Netflix to automatically cancel ‘hundreds of thousands’ of inactive accounts

Affected account-holders will receive email notifications before the cancellation is confirmed

Netflix has announced that it will start automatically cancelling accounts that have been inactive for long periods of time.

Users who have left their account dormant for a year or longer will receive a notification from the company, asking if they want to continue their subscription. This will likely take the form of an email.

If the user doesn’t respond at all, or responds that they want to discontinue their subscription, then Netflix will deactivate their account.

Later on, if a deactivated user wishes to re-open an account, the streaming service will have retained their old viewing history and preferences.

Product innovation director Eddy Wu wrote in a blog post on Netflix’s website: “You know that sinking feeling when you realise you signed up for something but haven’t used it in ages? At Netflix, the last thing we want is people paying for something they’re not using.”

He continued: “So we’re asking everyone who has not watched anything on Netflix for a year since they joined to confirm they want to keep their membership. And we’ll do the same for anyone who has stopped watching for more than two years.

Members will start seeing these emails or in app notifications this week. If they don’t confirm that they want to keep subscribing, we’ll automatically cancel their subscription. If anyone changes their mind later, it’s really easy to restart Netflix.”

Wu mentioned that the inactive accounts, while only amounting to less that 0.5 per cent of Netflix’s subscriber base, still constitute “a few hundred thousand” customers.

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