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Media The Almighty Buck United States

Netflix Ends Free Trials In the US (cnet.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the no-more-handouts dept.
Netflix has ended free trials for new customers in the U.S., after years of giving away the first month of its service free. CNET reports: The streaming service's U.S. sign-up page said trials are no longer available, with Netflix instead touting how it lets you cancel anytime at not cost. "We're looking at different marketing promotions in the United States to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience," a Netflix spokeswoman said Tuesday. The end of free trials in the U.S. was reported earlier Tuesday by TV Answer Man.

Netflix, the world's biggest subscription video service with more than 192 million paying members, was increasingly an outlier among its rivals by offering a month-long free trial. As a raft of new rival services have launched in the last year, many set their free trial periods at a single week, including HBO Max and NBCUniversal's Peacock. And Disney Plus, as strong growth lifted its number of subscribers above its initial projections way earlier than expected, stopped offering free trials altogether in June.
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Netflix Ends Free Trials In the US

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  • No surprises here. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by segin ( 883667 ) <segin2005@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:17AM (#60605572) Homepage
    Netflix has enough brand recognition for both itself and for it's content, and to the nature of it's content, that free trials probably no longer make sense. You know what you're getting, just pay for it. Also, first post.

    • Who?

    • Netflix has enough brand recognition for both itself and for it's content, and to the nature of it's content, that free trials probably no longer make sense. You know what you're getting, just pay for it. Also, first post.

      Cracking open the Netflix catalog is kind of like stepping into a large deep sandbox.

      The only thing you know, is there's a shitload of content, with an emphasis on shit, since sequels and remakes is pretty much what defines Hollywood now.

    • Amazon still gives free trials for Prime.

  • My bad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:19AM (#60605580) Journal
    36 email addresses, 36 empty prepaid cards. 3 years of free netflix. I'm sure a shitton of people abused it.

    • Re:My bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by umafuckit ( 2980809 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @04:54AM (#60605738)
      Sounds like far too much effort, TBH.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        You would be shocked at how far some people go to get something for free.

        Part of the problem was that Netflix wasn't properly verifying the emails first. When I signed up for Netflix last year, I didn't get my free month because someone had already used my email address. I did a password recovery and then Netflix support deleted the account since it was in Turkish. I signed up again, they said I would get the month for free but that never happened.

        The best part is, that they never actually had access to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        I have to be honest on the effort front. I already own most of the content being streamed. I could not be botherd ripping it to hard disk or getting up to change DVDs, paying for a DVD changing service couple of dollars a week, worth it. I just swap them around.

      • I used to offer a 7 day free trial for one of my software apps. People would start with xyz1@freemailprovider.whatever and just go through xyz2, xyz3 and so on, for month after month. I blocked some IP addresses now and then, but in the end I ditched the free trial.
      • many people have more time than money. Might be too much effort for you or I but I am betting there were many thousands doing this.
    • Why not just use .torrent?

    • Grr... guys like this are the reason why Google's free cloud hosting trial is so weak now. You used to be able to spend your $300 of hosting credits on whatever you wanted, but now they have restrictions on number of and size of the instances you can run.

  • "We're looking at different marketing promotions in the United States to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience,"

    They A/B tested "great" vs. "crappy" experience and the former seems to score higher.

    [ They're still testing Netflix vs. Amazon Prime ... ]

  • Really? Who cares, when most of people here joined years, if not a decade ago?

  • Doctor Who (Score:3)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @04:01AM (#60605650) Homepage
    Bring back Doctor Who, Netflix you bastards!

    • Bring back Doctor Who, Netflix you bastards!

      I have a better idea, Hollywood.

      Bring back originality, you lazy bastards.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hydrian ( 183536 )
      Not NetFlix's fault. I'm sure they would love to have it back. The BBC is notorious for jumping providers / rolling their own to get the best deal. It makes it shitty for the customer, especially the non-British customers.

    • That's the BBC's fault, not Netflix.

  • "Free" eh? (Score:3)

    by EmoryM ( 2726097 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @04:48AM (#60605726)
    I agree that Netflix shouldn't be paying for the bandwidth. Absolutely do not stick a condom on your browser, fire up yandex.com and search for the name of the show you want + "free stream" - it is definitely not that trivially easy to watch all original content from the growing multitudes of streaming services.

  • Netflix (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @05:21AM (#60605774) Homepage

    Did a free trial a couple of years ago, when I moved house and literally had no entertainment. No TV, no streaming services.

    I trialled TVPlayer (all UK TV channels streamed) on a vastly-reduced deal, and Netflix for free for 3 months. And it was over the Christmas period, so I wanted to watch something most days.

    I spent more time watching things like the original Ghostbusters and stuff like that than anything else. Literally re-runs of stuff that was probably re-run for the millionth time on TV at the same time. I tried a couple of Netflix originals, they didn't get past the opening episode for many, and for some not even 10 minutes in. Everything else was just stuff I had elsewhere or had seen.

    The other stuff they offered was of little interest. I think I watched one "big" movie that I hadn't seen before that was vaguely worth watching (can't even remember what that was).

    It certainly wasn't worth the GBP 5.99 that it would have cost to continue it, even just for myself.

    When the trials/deals expired I cancelled the services. I put the money I'd saved NOT buying Netflix into buying other things instead. Still never bought a TV. I have an RPi with tvHeadend on a Kodi box (which isn't full of illegal streaming plugins because I don't do that either) which does all my live TV / DVR things.

    So still in the same place - Netflix still just something I wouldn't pay for. I have a few purchased movies / series on Google Play, a few more on Amazon, and I have Amazon Prime which fulfils all the "Netflix gap". I actually find it better than Netflix but still don't use it very much at all - it's just there "for free" because Prime is worth it for the delivery savings alone for myself.

    I don't get the attraction, and I had it for three months when I was penniless, on my own, off-work, with no other entertainment and looking specifically for some kind of TV/movie distraction.

    • Re:Netflix (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:47AM (#60606048)
      The strength of their catalog has gone up and down over time depending on the deals going on with other content providers. These days they have more quality stuff, but I agree that there's a lot of chaff. I think they're trying to avoid the problem HBO has with just having a few high quality shows in that HBO is one that many people will binge for a month or two and then unsubscribe for the rest of the year.
  • Never tried it and apparently never will

  • So what... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @05:49AM (#60605816)
    So what, they ran out of shows to cancel after a season so they've moved to cancelling other stuff?

  • Ah, man (Score:3)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @09:45AM (#60606184) Homepage

    Next thing you know AOL's going to quit sending out free cds.

  • Dont Worry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 ) on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @09:51AM (#60606208)

    They still have free trials available on the Pirate Bay.

  • I didn't need all the 7 days to find out Disney+ was rubbish. It only took a day. Well, less than a day; it was more like an hour. Yeah, Netflix probably should have ended the free trial long ago. There probably isn't anybody now that doesn't know what Netflix is or has a good idea of what they would be getting. Of all the streaming services, I still think it has the best content. I sub and unsub from the others when they have something I think is worth watching. When Disney gets the Mandolorian again the

  • guess my days of using different email addresses for free trials are over.

  • They don't really have much of anything worth watching, so they want you to pay at least a month and before you realize it.

    I had been a subscriber for 15+ years and just canceled. I should have canceled years ago, but was too lazy. I tried for a good month to find something to watch. A few comedy specials were interesting, but none of their recent original shows or movies are even halfway decent. Most are cringe-worthy attempts with poor writing, poor acting and what appears to be a plot that didn't get any

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