New survey shows nearly half of MoviePass users considering canceling

Hollis Johnson/Business
Insider

• A new National Research Group survey found that nearly
  half of MoviePass subscribers were considering canceling the
  service, and less than half were satisfied with it.
• That’s a sharp drop from NRG’s first survey in April,
  which found that 83 percent of MoviePass subscribers were
  satisfied.
• Former users who already canceled cited constant rule
  changes as a reason, and those who remained didn’t find the
  service trustworthy anymore.

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Movie-theater subscription service MoviePass has faced a series
of controversies recently, and subscribers seem ready to abandon
ship if they haven’t already.

According to a new National Research Group poll, first cited
by The Hollywood Reporter, nearly
half of MoviePass users (47 percent) were considering canceling
their subscriptions, and only 48 percent were satisfied with the
company.

The latter number is quite low compared to NRG’s first survey in April,
in which an impressive 83 percent of MoviePass users said they
were more satisfied with it compared to other subscription
services like Netflix. Those surveyed said that they were seeing
more films than they had before MoviePass, and more diverse
films at that.

For this new survey, NRG surveyed 1,558 moviegoers in
August, including 424 MoviePass customers and 100 former
customers who had recently canceled. Those who canceled cited the
constant rule changes as a reason, and those who remained with
the service told NRG they no longer found MoviePass reliable or
trustworthy.

While MoviePass has certainly gotten more people into movie
theaters, it has struggled to financially sustain itself in
recent months, and the dramatic changes and inconsistent business
model have driven some subscribers away. In an effort to stay
afloat, MoviePass announced last month that it would raise its price from $9.95 a
month to $14.95 and restrict popular films when they were first
released. It quickly rolled back those changes,
however. Now, the price will stay at $9.95 but users are
restricted to three films a month.

As MoviePass transitions to this new plan, it has caused further
headaches for subscribers. For the time being, MoviePass posts a
schedule each week to its website with what films are available
each day on the service, and the titles and number of films can
vary. MoviePass is also in the process of converting annual subscribers
to its new monthly plan.