Netflix Tries Out-of-Household Account Sharing: Chaos

Update 1.6.:

Netflix’s trial of account sharing (see below) has caused confusion among users in Peru, The Verge reports. Some Netflix customers were probably not informed even two months after the start of the sharing program. Netflix wants to email all users who share their accounts with others.

Netflix: Account sharing will soon cost extra & advertising-financed subscription

In addition, Netflix would enforce its new model differently from user to user. Some users with shared Netflix accounts have reported ignoring the validation prompts without the account owner being penalized. Still other users report that they were not informed about the sharing model, although they would definitely share their Netflix account with other users. On top of that, there is probably a lack of clarity about how “a household” is to be defined.

Update end, beginning of the original message

Small revolution at Netflix: account sharing

Netflix is ​​also testing giving Netflix accounts to users outside of your own household. But Netflix charges extra for that. Netflix is ​​already testing this new subscription model, as the company writes in a blog post.

Netflix wants to react to the fact that the access data for Netflix accounts are often used by users outside of the registered household. This is against Netflix’s Terms of Service, but is common practice in many cases. Netflix now wants to officially allow this “sharing” of a Netflix account with users outside the household – but only at an additional cost and initially only in a few countries.

For this purpose, the owner of a Netflix Standard or Netflix Premium account (but not the user of a basic account) can add further “sub accounts” (“Sub Accounts”) for up to two people who do not live in the household. A separate profile is created for each of these sub-accounts with personalized recommendations and their own login data. There is a surcharge for this.

Additionally, in the test countries (see below), Netflix allows Basic, Standard, and Premium plan users to allow other co-users to be able to transfer existing profile data to either a new account or a sub-account for extra members—while retaining it the personalized recommendations and the viewing history etc.

Here Netflix tests the new offer

Netflix is ​​testing these two new features with Netflix customers in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru over the next few weeks. In Costa Rica, for example, the surcharge per sub-account is 2.99 US dollars – that’s the equivalent of around 2.70 euros.

Netflix wants to monitor the use of the new options in the three test countries and only then roll out these innovations worldwide.