We had been talking about a major change in Netflix’s shared account policy for some time, an idea that no one liked and that could lead to a new exodus of users from the well-known streaming platform. Today, at last, we can confirm the most important keys to this new policy, and we are quite clear how it will work
As of August, all Netflix users in the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador will have to pay an extra if they want to allow their account to be used in “additional” households. Please note that here the key is in that idea of ”other homes”which means that we can continue to use Netflix on different devices as long as we are within the same family nucleus.
It does not matter the Netflix plan that we are using, in all cases we will have to pay extra which is added to the cost of the monthly subscription if we want to use this service in another additional address. However, there will be differences between the options offered by each plan, since with the basic plan we can only add one house; with the standard plan two houses and with the premium plan a total of three houses. In total, we could use the basic plan in two houses, the standard in three houses and the premium in four houses, counting ours.
The cost of that extra to pay will depend on each country, since not all have the same taxes or the same cost at the subscription level. In Argentina you will have to pay 219 pesos per extra home, 1.66 euros to change, while in the rest of the countries the cost of adding a is given in dollars. To include a new home it will be necessary to pay $2.99, so if we wanted to enjoy Netflix in three homes with the premium plan, we would have to assume an extra cost of $8.97. Yes it is much.
To make this change easier to administer and manage, it will arrive very soon a new section integrated into our user account, through which we can view the homes in which our Netflix subscription is being used, and we can delete them and add new homes at any time. I know what you’re thinking, and how will Netflix know if the service is being used from another home? Well, very simple, updating the information of each user with key data, such as the IPC address, your identifier and the activity performing.
Is Netflix making a mistake?
The company sold the possibility of sharing an account as one of its main claims to attract users, so it is curious to see that it is now going totally against that strategy that allowed it to grow and attract even very young users with a low budget who shared an account with their friends.
I understand that Netflix wants money, like any company, but that it is willing to throw away those values with which the user fell in love a few years ago I find it quite sad. The firm has commented that this is necessary to continue offering “quality content”, in quotes because after seeing things like the latest series of “Resident Evil” I really begin to think that they are losing the north, and that we have reached a point very absurd where we want to bring together so many things to be politically correct that we end up shaping unspeakable clunkers.
At the moment it is not clear if the payment for extra household will reach other countries, but It is very likely that it will happen sooner or later.. If this is applied in Spain, I will end up considering unsubscribing, since I pay for the premium plan (17.99 euros) and I keep it because I can share it with my parents and my in-laws, obviously without charging them anything. The cheap ad-supported plan might help you attract new users, but charging for account sharing is going to be a mistake, I know for sure. And you, do you think that Netflix is right or that it is throwing stones against its own roof?
