from Hacker News

Netflix Canada just got rid of its cheapest ad-free plan without even a heads up

by woranl on 6/25/23, 12:55 AM with 99 comments

• by medellin on 6/25/23, 3:01 AM

  Netflix also no longer works when i travel. Went on a short trip to see some relatives in another country and my netflix account is blocked. Contacted support and they said i need to pay for a new account in that country.

  Netflix is really starting to lose its value for me. But I’m working on setting up a VPN at my house to tunnel all Netflix traffic through and then configure some rpis to send to family members so we can all steal from Netflix again.

  At this point they have pissed me off enough that im working on making it as easy as possible for anyone to setup and sharing it when im done.

• by Waterluvian on 6/25/23, 1:12 AM

  Tangent: As much as it feels like we just have “bundles” like the bad old cable days, I really enjoy getting to change streaming providers every 2-3 months. My wife and I just Hoover up whatever we’re interested in then move on. And in a year we’ve got that service back and we Hoover up the last year’s added content that looks good.

  Lots of ways to measure it but when I think about how much I pay and what my experience is like, I’m doing far better than in the cable days. I’m much happier.

• by eduction on 6/25/23, 2:39 AM

  That’s really funny, I was just an hour ago reading this long New York magazine story on streaming consolidation that Pocket suggested to me which contains this line:

  “ Netflix claims its Basic With Ads tier brings in more revenue per user than its standard commercial-free plan”

  “More revenue” links to https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/ads-on-netflix-12....

  Overall story paints a picture of the chickens coming home to roost in streaming https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/streaming-industry-netflix-m...

  So I guess it’s not surprising that they would take away the least profitable plan.

• by mdm_ on 6/25/23, 2:12 AM

  Crave recently did the same thing in Canada, got rid of their $9.99 “mobile” plan, and now the $24.99 subscription is the only choice available for new subscribers. Sucks because all I want to watch is new Star Trek series, which means paying $28/month after tax to watch about 3.5 hours of content.

• by crazygringo on 6/25/23, 2:30 AM

  > Without Even A Heads Up

  Since it only affects new users, and existing users on the plan remain, who cares about a "heads up"?

  Maybe it's newsworthy that they dropped the cheapest plan going forwards, but it's not as though there's some expectation that plan changes for new members are supposed to be announced months in advance or something.

  When I go to the grocery store and strawberries are now $4.99 instead of $2.99 last week, I don't complain the supermarket didn't give me a "heads up".

• by dghughes on 6/25/23, 3:20 AM

  I'm in Canada and keep thinking of ditching Netflix but I keep procrastinating maybe today is the day. Or tomorrow since Monday is my billing date $24.14 for Premium.

  I can't recall when I last watched Netflix. Streaming services are the gym membership of the 21st century the companies hope we forget or find it a pain to cancel.

• by nine_zeros on 6/25/23, 1:33 AM

  It just looks like the game is up. Every company is trying to raise prices and squeeze more, so that stock prices remain up.

  If they could accept a lower stock price instead, they'd just be more stable, and retain loyalty on the other side of the recession curve.

• by graypegg on 6/25/23, 4:36 AM

  I get it, the ad tier probably makes a lot more revenue per-user than the ad-free basic plan. They’ve done the research (I assume) and I guess came to the conclusion that price-sensitive users will tolerate ads to save money, and the users that would have chosen basic solely because it was the cheapest option without ads will simply switch to the new cheapest ad-free option.

  Either way, Netflix actually stands to make more money removing that tier.

  However it’s also another barrier to me ever considering paying Netflix ever again. But we’re the minority of people.

• by SpacePortKnight on 6/25/23, 9:36 AM

  Netflix increase prices. Reddit closes down free API access. Twitter introduces subscriptions.

  I've noticed that people are quick to react negatively to such news however I feel like all of these services provide a real value and they are without any real competition.

  Also these services are still better than traditional alternatives. I can cancel Netflix anytime and that alone is worth to me more than anything which cable could offer.

• by opmelogy on 6/25/23, 3:06 AM

  this makes total sense. Tech really does funnel money into a smaller set of society and the way to keep doing that is to raise prices on everyone, even if that means the majority of the people that are making way less a year than their employees.

• by barbazoo on 6/25/23, 4:08 AM

  Luckily, I was able just now to switch from Standard to Basic FWIW