My complaint:
Today 23 October 2020 I found out that I was paying for 2 Netflix plans under one account. My son subscribed to the Netflix premium plan which allow up to 4 users. He used my credit card for billing which is on every 12th of the month. My wife was one of the user. My son no longer want to use Netflix but my wife wants to continue. Since we don’t need so many users, I logged in to my son’s account to downgrade to a cheaper plan. I did that on 23rd August 2020 and the new billing period is the 22nd of every month.
Sometime in October, my daughter who has an 3 user account, told me to use her account so as to save money. I cancelled my son’s account but I can still watch Netflix until the end of the billing period which is October 22nd. After the end of the billing period, my wife turn on Netflix and was surprised that she can still watch Netflix eventhough we have cancelled the account and have not logged in using my daughter’s account.
I then checked my credit card transactions and was shocked to find that even after I downgraded I was still paying for the premium plan (billed twice after the downgrade) besides the downgraded plan. After some investigation, I found out that when I downgraded the plan, I was asked to choose a new plan and create a new profile in which I used my own name. So now there are 2 profiles, one in my son’s name and one in my name. Each time I login into Neflix, it will automatically enter into my profile which is already unsubscribed. There is no way I can change to my son’s profile from within my profile. After some trying, I logged out and instead of using autologin, I manually entered my son’s userid and password (the same as the autologin), only then it goes into my son’s profile. From there I found out that the premium plan is still active.
Did Netflix tell us that to downgrade you have to cancel the current plan first? One would think that it is understood that when you choose a new plan, it should automatically replaced the old plan. But this is not the case. Eventhough it is only one account, Netflix is treating each profile as a separate account. Don’t you think Netflix is misleading the users in order to benefit from their ignorance? Just imagine, if I had not found out about this, I could be paying for the premium plan for god knows how long. People who have high monthly credit card bills would not even notice the extra charge. This is cheating. Shouldn’t this be illegal?
Another problem is that there is no way do deleted credit card information from your account except to call customer service. Why is this so? It is a risk to leave credit card info when you already unsubscribed. I cannot even delete my profile which is infrigement of privacy.
Suggested solution:
Stop this illegal practice. When a subscriber change plans, it should be only one plan even if there are multiple profiles. Remember, there is only one user account and the user is paying for the plan. Also allow users to delete payment info and profiles as and when we choose to.
