Netflix said on Thursday it will ask customers who have not watched anything on its platform for a year whether they want to keep their membership and automatically cancel the subscription if they don’t receive any confirmation.
The streaming service said it will also reach out to customers who haven’t streamed anything in more than two years. Members will be intimated via emails or in-app notifications this week.
“We’ve always thought it should be easy to sign up and to cancel. We hope this new approach saves people some hard earned cash” said Eddy Wu, director, product innovation at Netflix.
Losing these customers isn’t expected to impact the company’s subscriber base, since these members represent only a few hundred thousand users, or less than 0.5% of its overall member base that stood at 182.9 million for the quarter ending March 2020, Wu said in an official blog post.
Wu said that the service will retain favorites, profiles, viewing preferences, and account details for all cancelled accounts for 10 months, making it easier for members to rejoin the service should they choose to return within that period.
The Los Gatos, California-based streaming giant had added a record 15.8 million paid subscribers across the world in the quarter ended March 2020, as people were confined to their homes due to the lockdown curbs to stem the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company however had warned that the subscriber surge in Q1 could come at the cost of slower growth in the coming quarters once the lockdown restrictions are lifted in each country.
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