Earlier this month, MoviePass announced that its customers, previously allowed to see one movie per day, would be limited to just three per month. At the time, the company said that the change wouldn't affect annual subscribers until their plan renewed. But it looks like MoviePass has changed its mind yet again, and probably to nobody's surprise. The company began circulating an email today notifying annual plan subscribers that they too will be limited to just three film showings per month.
"As of today, aligned with Section 2.4 of our Terms of Use, your annual subscription plan will now allow you to see three movies a month instead of the previous unlimited offering, and you'll receive up to a $5 discount on any additional movie tickets purchased," the email said. "This is the current standard plan now in effect for all current and new subscribers." And because the move is retroactive for the current monthly period, which varies by customer, some users will find that they've already seen their three movies once they receive the notification email. The company claims it "intends" to expand its offering of blockbuster and independent films in light of the plan adjustments.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/24/moviepass-annual-subscribers-three-movie-plan/
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @04:39PM (4 children)
Somewhere out there is a lawyer who is also a movie buff that paid for an annual Movie Pass subscription. The rest shall be class action suit history.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 27 2018, @04:57PM (3 children)
Huh? You mean Movie Pass doesn't have an ironclad TOS prohibiting lawyers from suing them? Won't that lawyer you describe have to submit to an arbitration process, held in a court building on top of Mount Everest, according to all the applicable laws of The Republic of Everest?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @06:22PM
No
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
The TOS can be clad in any metal you like, and declare whatever it wants. The point is that there is no TOS preventing lawyers from suing them, and lawyers often are good at that sort of thing.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:37PM
Actually, that's no longer true, courts have been shockingly OK with people signing away their rights to sue and permitting companies to use crooked arbitrators to settle the matter.
It's the judicial race to the bottom where the people no longer have legal rights because pro-corporate judges keep getting seated. Even the fact that all options in a given space require agreeing to binding arbitration and bans on class action suits doesn't seem to impact the rulings.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 27 2018, @05:18PM (11 children)
Dear MoviePass
Didn't you realize that when you made an offer to customers that was too good to be true, that it probably was?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:32PM (10 children)
The assumption was that if they got enough customers that they'd be able to negotiate the rates for the tickets down enough to be profitable.
Which is incredibly stupid, even when I buy ticket vouchers from Costco, I'm still only getting at most $3 per ticket off and usually a lot less. The number of movies was always ridiculous as no theater is going to discount things to that extent, no matter how many customers they're bringing in.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 27 2018, @05:41PM (2 children)
Are there enough screens at a theater to watch 30 movies in a month?
If so, for certain theaters, do they have enough movies that are actually worth watching at least once?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 27 2018, @05:46PM
Almost certainly no, on the last part. Probably no on the first part, if I assume correctly that you're thinking about different movies in a month. Though, it's possible some theater out there is showing a rotating list of movies every day, so you wouldn't see the same thing every day. Highly doubtful they would all be new releases.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:42PM
There probably are enough screens, whenever I go to the movies there's plenty of empty seats, perhaps not for movies that were just recently released, but certainly by the end of the run.
The issue, as far as I'm concerned, is the lack of movies worth paying for. There just aren't enough movies being released that I'd be interested in to justify paying a subscription. AMC theaters has a subscription for $20 a month and one can see up to 3 movies a week, but I struggle to find 2 movies that I'd want to see in a given month, which means that I'd usually be better off just paying for the tickets myself.
For somebody who finds a few movies they'd like to watch or don't mind paying to watch more than once, it can be a good deal. And probably sustainable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @06:24PM
They also wanted a piece of the concession sales form Movie Pass subscribers and are selling subscriber data.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @06:52PM (5 children)
Unfortunately for MoviePass, x dollars lost per customer times n customers still turns out to be a loss if you change x · n into x · ( n · 106 ). A larger loss, in fact, by a factor of 106, with more people carrying pitchforks and looking for your house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:44PM (4 children)
And the point you're missing is that they wouldn't have been losing money had they been able to negotiate discounts to cover the money lost on the tickets. The problem is that they haven't been able to negotiate the hoped for savings and as such, they just lose large amounts of money on each customer that actually uses the pass. If you use it for one movie a month, they might break even, but if you watch more than one, then they're losing a ton of money.
It's an idiotic plan and the people giving them money are morons.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @09:44PM (3 children)
If they had been able to so negotiate, x might have been beneficially negative, and MoviePass would not be a laughingstock.
If. [cracked.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @10:09PM (2 children)
And hindsight is 20/20, the fact that you can't grasp the fact that they weren't planning on losing money on each subscription over the long term has precisely no influence on the decision making that happened in the past.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @11:37PM (1 child)
It's not that I am having trouble grasping that they totally thought their plan wasn't stupid, and that I need your benevolent assistance in explaining it.
Nor is hindsight substantially involved.
Their plan is:
1. Lose a little money.
2. Lose more and more money.
3. Lose gargantuan amounts of money in order to try to appear to be major players in the business via "volume."
4. Then exploit that position to negotiate better prices that could cause them to start making money. That's got to work!
5. ...
6. Theoretical profit!
It does not require hindsight, nor your frankly brilliant analysis, to see that this plan breaks down at step 2 or 3
One of the problems with it (not the only one) that you can see right up front is that "Lose lots of money" is a guaranteed for-sure item, while "Force those stingy theaters to re-negotiate prices" is at best a maybe. This is not a brilliant plan that somehow ran off the rails. Failure is where these rails go.
Consider this: The profit in step 6 would be just as likely to come from answering that Nigerian prince that keeps sending them offers of millions of dollars. That's readily apparent to, I would submit, many people*, just by reading the 1 through 6 above.
Primary difference being that with the Nigerian prince plan, they go down alone; with the 1-6 plan, above, they lose and lots of gullible customers lose right along with them.
Sorry for any confusion I caused. Some people don't think in math, and I regret forgetting this.
-------
* Of course, many people also send their life savings to His Royal Highness Prince Of Nigeria, so not *all* people can see things so clearly, I admit. But it's there to see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:12AM
Except you're a fucking moron that still doesn't get it.
That wasn't their plan, their plan was to get a large enough number of subscribers that they could fill seats in theater chains and negotiate a discount based upon the fact that they could A) fill those empty seats B) represented a form of advertising that theater chains pay for in other ways and pocket the difference and C) direct those movie goers to movies that they might otherwise skip even though they might be interested in the film based upon analytics.
Just because you're so fucking stupid that you don't understand what they were planning on doing doesn't change the fact that it was at least plausible when they were doing the planning. Now, you're using the information about how it worked out in order to recast what the plans were to make yourself feel smart.
Personally, I think it was a somewhat moronic idea in the first place, but it was at least somewhat plausible that it could have worked out. The main issue was that they promised too many viewings for the price with too few limitations and the results were more or less as one would expect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
Did anyone else see that you have to download and install a piece of proprietary software just to use moviepass? Not on a desktop, not in a VM, not on their website. It has to be through the mobile app. Do they just want to sell your contacts list, or something? Do they track your location to make sure you go to the theater, not someone else? I for one will not be using moviepass unless it comes with a dedicated smartphone just for that app.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @11:08PM
Yes. Selling subscriber data, including tracking them like a dog, is all part of the Movie Pass experience. Me, I'll just Pass (no movie required).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:40PM (8 children)
Charge
Dispute
Either you will give me my money back, or my bank will take it back. Have fun with those chargeback fees. :)
I'd like to know what legal team they discussed this with said it was OK to change the terms of a contract after payment for that contract had changed hands.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 27 2018, @06:31PM (7 children)
MoviePass TOS, 2.4, linked in the summary.
One should read the contracts one signs before signing them. Whether a court would find that enforceable is a different question, but I don't immediately see why not. You agreed to pay a fixed amount for a service that they can alter the service levels of at any time in their sole discretion.
Maybe the question should be what legal team the buyer discussed this with and advised that it is in fact a good deal for the consumer?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @07:17PM (2 children)
You can't make a contract where you keep changing the service in unreasonable ways without giving the other party an option to agree or bow out. Otherwise companies like verizon would have jumped all over this when they took away unlimited and landlords could perpetually renew your lease while upping the rent. Also being a contract of adhesion and all.... much easier to get it thrown out.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:50PM (1 child)
Well, that's what they basically did. "Unreasonable" is a matter for a court given a specific change. "Unlimited" gets thrown out because the contract was made with the specific understanding it would be unlimited - this contract pretty well says the amount you get is the amount they allow you to have at any time. This contract isn't changing the amount required as consideration for the variable service. You are a free agent signing the contract and there are other ways to get movie tickets so this isn't adhesive.
And yes, it can be challenged in court... if there isn't a binding arbitration clause. And you can win or lose. It's just not clear cut that a plaintiff could win this - good luck finding a contingency lawyer to take it on (though you might!!!)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:47PM
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=contract+of+adhesion [lmgtfy.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:48PM (3 children)
There's certain things that you can't put into a contract and expect to enforce. For example, it's not legal to sell yourself into slavery via contract, a contract like that would never hold up in court, even if that was the intended effect of the contract and not just hidden somewhere in fine print.
Unilaterally changing of contracts isn't legal without the 2nd party having the option of opting out. There's a reason why cell phone carriers have those people grandfathered into their plans, changing the contract generally requires consent by the other party, the first party can't do it on their own.
If you read down in the contract, there's usually a clause indicating that not everything in the contract is enforceable and indicating that if something isn't enforceable, then it's just left out. You can put all sorts of things in a contract, but they're not automatically binding, sometimes they're put in there hoping that non-lawyers will see it and treat it as enforceable, even when it's not.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @11:10PM (1 child)
Clearly you have never read the ToS on the back of a marriage license.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 28 2018, @01:10PM
Or a cell phone service agreement.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:00PM
Correct. Slavery is a crime so you can't do that. How is this a crime?
The contract isn't being changed at all. The customers are receiving the goods promised by the contract (which MoviePass can vary the amount of at the sole discretion of MoviePass) for the same consideration. All the terms of the contract are still in force. It is certainly allowable to have a contract in which with performance and/or consideration clauses are variable. "You pay me $1.00. I'll invest it and do my best to make it worth more, however, the amount I return to you is based strictly on how your investment does, and I don't guarantee you will make a profit and you may lose it all." Perfectly legal. "You have hired me to come play at your Bar Mitzvah. You pay me $50.00. I agree to come and play for a length of time, that amount of time to be set by me at my discretion." Legal. You might sue me if I come and play one song for three minutes, and you might well win that. But if I come and play for 30 minutes and you wanted me to play for six hours? Nope. And if you were contracting with Sting and not me, a court might well find one three minute song for $50.00 to be a bargain. It is the fault of the consumer for signing an agreement which allows the performance goals to be changed at performer's whim, so long as it appears to a court or arbitrator that good faith efforts are being made to comply with the terms.
And I completely agree with you that one can write all sorts of unenforceable terms to a contract, and a good contract will indeed state that if any provision is unenforceable that the remainder of the agreement is still binding. But with something as simple as performance and consideration, if you throw either of those out in court what do you have left to contract about?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:44PM (1 child)
About $3.50 per month for PIA VPN, unlimited movies...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 27 2018, @11:24PM
Bingo!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 27 2018, @06:10PM (6 children)
Moviepass is an online service piggybacking on an outdated model for content consumption. Cinemas need to change up their business model if they want to stay in business. They've tried to put in barka-loungers with reserved seating, but, honestly, I have that same chair at home minus the irritation of seat reservations and people who reserve the best seats and then don't show up, or waltz in 40 minutes after the movie has started. Also, at home I can pause the movie for a bathroom break or when an important email or phone call comes through, or I just want to get up and refill my soda.
In other words, cinemas and movie studios want me to keep consuming their content as a captive audience, in an age when universal choice and consumer discretion is the norm. Every such move they make such as this pushes me harder in the direction of using torrents.
Cinemas and movie studios really must evolve. Movie studios should come up with different narrative structures and/or dimensions to the story telling, such as 4D theaters do at some zoos now. Cinemas should adopt a different format like dinner & movie, where they serve you dinner and a pitcher you consume while you watch the film, or add some other dimension like they used to do at those that showed the Rocky Horror Picture show.
They have to come up with new reasons for people to come to their venues that are not easily replicated in a home environment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday August 27 2018, @06:30PM (3 children)
They should find a way to play up the social element more. That's something they don't have on you on your couch at home - like 50 or so people enjoying a common experience.
I have no idea how they would do this, and accept it probably wouldn't appeal to everyone, particularly those with particularly comfy chairs at home.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 27 2018, @07:50PM (1 child)
I thought they could use a branching narrative and have the audience signal which character they want to follow out of the room when a subtle chiron appears in the lower right corner. Or they could have viewers vote for one or other party to prevail in a struggle, to give alternate histories a chance to play out. They could milk a well-structured and designed central narrative for a long time that way; the story would have many more dimensions and depth that way.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:19PM
That would be fairly simple. Since you're in a theatre with who knows else, and collusion is disallowed (its on the back of the ticket) and there's no electronic paper trail to prove how anyone voted, they could simply pause the action, show the prompt, and continue as if the audience had voted however the director wanted.
Wait, this feels like something someone's done before...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @08:51PM
Why would I pay to go to the movies, if I had to deal with that? The business model is fine, what's not fine is the cost and the generally low quality of movies that we're being expected to pay ever increasing amounts for.
If they want to change their model, probably the thing that might help is providing child care on site for a fee. There's a lot of parents out there that don't go to movies that might go if they didn't have to worry about childcare.
(Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @06:56PM (1 child)
I can't fault your analysis of what the theaters are doing wrong, but based on the above, I suspect that you yourself are doing it wrong.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 27 2018, @07:51PM
Could be. How so?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @07:10PM (1 child)
From 3 movies a month to say 1 $5 discount a year while keeping their subscriber's money? WTF kind of service is this?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 27 2018, @08:05PM
Pretty much exactly the kind of service it seemed like it probably would be from the start?