For some MoviePass subscribers, the service once offered the highest of highs, letting them see as many movies as they wanted for a low monthly rate. But recently, membership has been a rollercoaster for subscribers as MoviePass's financial struggles and ever-changing service has been hard to keep up with. Now, after another weekend of service outages and new restrictions, some subscribers have decided to get off this ride. However, some users are now accusing MoviePass of not letting them cancel their service, and they've been taking to social media to voice their frustrations. Take a look:
Judging by Courtney Guth's Twitter post, subscribers who previously cancelled their service and then opted in to the new plan will still be charged and the opt-in will override the cancellation. The opt-in was an in-app prompt you had to address confirming that you accepted the new plan of $9.95 a month for 3 movies. If these claims that MoviePass isn't letting people cancel are true, I could see a scenario where a person may have cancelled the service and then saw the new plan and opted in. In MoviePass's eyes that could mean that the subscriber would like to give the service another shot under the new plan, thus negating the cancellation. What's unclear is if a person doesn't opt-in, that then means that the service just opts in for them automatically and enrolls them in the new plan.
Another person alleging that MoviePass won't let him cancel is comedy writer Chase Mitchell, who apparently tried to cancel the service after receiving the new subscription email, only to be unsuccessful. Check it out:
I imagine something like that could be an error on the technical end due to lots of people cancelling, but some people are accusing MoviePass of deliberately not letting them cancel. These allegations are anecdotal at this point and it is unclear exactly how many subscribers are attempting to cancel and how many are unable to do so. Yet if this is indeed a real problem, it is not a good look for MoviePass. If users are manually opting in to the new plan after cancelling, there is some onus of responsibility on them. Error messages when trying to cancel would be solely on MoviePass. Either way, the ongoing problem if these allegations are true continues to be a lack of clear communication from MoviePass to its subscribers. The opt-in screen did not explain that accepting the new plan meant negating any previous cancellation of the service.
True or not, widespread or isolated, the problem for MoviePass is that these issues seem believable given the service's recent history and just add insult to injury to the company's image, which has been battered over the past month or so. Even more alarming is that people are cancelling the service, presumably frustrated with outages and the lack of movie availability, and not wanting to wait until the new plan goes into effect to see if things improve.
For all the latest on this saga that will probably make a great documentary someday and all the latest movie news, stay tuned to CinemaBlend. Also check out our premiere guide for all of the biggest movies still to come in 2018.
