MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 10 of ?)

There was just a wee little bit of activity in the MoviePass this week.

They got a new Executive Vice-President.

Someone took that job. Someone took ANY job with MoviePass. That's HUGE news. (In related news: new deck chairs recently added to the Titanic.)

Can't resist, here are some gems from a speech by this new kid on the MoviePass block:

"You may notice we’ve been out of the news for some time, and that’s been by design."

False. You have very much been in the news. A lot. Your "design" might just be faulty...

"At MoviePass, we’ve recently prioritized building toward a vision that aligns our success with greater consumption of entertainment."

People would be able to consume a whole lot more entertainment if you didn't shut down the app around 1pm EVERY DAY.

"I believe that the best marketing we can do, today and always, is to enhance our product and treat our subscriber as a member of something special"

LOLOLOL I can not possibly throw enough adolescent snark at the notion of this kooky random Calvinball/Dragon Poker company treating its subscribers as anything but unwilling subjects in their mad science experiment.

"It’s on us to regain their trust."

Well, on that we agree.

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MoviePass is going totally overboard with the ridiculous cross-promotions, going so far as to spam current AND former members this week with an offer to switch to T-Mobile.

HOWEVER: If you actually try to use your T-Mobile data plan, you will get blocked and the screen will say, "THERE ARE NO MORE DATAS AT THIS NETWORK TODAY."

Oh, they also spammed current and ex-customers with an offer to have someone walk your dog for three hours.

Not making that up.

That would be a great offer and a clever bit of synergy...if you could actually use MoviePass to get out for three hours and go see a movie. 

But nope. "THERE ARE NO MORE SCREENINGS AT THIS THEATER" now and forever!

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Saddest news of the week?

MoviePass disabled comments on their Instagram account.

This is heartbreaking, as reading the endless torrent of cathartic righteous rage burning its way through those hundreds of comments was one of the highlights of my day.

Guess I'll need to find a new source of dopamine. (I hear this "exercise" thing is good for that. Should I try it? Leave a comment below, and don't forget to subscribe!)

It's quite remarkable that it took them until now to learn that you can disable Instagram comments. It's been nothing but hate there since August.

I left a nice comment here and there when the service worked, but I am the 1% on that front.

Well...more like the .01%

*

There's a Big Story below, a game-changer, but so much nonsense went down with my experiences with the app/customer service this week, I'm gonna have to run through it all real quick. (You can skip to the next section if you want to get straight to the juicy Big Story stuff. But you'll hurt my feelings if you do.)

My app hasn't been displaying that "Bonus" movie banner on bonus movies. Ever. Until it updated this week. Why it no update? I no know.

But the bonus movie this week was a screening of the stage version of The King and I (You may know it better by its title Anna and the King. Or The Prince and Me.)

Bonus movies are ones that don't count against your monthly limit of three. So I am all over them, every time, even if they're pretentious social-commentary dramas or Coldplay documentaries.

So the wife and I (not the king and I, alas) went to the box office the minute it opened to get our bonus tickets. Hers? No problem. Mine? Problem.

Because--although it doesn't count toward your monthly three--I already got three tickets this month. So MoviePass tried to charge me for it. (Minus their "generous" $2 discount on the ticket, of course.)

I was not gonna let that aggression stand. I jumped on chat with customer service on the app. Look, I took a bus out there on my lunch break. (We recently dropped down to one car because life happens.) So I was NOT leaving without a ticket.

I went back and forth with customer service for over a half-hour. Many mortals would not exhibit that level of persistence and tenacity. Many mortals are not me. 

I got the runaround over and over and around and around. Waited. As requested, I sent screenshots of the app trying to charge for the bonus movie and of the email inviting me to the bonus movie. Waited.

MoviePass customer service performed candlelit rituals, uttering ancient arcane spells and curses in forgotten tongues in an attempt to break my will and get me to give up and disconnect. They failed. They underestimated my patience. 

Being in the lobby at Regal, I noticed I had a free small popcorn on my rewards account, so I treated myself to that while I waited. Munching happily, listening to podcasts in my earbuds while the wheels turned...

My request was forwarded to a "superior"...

And 32 minutes after contacting Customer Support...

They said to go ahead and check in and get the ticket. 

And they said that if I accidentally get charged, they said they would refund it, no problem. (Yes, I screenshotted the entire interaction.)

So that’s a win. Also while waiting, I found a receipt on the ground for $31 in concessions and manually entered the receipt number in on the theater app. That was 3100 reward account points to compensate me for my patience!

Too much winning! I'm like a regular Charlie Sheen over here! (See? I can make current references!)

*

Okay, Big Story starts here:

MoviePass scored an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. (So did Sinemia, btw.)

Apparently when you relentlessly screw over your customers all day, every day, that eventually takes a toll on your reputation as a company. (And sometimes makes them file class-action lawsuits against you.)

Who knew?

*

And speaking of failure, a funny thing happened to me this week...

MoviePass canceled my account!

And no, not for any arcane Terms of Service violations. (I NEVER EVER violated the Terms of Service, as far as you know.)

My account was deactivated because my annual period allegedly just ended.

I was charged for my annual plan on January 6, 2018 and they ended it on December 2, 2018.

They have a mighty curious definition of "annual."

This could explain a whole lot about the company, as it indicates a lack of understanding about basic notions of math and how many months exist within a calendar year. (Spoiler: it's TWELVE.)

I looked online and this early-annual-cancellation has apparently happened to multiple people now. No explanation.

So you better believe I got right in touch with customer service.

I was shut out of using the app (Unless I reactivated as a monthly user for $9.95 a month, haha, nope!), so I couldn't access chat there. I poked around their website and found a chat link there. Just like the in-app chat, you get about four robo-responses, then if you insist on it, you get an actual person.

I had no luck. The way their non-in-app chat works (once you get a person) is they ask you for your problem and say they'll get back to you. They never do. They say they'll look into it and for you to wait for an email that says your chat finally got a response. You wait. You get an email hours later. You jump on the chat to see their unhelpful response. You respond. No response.

Tired of that nonsense, I called.

Oh, you didn't know you could do that? Neither did I. The number is deeply buried, but sure enough, it's publicly available on their website. (646) 400-0801, if you were curious. Give 'em a call. Reach out and touch someone at MoviePass!

I got through to a human within minutes. The human even had a sense of humor. Back-and-forth and she "escalated" it to the "next tier" of customer support so we could "get on the same page."

Ma'am, I don't even want to read the same book if that book has you cutting off my annual account more than a month early.

She said they'd get back to me via email in less than 10 minutes. Surprise, they didn't. I called back hours later and went through the same rigamarole. Spent most of this call and the previous call on hold. Their hold music is this bizarre surreal chant with a female voice saying something like, "Queasy, queasy" every ten seconds. And listening to it makes you feel...QUEASY, QUEASY.

They kept insisting my account in fact started on December 2, 2017 even though I was charged for my annual account on January 6, 2018 (Oh, and I was charged monthly $9.95 fees on December 2, 2017 and January 2, 2018. Double bill much?)

This time she said the "escalated tier" would get back to me via email within 24 hours. Fine. Hours later, they did, and I actually got into some heated back-and-forth with the wiseguy on chat. I screenshotted the entire thing, in case I needed it later.

Another bunch of emails flew and finally someone got the facts and presented them to me straight.

And guess what?

MoviePass didn't actually cheat me.

Not exactly.

Here's what happened: turns out they only charged me $70.05 for my annual fee on January 6, 2018 instead of the normal $89.95 to subtract the two $9.95 monthly fees I paid on January 2, 2018 and December 2, 2017. And then backdated the start of my annual period to December 2, 2017. Meaning that technically, yes, it ended on December 2, 2018.

As a wise philosopher once said: ALRIGHTY THEN.

I think this bonkers-kablooey creative accounting probably accounts for everyone else I'm seeing who's reporting early endings on their annual account periods. MoviePass just randomly undercharged their annual fees and backdated the start date.

Mystery solved!

But still. Randomly cutting people's annual accounts off before they expect it with no explanation whatsoever, just a page on the app demanding they start paying a monthly fee to access the app?

Pretty poor customer service for a company that's been nothing but aces in that department so far. (Just joking.)

This also answers the question of how MoviePass will handle the end of the annual accounts, since almost everyone ended their accounts when things got bad back in August, except for the annual folks who stuck it out. The answer? MoviePass is proactively kicking them out and alienating them by demanding cash money to be let back in. Good strategy there. Beats being unable to cancel, a problem faced by many users back in jolly ol' summer of 2018.

As it stands, my MoviePass account remains inactive. I didn't cancel. It just lapsed. So I don't believe I have to wait nine months before re-joining like the other cancelers. I plan to just wait and see if the service ever gets better and rejoin then.

And I am surprisingly at peace about my tie being severed. Will be okay to watch this horrorshow from the sidelines for a while, if need be. (My wife has been monthly from the start and her account remains active, so I still have a window into this mess.) I got 99,000 Regal points and a bunch of advance tickets already purchased in my wallet, so I think I can survive the winter. This squirrel's been collecting nuts.

I've philosophized before about this. It's impossible to say what my past year+ would’ve been like without MoviePass. Probably one theater visit every month or two. Might have written 16 books instead of 15. FilmPass and the Cinemadness books probably wouldn’t exist. No way I would have paid for Annihilation (let alone seen it twice) as the trailer did NOT grab me. I found so many unexpected gems that I loved. 

Warts and all, I liked MoviePass even at three a month. But I'm willing to take a break since they kicked me off the unlimited plan without warning and then kicked me off the annual plan without warning. This abusive relationship needs some time to cool down before I start letting them abuse me again.

And the darndest part of this is that I just switched my account to my iPad so I could do the early check-in trick. CRAZY GOOD PRO-TIP COMING UP HERE...

Seriously, if you see movies on the MoviePass app early in the morning (the ones that always disappear later), tap the showtime you want and the "Check-In" button will appear. Turn off the phone (or better yet, your iPad since you might be able to resist not using it for a few hours but you'll NEVER be able to keep your paws off your phone that long) and then open it again at the theater. Get on their free Wi-Fi (or use your mobile phone as a personal hotspot for your iPad) and tap "Check-In." Even if that movie/showtime has since been purged from the app, your check-in will go through!

I finally mastered this and beat the app! Right in time for my account to end!

Isn't that life? As soon as you finally get good at something, that phase of your life is over and you have a new challenge you must face and master...

*

Speaking of which, did I mention I signed up for Sinemia?

After getting sued for canceling physical card usage and adding super-sketch $1.80 fees to every ticket purchased through their app (the only way customers could use to get tickets), Sinemia backed down and brought physical cards back. They also said they'll finally be hiring some people to work customer service since that aspect of the company is legendarily bad.

So, yes. I am a Sinemia member. And my physical card is on the way. Never thought I'd see the day, but here it is.

Ironically, I made this decision BEFORE MoviePass rudely dropped me. Was undecided about whether to stay with MoviePass as I took this Sinemia adventure, but MoviePass made the decision very easy for me.

So did Google. Check the first result from the screenshot below. Not Photoshopped.

Is this the end of the MoviePass story? Or just the beginning of the Sinemia story?

Probably both.

Tune in next week...


-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.

My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony McFakename books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but I only really post regularly on Instagram.