Online movie streaming service Netflix is trying to make it easier for people to cancel their service with a new automated prompt that will ask subscribers if they want to continue paying after a lengthy period of inactivity.
On May 18th, the company started reaching out to subscribers who haven’t used the service in two years (or within one year of their initial sign-up for newer customers) to let them know they can either keep their membership or have it canceled upon the next billing cycle. Those customers represent a small number of Netflix’s overall 183 million subscriber base, totaling less than half of 1 percent or a few hundred thousand customers. Cancelations will begin on June 1st.
“We’ve always thought it should be easy to sign up and to cancel,” Eddy Wu, director of product innovation, wrote in a new blog post. “So, as always, anyone who cancels their account and then rejoins within 10 months will still have their favorites, profiles, viewing preferences and account details just as they left them.”
Currently, customers have to go into their account and manually request to cancel their subscriptions. Now, if a customer falls into the aforementioned small member base, they’ll begin to see emails and in-app notifications this week, according to the blog. If they don’t confirm to the prompts that they want to remain subscribed, Netflix will automatically cancel their subscription.
