Helios and Matheson is sick of being tainted with the "suckers that financed the cash-burning MoviePass machine" brand.
Too bad! They can try to rebrand, but both Pepperidge Farm and the Internet remember.
These jokers decided making unlimited movies in the theater for $9.95/month was a sound business strategy.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciated it! Thanks for doing that!
But spinning off your little MoviePass company isn't gonna erase it.
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I've joked about MoviePass' "Whoopsie!" emails they periodically send to users, where they apologize for their latest blunder. There have been many, many blunders.
Well... check the title of the email they sent a few days ago...
"Whoops! Regarding your special screening invite."
Context: MoviePass sent me an invite to a movie premiere event in Los Angeles. I was bemused by this, but immediately disregarded the message and went on with my life. The "Whoops!" follow-up came a few hours later, telling me I'd accidentally been sent that invite and they didn't mean to send it to users who lived so far away and obviously couldn't make it there for the event.
But bottom line: They actually put "Whoops!" in the title of one of their emails.
(Follow-up thought: they didn't actually rescind the invite, just said "Whoops!" in regards to sending it. If I were to RSVP to it, they couldn't stop me. I think it's time to hop on a plane and go cross-country and demand entrance to this MoviePass screening they "Whoops!"-ily invited me to!)
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Oh, and speaking of "Whoops!" emails, I got this recently...
This is a trainwreck worthy of deep, sustained contemplation.
I mean, the jokes write themselves, so we can skip right past the obvious snark. (Is MoviePass even gonna exist in two months? Does this mean T-Mobile service won't work, either? etc.)
Let's just stand in awe of the fact that T-Mobile thought doing a tie-in promotion with MoviePass was a good idea.
Also, switching cell carriers is a HUGE decision. Cell plans are a massive confusopoly, precision-engineered to make it impossible to compare plans and figure out whether switching makes financial sense.
And the incentive they're offering to switch? Two months of a completely frazzled, brokedown, tainted, user-infuriating service valued at $19.90.
That's right, a $19.90 incentive to switch cell carriers.
I suppose it's possible there are people out there who might have been contemplating switching carriers and might go, "Okay, that's a nice little bonus for something I wanted to do, anyway."
But for the rest of us?
This might be MoviePass' greatest "Whoops!" of all.
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And in other news, MoviePass produced a movie called Border.
It looks great!
And a nice perk: MoviePass sent out a non-"Whoops!" email saying that Border would be a "bonus movie" and would not count against our three-per-month movie limit.
Terrific!
I noticed on the app yesterday morning that there was a screening of it in my town last night.
Huzzah!
I got ready to go get my ticket over my lunch break, and...
It was gone.
MoviePass blocked it.
I repeat: MoviePass blocked access to their own movie on their own app.
Any questions?
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Rumors abound of MoviePass cutting off access to their previously stress-free eticketing theaters.
Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of eticketing theaters are gone from the app. By "gone," I mean now these theaters are just offering the ridiculous limited daily options MoviePass randomly provides.
This is seriously bad because previously, eticketing theaters were the only ones that actually reliably worked. You could pick any movie and any showtime there.
During the great "Mission Impossible 6 Blackout of July 2018," I drove to an eticketing theater 40 minutes away and saw it, no problemo.
Speculation runs rampant about why. Some say it's because MoviePass didn't want to let users enjoy the convenience of these theaters anymore. Some say it's because MoviePass wasn't paying their bills at these places so the theaters cut them off.
This story is still very much in the shadows, and only power-users are even aware of it at the moment. And for what it's worth, the eticketing theater 40 minutes from my town is still on the app.
More as it develops...
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Oh yeah, and MoviePass is being investigated by the New York Attorney General.
No biggie.
-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename
I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.
Unrelated to MoviePass but related to cell phones: Republic Wireless is a champion among cell providers. It's straightforward and cheap.
ReplyDeleteI like both of those things! We can only hope one day MoviePass becomes a cell provider.
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