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Netflix price rise: Subscription charge to go up for millions of people

Most people aren’t aware that the monthly charge is about to get hiked up, according to surveys

Andrew Griffin
Friday 08 April 2016 13:55 BST
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Millions of people are about to see their Netflix price get hiked up — and most of them have no idea.

The site announced in 2014 that it was to gradually start increasing the monthly charge for its TV streaming service. But those people that were already subscribers had their accounts “grandfathered” — Netflix allowed them to stay on the old $7.99 price, even as the charge for new subscribers was pushed up to $9.99.

Similar price rises are set to come into place in the UK. Subscribers to its most popular plan will see their price go up by 50p, to £7.49.

That comes after Netflix promised a two-year freeze on its prices in May 2014, which is about to expire.

But those people are about to lose those special privileges and get moved up to the full price. That will hit about 37 per cent of subscribers in the US, or 17 million people, according to a UBS survey reported by Business Insider.

And most people who are going to be hit by the price hike aren’t aware of it. Of the millions of people that are about to be moved onto the full price plan, 80 per cent aren’t aware that the prices are about to change, according to a survey by JP Morgan.

About 15 per cent of people, after being informed about the change, said that they would look to quit the service. But UBS predicts that few of them will actually cancel their accounts, Business Insider reported.

In the US, Netflix offers three tiers of account, which mostly decides how high definition videos are and how many screens can be watched at the same time. The standard plan — which is the one that most users are on and will be hit by the change — sits between the basic and premium plans, allows for HD but not 4K streams and lets users watch two screens at once.

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