage and news that the service will be making another major change to how customers can access films. After another brief service outage, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe said that they were instituting a new two movie plan, which means that each day the service will give customers two films to choose from, instead of the normal selection of any film at the theater.
“Unfortunately, in order to stay financially stable we’ve had to curtail the service,” Lowe said to the New York Post. “We had to right the ship as far as the amount of money we were burning.”
The “disruptive” subscription service has proven over the last few tumultuous weeks for its business, that they will do anything to survive their myriad troubles, which have included multiple outages, horrible customer service, and last-minute, unannounced policy changes. However, the biggest thing MoviePass has proven over its short life is that the company just doesn’t care about the paying customer. In fact, MoviePass wants your money for a service that the company doesn’t want you to use.
And that’s why I’m canceling my subscription to Moviepass.
Just as a short history, and for context, I was part of the first wave of people to sign up for the service when it dropped the price to $10 per month. I, like many of you, waited weeks for the card that took forever to ship. And since then, I’ve been using the service as much as humanly possible. But not any longer.
On social media, as well as our comment section, multiple readers have pointed out that I’ve been hard on MoviePass over the last few months. Some have said that my writing has been “biased.” These people claim that even with the changes to the subscription model, that have crippled customers’ use of the service, the $10 per month is still worth it. Hell, even if you only get to see three films a month (which is MoviePass’ most recent change), then that’s just over $3 a ticket, right? That’s a hell of a deal!
Sure, it definitely is cheaper than going to the theater and buying a ticket at full price. But at what point is it not okay for a company to lie, mislead, price gouge, attempt to rig the system, and ignore customer complaints? When does a paying customer see that even though the cost of a movie ticket is cheaper, it’s not worth supporting an apparent crooked company? That’s the real issue here. You see, over MoviePass’ short life-span, the only thing that is evident about how they do business is that the subscription service couldn’t care less about the people that pay money to subscribe. And as a paying customer to the service, I feel like I have a right to voice my displeasure.
First, we have to say that it’s clear that MoviePass has never been about saving the film industry, specifically the film-going industry. Mitch Lowe has been vocal from the beginning that the initial idea about the service was all about data. The company has said that the real money wouldn’t be coming from subscriptions, but from studios and advertisers looking to buy mountains of data about viewing habits of Americans. So, right off the bat, it’s obvious that MoviePass has never been about the little guy. But let’s take a look at the recent facts.
I have covered the various sordid details of MoviePass’ recent history in almost two dozen articles dating back to March 2018. Over that time, I’ve seen executives exaggerate financial figures, scoff at anyone claiming the company was in trouble, willingly and enthusiastically mislead customers, and change their business plan in a blink of an eye just to stay afloat. This isn’t hyperbole either.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the various examples.
There was the time that CEO Mitch Lowe gloated about tracking customers’ movements based on a hidden function in the company’s app, saying, “We get an enormous amount of information. We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.” Of course, after the public cried foul, MoviePass disabled the functionality and Lowe said he was speaking “sarcastically.” Yeah, okay.
How about the time that Helios and Matheson (aforementioned MoviePass parent company) CEO Ted Farnsworth denied reports that there was any trouble on the horizon? He said the company was sitting on “hundreds of millions of dollars of dry powder, and I’ve got bankers and debt-financing companies calling me all the time.” And this was only 3 months before the company couldn’t pay their bills and needed an emergency loan. Where’s that hundreds of millions of dollars of “dry powder?” Oh yeah, didn’t exist.
Oh, and remember that iHeartRadio debacle? Probably not because it only lasted two weeks. During that time, MoviePass announced their price had changed and customers would only get four films a month, with the added bonus of an iHeartRadio subscription. When that plan went over like a lead balloon, Lowe again backtracked and changed the business model back to the $10 per month/unlimited movies plan.
“It’s marketing 101,” Lowe said. “We wanted to focus everybody on this partnership promotion. If people knew the [movie-a-day] plan was coming back, they might not be interested in the iHeartRadio deal.”
That, my friends, is called deception. Lowe willingly, and enthusiastically, deceived paying customers who purchased an inferior plan by failing to mention it was only a temporary promotion.
Then to become even more subscriber-hostile, the company changed its plan to only allow paying customers to see a movie one time, instead of as many times as they wanted. And in addition, to prove that you didn’t take advantage of the system, MoviePass forced customers to take pictures of their ticket stubs.
Over the ensuing couple of months, MoviePass announced new changes to its plans, including “Peak Pricing” that added a surcharge to films that the company deemed as popular. The exact surcharge and reasons why a film is deemed in “high demand” was never made clear, and recently, we’ve seen proof of the MoviePass charging upwards of $8 extra per ticket.
Oh yeah, and lets’ not forget about “Gotti.” The film that was partially funded by MoviePass Films, and highly-promoted on their app and emails, was the subject of intense controversy when it was revealed that the subscription service reportedly rigged the film’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes to combat the poor critics reviews. How did they do that? By creating various fake accounts, all giving “Gotti” great reviews and making a film that got nothing but horrible critic reviews, a winner in the eyes of audiences. This seriously happened and has been proven (as much as it can be).
Skipping ahead some more, we reach the point where MoviePass has become astonishingly even more misleading and deceitful. They lied to customers about the infamous Thursday night outage last month, where they used excuses like technical error and vendor issues, but really, they ran out of money and had to secure an emergency loan. That was followed by a price hike to $15 a month and blackout dates on first-run films. Of course, following the public outcry, they recently backtracked on the idea, saying that it’ll be $10 again but only three movies a month. And that just happened earlier this week.
Long story long, ethically, this is no way to run a business or treat a paying customer, no matter how good their deal is (and once you’ve set up that expectation and then realize maybe it’s not a good idea, well, you’ve kind of made your own bed there). MoviePass has proven time after time that they don’t care about the people who pay them a monthly fee. The company is routinely caught misleading and deceiving everyone. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that MoviePass apparently tried to cheat their way to good reviews on a third-party website.
Overall, MoviePass is garbage. The executives that run it are clearly only after bigger (or any) profits, at whatever cost, which would be fine if they didn’t penalize customers in the process. And because we get free/cheap tickets to films, we let it happen. I’m sorry, but this isn’t about free tickets. This isn’t about disrupting the theater distribution model. This is about choosing to not support a company that doesn’t give a shit about the people who pay them a monthly fee in the first place.
Sorry, MoviePass, but I’d rather pay more for my movie tickets than support your sinking ship of a business. Good riddance.
