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MoviePass is Going To Start Charging More For Popular Movies Next Month (qz.com)
As if seeing a popular movie with MoviePass -- where you can't reserve tickets in advance -- wasn't stressful enough, it's about to get more expensive, too. From a report: The movie-ticket subscription service, which charges $9.95 per month to see a movie a day in the US, will start surge pricing on popular movies next month, Business Insider reported. MoviePass will charge subscribers $2 or more to see titles that the app decides are very popular with its members beginning in July, Mitch Lowe, MoviePass's CEO, told the publication. He was vague on the details. "At certain times for certain films -- on opening weekend -- there could be an additional charge for films," Lowe said, calling the forthcoming policy "high-demand" pricing. But if you've paid for a year's subscription to MoviePass upfront, don't worry: Lowe said these subscribers would not be subjected to the new pricing policy. MoviePass will begin rolling out two other previously announced features, like the option to upgrade to premium movie formats such 3D and IMAX, or bring a friend to the movies, by August, Lowe added.
Realizes it's business model is unsustainable and tries to stop the hemorrhaging....
that MoviePass can arrive at something sustainable. I bought the yearly subscription because I saw this stuff coming, the original business model appearing unworkable to me. I "knew" that they would have to start doing stuff like this and wanted the "pay up front" model so's it would be a contract violation for them to start changing extra for the features.
Before Moviepass, my admission expenditures were $85 for the month of January (lots of great movies come out in January) and $65 in February (not so many movies coming out in February.) In case you haven't figured it out, I see almost everything, the moviegoing experience - popcorn, sit in the dark and let the world go by (escape from reality) for a couple hours, having someone else make the popcorn and clean up afterward fits my lifestyle! The movies are not more than 50% of the reason I go. That's a good thing because movies are faaar less entertaining than they used to be. Lots of movies don't even make sense any more - "A Quiet Place" is totally unbelievable since it depicts a post-apocalyptic world, but they have grid electricity, and they are plagued by animals but it seems nobody has the gumption to carry firearms and dispatch said animals. Makes no sense at all, and lots of movies are like that. Lots of the "SciFi" has little or no "Sci" and violates scientific principles from start to finish. That's hard to take for some of us with the study of science in our backgrounds. But the moviegoing experience is the thing that makes it pleasant, and sometimes the film must be endured rather than enjoyed.
I don't use it so don't know, and thought that the purpose was to remove the (relative) stress of high ticket and concession prices and getting tickets for the showing you want.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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Okay. Enough. We get it: your failed business plan depends on having more suckers than moochers, so you really need to get the word out in hopes of finding more suckers; hence the Slashvertisement. But here's a free tip: Tech-savvy nerds are more likely to be moochers than suckers, so you're really barking up the wrong tree by advertising all the time on this site.
To put it another way: We won't sign up unless we plan to get more out than we're spending, and we'll cancel our subscriptions the minute we start getting less than we paid for, so you're getting negative ROI for your advertising dollars on this website. Please stop advertising here. Please?
Sorry, but who the hell goes to movie theaters anymore? Wait a few weeks (or a few months at most) and anything you would have seen in the theater can be watched at home on a large screen and in a good environment for far less than a couple tickets and parking and without the added time of dealing with going to a theater. I haven't gone to a theater in literally twenty years simply because it just isn't convenient or interesting, no matter *how* cheap it is. We live in an age where we don't have enough time to keep up with the content we want to consume. Consuming it two months later hardly matters anymore.
I haven't been to a movie since I was in Manhattan 10 years ago, when the group 5 rows behind would not stop talking.
It's like the "Super Saver" tickets all over again. It used to be that you had to buy these in bulk (10+) but you would save a ton per ticket. Originally you could use them on any movie so they were worth getting if you had a group of people to buy them for. After a while, the movie theatres started putting restrictions on when you could use them such as only Monday-Thursday and the movie you went to see had to have been out for at least 2-3 weeks. Then they went a step further and started marking popular movies as "no super saver tickets allowed". So basically if you wanted to use a super saver ticket, you had to see something that was on it's last week in the theatre playing on a weekday. Then to further add salt to that wound, the tickets started expiring a year after purchase.
This strategy on seems fair, it would help cover other costs associated with showing the movie
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The new policy sort of defeats the whole purpose of Moviepass, right?
They never learn. What started off as a good deal incrementally morphed into a scam.
vote with your feet and walk away if you don't like it.
There are only maybe 5 movies out at any given time. Plus whatever crap from last season the cheap theaters are still showing, but if you're an avid enough movie goer to have a subscription you've already seen those older movies.
That said the current subscription price doesn't make a lot of sense and is probably too low. But people don't like paying more for subscriptions especially if it's a per-person sort of thing like Moviepass.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is actually a little stressful. You can only 'check in' to get a ticket within an hour of the showtime, and within 100 yards of the theater, and you then have to use their card in person at a kiosk (usually; depending on the theater). So this means for a popular movie I have to keep an eye out in case the theater is filling up, especially if I'm coordinating with friends. How many seats are left? Are those acceptable seats? Is it filling up so quickly that we should think of another showing? Etc. Definitely white whine territory, but it's a tradeoff of simplicity for cash when compared to my old style. Luckily, I like sitting very close (rows 1-3 have a greater angle of view taking full advantage of the theatric experience) and those are the seats typically available.
The worst thing about MoviePass is the customer service, or lack thereof. They seem to have a policy of randomly cancelling accounts, coupled with another policy of not spending any time evaluating whether an account was cancelled for any legitimate reason.
They cancelled both my and my wife's accounts, and it took about 4 months for us to get them back. Many calls with customer service, and back-and-forths in their ticket system (very VERY slow). Eventually, I went through the Better Business Bureau, and got our accounts re-instated.
But a few weeks later, and they randomly cancelled my wife's account again. On the phone, the rep said that there was no reason for it to be cancelled, and that he would 'escalate' the ticket to get it dealt with, and that since we were at the theater, we should purchase her ticket out of pocket, and send them the receipt for a full refund. We did so, but then got an infuriating reply that said "we are so saddened to say that we can only do reimbursement when a customer service representative advises you to pay out of the pocket for your movie tickets."
On top of all that, I switched to the yearly billing plan of $89.95 back in Feb (they charged my CC then), and then they charged another $89.95 in April, and are giving me the runaround on that as well.
I wonder how many people like me that used to go to the movies every weekend for entertainment have decided that movies simply aren't worth the risk of disappointment anymore?
Whereas I'd go to the movies 10-20 years ago by default and find a movie to watch, these days we wait for it to come out on streaming or blu-ray to watch at home because the chances are more likely than not that we're going to be disappointed.
I can't tell you how many movies my wife and I have started, gotten 10-30 minutes into, and turned off because it was really stupid.
"will charge subscribers $2 or more to see titles..."
Why would I pay $2 to see...oops, didn't have my reading glasses.
Just another day in Paradise
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