Everything MoviePass does just makes things worse

I purchased a MoviePass membership back during a promotion. I paid $90 for a year of one movie a day, and got a MasterCard in the mail that I could use to purchase a ticket at the box office after checking in using the MoviePass app. The first month, I went to about 10 movies. The hassle of using a sometimes-buggy app and heading up to the counter one moviegoer at a time was worth the promise of free movies.

Then the problems started to surface. First, there was the location-tracking scandal, made worse by a loud-mouth CEO incapable of communicating clearly (or at the very least shutting up). Then it stuck all new customers with a plan that offered only three movies per month. (But it came bundled with an iHeart Radio membership, oooh...) The one-per-day plan came back a month later, but I was already worried the plan I paid for could vanish at any moment.

Soon after, I got a notification that I needed to start taking photos of my ticket stubs to prevent fraud, something users had been dealing with, along with blackout dates, for a few months. Then the ultimate treachery: new surge pricing for "popular" and first-run movies. Adding a bring-a-friend option and 3D/IMAX tickets (for extra fees) is no way to fix that issue. Now parent company Helios is bleeding cash and filing with the SEC to allow the sale of as much as $1.2 billion in equity and debt.

Making sweeping policy changes on the fly seems to be how MoviePass rolls, and it's pretty annoying. Look, I generally know that companies like this can change things up as they go without warning; it's in the terms of service somewhere. What MoviePass really needs to do is to keep customers like me happy, not sell more equity. The service has plenty of competition from similar companies and theater-sponsored plans -- it won't take much to get me to switch if MoviePass continues to downgrade my experience.



via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2tK2W9N
RSS Feed

If New feed item from http://www.engadget.com/rss-full.xml, then send me

IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to...
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic...
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs? ...
Read more