Netflix Will Now Be Canceling Inactive Subscriptions

There’s a lot going on in the world today, and between a job, friends, family and keeping up with everything else, it’s sometimes easy to forget things. It might not be particularly detrimental to forget to switch your clothes over from the washing machine to the dryer once in a while, but forgetting about an outstanding subscription could cost you hundreds of dollars over the course of a few years. Now, Netflix aims to lend a hand in fixing that problem. That is, if you’ve forgotten about your account long enough.

In a letter to investors this past Thursday, Netflix announced that they felt like pausing inactive accounts after a long enough time was the consumer-friendly thing to do. They’re right, of course, so all accounts that have been inactive for at least two years will now be paused so as to not cost the subscriber any further money for a service they’ve likely forgotten about. It’ll naturally cost the company a bit, but it’s a choice that should earn them plenty of customer appreciation and boost their overall image.

In the letter, Netflix stated:

A very small percentage of our members have not watched anything for the last two years and although we make it easy for people to cancel their subscriptions with just a few clicks, they have not taken advantage of that ability. So we decided to stop billing them and will do so for members meeting the same criteria going forward.

While this change resulted in a slight hit to revenue, we believe that pro-consumer policies like this are the right thing to do and that the long term benefits will outweigh the short term costs. In a world where consumers have many subscriptions, auto-pause on billing after an extended period of non-use should be how leading services operate.

Of course, there are many reasons to want to be a Netflix subscriber. July alone has seen some excellent additions to the platform’s expansive library, such as the chart-topping Charlize Theron action flick The Old Guard and the well-received first season of The Baby-Sitters Club.

Plenty of classics like Million Dollar Baby, Sleepless in Seattle and Total Recall have landed this month as well, and there’s still lots more content to come, with the second season of The Umbrella Academy marking perhaps the most hyped show to hit the service in a while. Obviously, then, it’d be hard to run out of stuff to watch, but just be sure to remember to cancel your subscription if you do.