This offer ALSO extends to people who CANCELED their accounts prior to December 1, 2018. So much for their whole "If you cancel, you can't rejoin for nine months" policy!
They're essentially rewarding disloyalty and punishing the people who stuck it out and didn't cancel. Interesting strategy, let's see if it works...
*
MoviePass also thought it would be cool to try advertising on Facebook for the first time.
Now they were sharp enough to finally shut down the comments on their Instagram posts. They were not sharp enough to shut down comments on their Facebook ad. If you click on the comments for this ad, you will behold a stream of hundreds of raging/mocking GIFS, photos, "no more screenings" screengrabs, and rants.
Essentially, MoviePass is focusing on roping in new suckers with this offer, with the promise that things will be different this time and the service will actually work in the new year. At least, it will work if you pay for one of the upcharged "premium" plans.
Time will tell!
In the meantime...maybe you should turn off the Facebook comments, Mr. MoviePass?
*
This isn't MoviePass' fault, but there was a weird movie release schedule this month. No major releases came out for three weeks straight (other than Possession of Hannah Grace the first week, which got such toxic reviews, even a horror junkie like me was wise enough to skip it) and then last weekend and this coming weekend roughly three blockbusters and a handful of mini-major releases are getting unleashed, on both weekends.
Now I'm not here to tell Hollywood how to do their job, but the first casualty of this ridiculous release schedule decision was Mortal Engines. That movie's studio had THREE free and clear weekends to release it, but NOOOOO, they had to wait until it was coming out head-to-head with the new Spider-Man movie and, to no one's surprise, it was completely crushed by the spider. It's estimated to be the biggest bomb of the year.
Which is a shame. Because I saw it and at no point was I unentertained. Check the preview. The movie's nuts! Yes, it's a generic YA dystopian and yes, it's not the most original plot. But...cities on wheels! Cloud cities! Sea cities! Cities shaped like spiders! Zombie cyborgs! Non-stop crazy plot developments! Girl power! What more do you want? This movie didn't deserve to be a megabomb. But the studio screwed it with the release date.
Bad studio, no cookie.
*
And here we go, the story you all came for...
I signed up for Sinemia.
Not a perfect process, but I survived.
You can choose whichever plan you want, and you can choose whatever additional fees you want to pay to get it activated early, cardless, or monthly instead of annual.
But I'm gonna walk you through the most fee-less way possible.
First off, some background info. Yes, I have been vocal with my anti-Sinemia feelings and thoughts in the past, in print and on this blog. I stand behind what I said at the time based on what Sinemia was doing at the time, but Sinemia has made some positive changes recently (while MoviePass has been getting progressively worse) that led me to go ahead and pull the trigger on joining.
The short version: Sinemia went "cardless" a few months ago and started forcing all users to pay a "processing fee" of $1.80 per ticket through the app on top of "convenience fees" from Fandango or Atom tickets or whoever.
Sinemia got sued.
Sinemia backed down.
Sinemia said okay, we'll bring back physical cards you can use at theaters to avoid the fees on our app (full disclosure: the cards cost $14.99, but that comes out to $1.25 over a year so that's not a bad deal and this is the ONLY additional Sinemia fee I recommend paying) and we promise to hire customer support staff so we can do more right by our customers.
You know what? I've heard good things about them lately. And they actually followed through on their promise and immediately and offered physical cards for members. (MoviePass used to apologize and send "Whoopsie" emails on a near-weekly basis, but they never actually changed anything, at least not for the better.) So I'll take a chance.
As the narrator on Jane the Virgin says: LET'S DO THIS.
Sinemia offers a Byzantine confusopoly of options, including family plans, elite plans, Monday-Thursday only plans, unlimited plans, and one-ticket-per-month plans.
Let's get the three-ticket-per-month plan, which is currently $8.99.
So far, so good.
Give them your info, something I hate doing to this day because you know it's getting intercepted by hackers and spyware and it's gonna get sold on the Russian deep web black market, but whatever, you do it anyway.
You get an email thanking you for signing up and saying you now have a Sinemia account and they'll activate it soon! Great!
Download the app, poke around, discover you can't really see much on it until your account is activated. Which will take about two weeks, unless you pay a $9.99 "early activation fee." (Ha-ha. But seriously, don't do that. Be patient.)
Now, time to get that physical card...
Uh, how do you do that?
Look all over the account activation page, the personal profile page, search every FAQ entry on physical cards.
You can find instructions for how to USE your physical card.
You can find a link for REGISTERING your physical card.
But nowhere on the site or in the FAQ is there a place where you can actually ORDER a physical card.
That's a capital-F Fail. Right off the bat.
Time to contact customer support.
You discover that they bend over backwards to avoid revealing their customer service email address anywhere on the site. The only way to get through to them is to scroll to the bottom of their FAQ page, where there's a "Contact" link, which leads to a page where you can put your name and title and message.
Ugh, fine.
Fill out all the fields, finish your message inquiring about how to get a physical card, and click "Send"...
And the fields all disappear!
Your name is gone, title gone, message...ALL GONE!
No notification that your message was sent or received.
So you try it again. Once more...ALL GONE!
Reload the page from a separate link. Try yet again...ALL GONE!
All fields on the screen deleted.
Look at the signup email they sent and find an actual email address on there. Send the message to that address IN ADDITION TO replying to the signup email.
Place your bets on which of these five attempts to contact Sinemia gets the first response...
Ready? And...
Turns out the first response is a response to your response to their initial welcome message. But it's only an acknowledgement that they got your question and will get back to you soon.
Note that.
(Also note: It has now been almost three weeks since I sent that message and I never did get a response to any of the five contact attempts, nor to the subsequent time I contacted them two weeks later. I also contacted them on their Twitter customer support account and got crickets. They have apparently not hired new customer support staff yet.)
Some time passes and you decide to jump online and see if anyone outside Sinemia can answer your question. Your search leads you to the Sinemia reddit page, where the denizens were all aflutter about the physical cards. On one of these threads, discover that there is a "Membership" tab hidden between all the tabs that SOUND like they'd be the places to order a physical card. Go back to Sinemia, open this "Membership" tab and finally, buried as deeply as it could be buried, there is an "Order a Physical Card" link.
They really, really don't want you to order a physical card. They want you to pay those sweet, sweet per-ticket fees on the app.
The wording on the card-buying page is super-shifty, basically threatening to change the fees and terms at any time. Yee-haw.
(Update: they didn't send the card within the promised 1-2 weeks, to no one's surprise. But 2.5 weeks in, I finally got an email from them saying the card is on the way. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I will have the card and be able to report if it works by next blog.)
I'm pre-emptively fine with all the crazy Sinemia stuff that's gonna happen over the next year. The money spent to join was a birthday present, so the 36 movies I'm gonna see with this unpredictable Turkish company over the next year are all basically free.
Plus, it's an adventure. Ups and downs are inevitable. And in case my books and blogs don't make this abundantly clear...I like a cinematic adventure.
*
-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.
All I could think of during your description of Mortal Engines was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShAeafYCqxk
ReplyDeleteMortal Engines >>> Jupiter Ascending
ReplyDeletecreativity of writer is purely impressive. It has touched to the level of expertise with his writing. Everything is up to the mark. Written perfectly and I can use such information for my coming assignment.
ReplyDeleteSell tickets