LOL explains why I kept "forgetting" my password and had to reset it a bunch of times!<p>PS. Thanks to the investors of MoviePass for giving me an appreciation of independent and foreign cinema.
“with the hope that a majority of users wouldn’t see more than one movie a month, much in the same way a gym offsets high overhead by relying on members who hardly ever show up. The problem is that people enjoy going to the movies in a way that they don’t particularly like going to the gym”<p>Ha !
I’ve experienced something similar with ebay and paypal, 100%.<p>Suddenly and out of nowhere I couldn’t login to either and had to do “forget my password” for both of them.<p>This triggered a several month long incident of my old passwords allowing me to log in and my new password working <i>some</i> of the time. I have absolutely no explanation of it but it got the to the point of having the small number of passwords I’ve used for both of them written down next to my computer. I could type in the same password three days in a row and it worked, and then the fourth day it stopped working and the another old one worked.<p>Deeply frustrating and still no explanation for it.
We have a similar subscription model in the UK for Cineworld. For a monthly fee you can go to the cinema as much as you like.<p>The key difference is, the monthly fee costs about 50% more than a single ticket, and you’ll be lucky to have more than 2 or 3 movies you want to watch each month, with the obvious dry-spells where nothing really appeals. Since it also gives a discount on snacks (already hugely expensive), it’s just a way to sell more sweets and pop.<p>It pays for itself after two films, when there <i>are</i> two worth watching, and as long as you don’t bother with snacks. Cineworld easily claws back some of that money when you skip the cinema for one month, or only go once.<p>It seems a lot better thought through than what turned out to be a free-for-all cinema subsidy with MoviePass.
Pretty sure NordVPN have recently started applying a similar tactic. The apps (on all platforms) have all seemingly started logging you out between use (after a small period of time has elapsed). Presumably the hassle of logging back in decreases usage, but customers keep paying.
I think there’s a general pattern here.<p>A subscription company can make its service hard to use and decrease usage and therefore costs to increase profit.<p>But it’s at the expense of long term profit as users gradually get fed up and leave.
I find it strange that the overall concept seems to work fine in the UK but not the US.<p>...like I'm basically in the cinema 2-3 times a month and that's been going for years