I am particularly joyful at this development because--while not a Sinemia customer--I have been keeping a close eye on the service. I raged when they dropped their price to $10/month for three tickets because that's a MoviePass-killer but no one was reading the fine print when they signed up. If they had, they would have seen that there were fees attached to every ticket on top of the monthly fee. It's like if MoviePass' notorious "surge pricing" were applied to every ticket you get every time.
But when they also started tacking an extra $1.80 "processing fee" on top of the ~$2 "convenience fee" and the monthly fee (and other scummy fees) a month or so ago, I wondered if that was the breakpoint. Sinemia was dealing a death blow to MoviePass--seducing customers away like a Pied Piper on crack--but screwing over their own customers while they did it. Per-ticket price on the MoviePass-equivalent $10 plan was going from the advertised $3.33 to $7.13. Would their customers actually tolerate that?
No! They sued! Yippee!
(Pro-tip for Sinemia: don't do customer-screwing shenanigans like that until you've ALREADY destroyed your competition and your customers have nowhere else to go.)
Now a bonus disturbing detail in that article announcing the class-action lawsuit: the author previously wrote a Business Insider article calling Sinemia out for its hidden fees and poor customer service and it looks like Sinemia responded by canceling their account.
I already felt iffy about Sinemia, but that level of petty retaliation against a journalist is something we'd expect from the President of the United States, not from a well-behaved business! (Haha, topical political humor! Rare for me! But it's non-partisan topical political humor because everyone on every side agrees the President doesn't like journalists, so let's not fight, okay?)
It's also chilling because it makes me wonder...if I try to sign up for Sinemia someday, will they deny me because I've written skeptically/irreverently about them in this here blog?
Thumbs down on your behavior there, Sinemia. All of it.
*
MoviePass is business as usual.
The owner canceled their stock split, the company is on the verge on delisting, bla bla bla.
Overlord and Halloween randomly showed up as available on the app yesterday, unscheduled. Some suspected it was a glitch, some suspected it's because it was Tuesday and most theater tickets are cheaper on Tuesday so MoviePass might have rolled the dice and thrown customers a cheap bone. Both movies were gone by 5pm and the app was shut down. So that was normal, at least.
And a few nights ago, I got to a theater to check in to a schedule-authorized film at 5:25pm and it disappeared between the time I left the house and arrived at the theater. No biggie. That happens to everyone all the time these past few months. And it usually leads people to rage-quit the service after being forced to buy a ticket out-of-pocket. Me? I just shrugged and decided not to see the movie. But that's always been my temperament. If I'm in a store and the line is too long or moving too slow, I put the item I was about to buy back on the shelf and walk out. No hard feelings, I just refuse to wait in line unless I 100% have to. And even then I avoid it.
Happily, though, my wife and I both scored tickets via the service last week and it looks likely we'll manage to keep getting our three a month. Rumors of MoviePass' death are very much exaggerated. People have been saying it's dying since August 2017. And it's still there. It's been around since summer 2011...so by August 2023, MoviePass will officially have been dying longer than it has been living. I look forward to that day. And when that day comes, I'm sure people will STILL be skeptical about the service. "Yeah, MoviePass lasted six years before the price drop/cinemadness and six years after the price drop/cinemadness. But it's gonna go bankrupt any day now. No way it'll last another six years."
Or it might go bankrupt by the time you read this! You never know!
It may get better someday (it may not), but for now: You have to be both strategic and determined to actually get the service you paid for from MoviePass. It is possible. Just hustle and get your ticket on your lunch break. And try to have an arthouse theater in your town. Sometimes the indie films that play there will show up on the app. If you don't have an arthouse theater, open one yourself.
You can do it! I believe in you!
-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.
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