After months of warning, Australians now need to pay $7.99 extra for sharing Netflix accounts between households.
Netflix explained in an announcement this morning that subscribers who share accounts across multiple households have now received an email with instructions on the next steps. As previously reported, sharing account details with people not in your household is technically against the streaming company’s terms and conditions. Up to now, it has not been enforced.
There was some initial confusion over how Netflix would act on its recent crackdown. To begin with, only a few regions were made to pay extra, including our neighbours in New Zealand. Now, the measures have been rolled out globally.
Netflix sharing details explained
Netflix included several details about account sharing in its recent email to subscribers. First, the company reiterated the definition of a household, explaining that it’s “for you and the people you live with”. Notably, this excludes family members or friends who live elsewhere.
One option outlined by Netflix is to transfer an individual’s profile into a separate fully paid subscription. This enables you to retain saved preferences and your watch history. Another option is to purchase an extra member for an additional $7.99 per month specifically for someone who doesn’t live with you. Bear in mind, however, you need to have a Standard Netflix plan at a minimum, as this option is not offered to anyone on the Basic with ads subscription.
On account sharing and access, Netflix clarified several points in its official announcement.
“A Netflix account is for use by one household. Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are – at home, on the go, on holiday – and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices.”
Whether this generates a domino effect among other streaming companies enacting similar policies remains to be seen. Let us know what impact this has on you and if you’ll continue your Netflix subscription going forward.
For about 4 months Netflix stopped working on my shared account by displaying non sense and clueless messages.
People will never learn that pay to view subscriptions will soon or later lead to cyber bullying because once the fat corporate reach a big volume of customers, they will make rules that always translate to more money!
We saw this happened with DVD and Blu-Ray movies where right fees were already paid to the fat corporate BUT you may not use a disc purchased from X country to Y country!
Piracy is always the solution because that is the result of the fat corporate cyber bullying!