In January I joined MoviePass, a wonderful service that takes the concept of Netflix and applies it to the multiplex. For $35 a month, MoviePass allows you to see “unlimited” movies.
I put unlimited in quotation marks because there are a number of catches. Members are only allowed to see one movie per day. Members are only allowed to see each particular movie once. And perhaps the biggest dealbreaker: Only 2-D movies are allowed. No 3-D. No IMAX. Want the full splendor of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney spinning around in space? You’ll have to fork over your own $19.
MoviePass works like a gym membership. After a 30-day trial, you have to sign into the program for a year. If you cancel early, you are subject to some pretty hefty fees. Using MoviePass is simple. You download their app, check into the theater when you’re within 100 yards, and use a Discover debit card they send you in the mail to buy your ticket. Although still in beta mode, the app and the card work reasonably well. Customer service is fairly responsive.
Despite the drawbacks, MoviePass is a great deal. Tickets in New York City are now in the $14 range. That means you need to see just three movies a month in order to avoid losing money. It works at all the major chains and at the majority of indie venues. There are no opening weekend restrictions. You’re welcome to see Ender’s Game at midnight with the rest of the fanboys.
But wait a minute, an intelligent person might ask, if they’re only charging $35 a month, how are they going to make any money? It’s likely that many people will sign up for the service, filled with optimism about increasing their moviegoing attendance, only to fall short. Maybe they see two movies a month instead of one. MoviePass would end up with a tidy profit of around $10.
That’s all well and good until you consider the heavy users. New York has more movie choices than any other city in the country. A film lover with diverse tastes could see a film every day and never catch up. Say that happens. Say a MoviePass member sees 30 movies in a month. 30 times $14 is $420. Subtract the $35 membership fee and you’ve got a $385 deficit.
That’s a real problem. Just a handful of hardcore users could cost the startup company thousands of dollars. I was unemployed for several months while enrolled in the program. I saw a movie basically every other day. During these heavy months, I ended up costing MoviePass a great deal of money. Other times I went two weeks without seeing a thing, but that’s not enough to balance things out.
The company also makes money off of ads within the app, by taking DVD pre-orders, and by selling aggregate marketing data to movie studios. But apparently not enough.
Last week the company announced a new policy. MoviePass formerly allowed members to watch one movie per calendar day. Now they only allow one movie every 24 hours. That’s a major shift, especially for users with a normal 9-to-5 job. Imagine this scenario:
It has been a long week at work. You decide to let off some steam at a 7:30 PM Friday showing of Bad Grandpa. The next day you finish your household chores early and decide to balance the artistic scales by taking in 12 Years a Slave. You used to be able to attend any showing on Saturday. Now you can’t. You can’t do a matinee. You can’t even do a 7:25 PM showing. You have to wait until after 7:30 PM.
Nothing says “Fun Saturday Night!” like watching a long movie about slavery until one in the morning because MoviePass shut you out until the 10:30 PM showtime. And God help you if you wanted to see something on Sunday. You’ll be mighty bleary-eyed on Monday morning after taking in that 10:45 PM showing of Blue is the Warmest Color.
The new 24-hour restriction is a blatant attempt to reduce usage by a company perhaps realizing the folly of their profit model. Even worse, it was presented as an exciting new feature for members. A Countdown Clock feature appeared overnight on the app with little warning. A vague e-mail explaining the new policy followed. Customers who signed into a yearlong contract are now stuck with a service that is severely kneecapped from what they signed up for.
The 24-hour limit makes even less sense when you consider that matinees are cheaper than evening tickets. By forcing users into more night showings and fewer day showings, MoviePass may inadvertently be costing themselves more money.
Users on the MoviePass Facebook and Twitter pages are livid about the change. A clause in the user contract allows customers to cancel by November 13 without paying early termination fees, and many are doing just that. For anyone with a fairly normal schedule, the usefulness of MoviePass has been cut in half. Cutting your subscriber base by radically changing the service you offer is just poor business sense.
The company has yet to issue a statement on this public relations disaster, which bears resemblance to the Netflix/Qwikster debacle of 2011. The 24-hour restriction is good for the company but terrible for users. And presenting it as an exciting new feature is just insulting. No company should treat its loyal customers like idiots. A little honesty goes a long way.
I for one would be perfectly happy to pay more than $35 a month for MoviePass if it means them staying in business. The service allows me to see a wider variety of movies. I spend enough time at home, so the concept of sitting in front of Netflix all day has never really appealed to me. The program is still very useful and I would like to see it succeed. But I’d like to be treated with respect as a customer.
Maybe MoviePass doesn’t respect me because they know I went to see Scary Movie 5 on opening day. Still, that’s no excuse. Tell me what’s going on. Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining.
If you’re a MoviePass customer, please sound off in the comments section below with your own ideas about how to fix the service.