If Netflix is going to charge me money, they need to prove that I incurred the charge. They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't.
In my case they refunded the erroneously renewed subscription as a "one time courtesy". Like they're doing me a favor. Yeah, it's "one time" because I'd have to be a fool to do business with a company that treats me this way.
> They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't.
Most likely they do, and decided it wasn't worth fighting over this issue.
OP's dad, using OP's account, consented to billing. There's really no other option, unless we're just going to say things non-technies think, like the computer decided on it's own or something.
Netflix cannot just randomly decide to charge people for things. That would obviously be fraud, and Netflix wouldn't still be a company today if they depended on fraud for billings. Think about it...
Yes, you're right, it's not possible for "a company" to commit fraud and still be a company, right? If the world worked like that, you would expect to find many examples of companies committing fraud.
And you'd never find a bank like Wells Fargo committing fraud for money, right? Because surely they wouldn't be a bank?
And you'd never find a company violating its own user privacy rules, like Facebook, because they'd surely be out of business, right?
And you'd never find a major phone company billing people for things they didn't have the right to do, because surely AT&T would be out of business, right?
The fact is: "most likely" and "probably" and your uninformed best guess about what happened is not knowing.
I'm not sure why you would think that the only reason that I would think that Netflix restarted my subscription in error is that I'm a "non-techie" (and ugh, what an odious way to try to dismiss someone) who thinks "the computer decided on it's [sic] own." It tells me a lot about your understanding that you can't imagine many scenarios where the interaction of a complex, mostly non-technical system of product design, business decisionmakers, microservice integrations, several apps on hundreds of distinct platforms might behave in an unexpected way that treats consumers unfairly, with varying levels of intention or neglect at different layers.
As the consumer, I'm getting charged the money and I'm the one who needs the justification to indicate that it was authorized. I disagree with your perspective that "Well, they're a 'company', therefore they must have a good reason to charge me, I better pay it".
I do, in fact, think it's "most likely" that someone did... something... on a logged-in device that restarted the subscription. However, I think it's very unlikely that that involved presenting a new billing agreement that they agreed to, or providing the password to my account (remember, this is a subscription that was cancelled, not suspended or paused or frozen or any other kind of seemingly-temporary measure--since Netflix doesn't offer a way to remove accounts, it's the strongest thing I can do to sever my business relationship with them). If the logic is unintentional: an edge case of a logged-in device where that particular app on that platform sent the wrong cookie when starting a stream, etc., then Netflix not caring to investigate and solve it is because they're happy to collect revenue from erroneous and unjustified subscriptions in the hope that consumers won't notice or fight it; which is gross. If the logic is intentional: to obscure the fact that whatever action the user takes results in a re-subscription; then it's gross and possibly illegal (dunno, not a lawyer, and my definition of "crooked" might include things that aren't yet against the law). Either way, they are likely to keep doing it until forced to stop, because your naïve perspective that companies can never do anything wrong is absolutely incorrect.
I looked into this a bit. If your subscription is inactive you can reactivate it at anytime. If you log into Netflix through an app and you don't have an active subscription because it was canceled normally it will prompt you with something like "Re-activate account" or "Re-activate subscription".
I do want to correct something I said. You said that Netflix doesn't really know it's you. My response was that you gave your dad access but I realize I was wrong about that because people in your own house have access to logged in devices which is allowed normally.
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The difference between authentication (your account) and authorization (your streaming plan) is the first issue here they are separate and for good reason. There actually is a way is a way to delete your account [2]. Even if you don't do this it is automatically deleted after 10 months. Why don't they delete your account when you cancel the subscription?
Think of how annoying it would be if your subscription and account were one in the same, considering your account holds viewer data, watchlists, profiles, etc. Here's some scenarios:
1. Payment fails because you went over the limit on your credit card or it expired.
2. You want to cancel for two months and then reactivate (I knew someone who did this every few months to save money)
3. You change your mind after canceling
4. Canceled by accident
5. Someone else who has access cancels
Why not lock the account?
How do you unlock it? Calling them is time consuming and expensive for everyone. They could require the password to be reentered but many people who share Netflix accounts give out the password as well so that's not really a global solution (I assume you didn't). Maybe a support email? or chat support system? Both are time consuming and also money for them.
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The fault is 40% you, 50% your dad, and 10% Netflix keeping it easy for business reasons.
- You should have told your family that you were canceling Netflix, wouldn't they have bothered you anyway if it suddenly didn't work? (assuming Netflix did wipe everything)
- Your dad should have contacted you when he was prompted. I know mine would if he saw something about a subscription being reactivated.
- You could have changed the password of the account
- You could have invalidated all the existing sessions (assuming he didn't have the password)
- Finally, delete the account as well per their instructions
Those last three are all stated in their FAQ about preventing reactivation of accounts and how to delete your account.
Is it fraud on their part? No, nor is it deception just because they only asked your dad to reactivate a subscription instead of also saying "This will incur costs of $19.99 a month.." I will agree with you they could have automatically invalidated all the sessions when you cancel a subscription but you had options.
Finally you were refunded after contacting them. Did they hassle you? How long did it take? You said "...then Netflix not caring to investigate " was the reason they refunded you quickly. They didn't investigate it because they have good customer service. As a subscription service they want you to be happy and, even if you cancel, you might consider coming back. Starting an investigation for one months fee isn't worth it.
On Hackernews we often discuss services where it's difficult to cancel. There are even some where you have to call like the NY times. This isn't the case for both the Netflix subscription AND the Netflix account. Both can be deleted using the app without interacting with a person.
If Netflix is going to charge me money, they need to prove that I incurred the charge. They could do this by making a record of the date, device and profile that renewed. But they can't.
In my case they refunded the erroneously renewed subscription as a "one time courtesy". Like they're doing me a favor. Yeah, it's "one time" because I'd have to be a fool to do business with a company that treats me this way.