Here we are again, folks.

Another company with great potential run by a bunch of crooks who think they can get away with stealing your hard earned money.

Enter MoviePass, an American subscription-based movie ticketing service founded in 2011. After hearing about the service from a friend of mine and my husband, I thought it sounded too good to be true… $9.99 a month to see one movie a day? After checking into if it was legit or not and hearing personal testimonies, I decided to give it a try.

I signed up for the $9.99/month plan and went on my merry movie watching way. My husband and I averaged about 1 movie a weekend, around 3 movies a month since one weekend a month we usually spent in the wilderness somewhere.

We were happy with the service and started telling our friends to check it out. It became more and more popular in our area so we had to get movie tickets ahead of time, but luckily we didn’t live far from our local theater. Then, it began.

The app began logging us out and having us resign in and reenter all of our info in every time we tried to check in to a movie. Annoying, sure. But a deal breaker to get 3 movies a month for $10? Nah.

Then, the app stopped working all together. Of course I immediately checked Twitter to see if this was just our experience or others, as well. The ever trusty Twitter #realnews showed that it wasn’t just us but an entire app outage.

Oh well, we said. Crashes happen, we said. We were understanding, again.

Then, peak pricing was introduced — movies that in high demand and/or at high demand showtimes were going to cost MoviePass subscribers more. Hmmm, this is getting less and less appealing, we said. We can be flexible about what time we go, so we don’t have to pay the extra fee — no biggie, we said. Why did we ignore yet another red flag? Because we are on a BUDGET people! 

All the while, MoviePass is beginning to change it’s terms of service on the reg, without anyone knowing of course, because whoever tells their customers when they’re making their lives more difficult/hellish?

Blindspotting is released and we head to the theater early to grab our tickets before the show sells out or hits peak pricing. (Highly recommend it, by the way) We get our tickets, all is well in the world. Granted, despite the theater having 8 showtimes, MoviePass only gave us one that we could redeem via the app. Stupid, but hey we’re flexible.

It was like the last great meal before heading to death row… another weekend arrives, and we want to see BlackkKlansman. We log into MoviePass and low and behold we can only see The Meg or Slenderman. What is this!? I head to the trusty #realnews Twitter again and see that it isn’t just our theater, it’s EVERYONE’S theaters only allowing them TWO options of movies to choose from.

Okay, we’re done for real now, MoviePass. Bae and I log in to our accounts, cancel them, and get a confirmation email saying that it’s been accepted. Or, so we thought…

Low and behold 24 hours later we get ANOTHER email telling us that we’ve opted into the new subscription model and that even though we may have canceled our past subscription, we’ve been auto enrolled in the new one and that takes priority over our previous cancelation.

 

That’s right. That statement in the grey box is MoviePass telling you, “ha ha SUCKER you can’t unsubscribe from us, we’re gonna keep charging your credit card on file, but not provide you any movies to watch so we can try to dig our way out of our lack of money pit.”

Again, I turn to Twitter and see some others have received the email, as well. My husband goes to try to cancel his account again and it won’t let him. I try. It won’t let me. I take to Twitter to share my wrath along with other #MoviePassFail warriors.

Now, on Wednesday, August 15th, MoviePass is planning on rolling out it’s new subscription plans. That means they are going to re-charge everyone who had previously canceled their “old” MoviePass plans on that date, according to their email to past subscribers stating that despite their previous cancelation, they’ve opted in to the new plan… even though they haven’t.

In an effort to save face/cover their ass, MoviePass is now stating that the inability to cancel/opt-out of the new subscription is a “glitch” and should be “resolved.” I went into my account and canceled, again, today.

While this MAY be true (and that is a VERY small MAY, despite being written in all caps), I would not trust MoviePass to NOT charge your card on file, again.

So, what can you do?

1. Cancel the card on file. Report it LOST or STOLEN with your credit card company/bank or else they will NOT change the account number and instead will just send you a new card.
2. Tell your friends who previously canceled their MoviePass subscription that they need to re-cancel it, as they are otherwise automatically opted in to be charged under this “new” subscription model.
3. Tell your friends about MoviePass shady business practices and encourage them to also cancel their accounts.
4. Make noise on social — word travels fast on the interwebs, don’t be shy about sharing your opinions and feelings about this dumpster fire of a company. Share this post!
5. Be informed — whenever you are buying something online whether it’s a good or service, please please please do your due diligence on the company, the product, the service providers, the owners, etc. Knowledge truly is power.
6. Keep your eye on the news — there are signs of a class action lawsuit against MoviePass about to hit the public.

Leave your questions in the comments and I’m happy to try and answer them the best I can! Feel empowered to share your experiences with MoviePass in the comments, as well. You never know who you could be helping by sharing your own story.