Netflix announces price hike, existing customers remain unaffected for two years

Himanshu Arora

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Netflix has finally announced the details of its expected price hike. Cost is rising by $1, £1, and €1 in the US, UK, and Europe respectively. The changes were announced in an email sent to customers in these regions.

The good news is that if you're already a Netflix subscriber, you won't have to shell out that extra bit for the next two years. However, it should be noted that the price exempt is only guaranteed as long as you remain a member on your current plan. Should you decide to take a break, you'll have to resubscribe at the new price structure.

The increase means that new users will now have to pay $8.99 per month in the US, £6.99 per month in the UK, and €8.99 in mainland Europe.

The company is offering a $7.99 plan that restricts your streaming resolution to SD, and lets you stream to only one screen at a time.

The hike in subscription fees shouldn't be a surprise as the company had already announced plans to increase its prices in a letter to investors issued last month.

The move will give Netflix the opportunity to add more films and TV programs, with Nurse Jackie, Only God Forgives, and the second season of Orange is the New Black coming to the service soon.

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That isn't bad. I like the way that they're handling it by allowing current customers to stay at the original rate for a while instead of flicking a switch and changing prices mid-month.
 
Not really a big price increase. I was expecting 20-30% price increase if they want to do all the things they + the fact that they started paying US ISPs tons of cash for bandwidth.

now all I need is for then to come to my country too.
 
Looks like Netflix learned a lesson when it changed terms overnight, a couple of years ago.

OTH this increase is justified and takes the already existing subscribers into account.
 
I always liked Netflix. They are very considerate when it comes to their customers. And it's only a dollar increase. Not horrible. Could be what cable companies do...increase their rates, don't tell you about it till they have already billed you the higher amount then expect you to be happy. Yeah uhh no.
 
Not really a big price increase. I was expecting 20-30% price increase if they want to do all the things they + the fact that they started paying US ISPs tons of cash for bandwidth.

Funny we already paid for that speed, or I thought we did.
 
Wish I got away with paying for bandwidth the same way netflix did for years.... Now they are paying for it... My data cap is 200GB and I have to pay $2 per 10GB I use once I pass my data cap wish I had nothing to pay like netflix :)
 
To be honest, even if they did increase the service mid-month by $1, I wouldn't mind. With them adding a ton of content, I would also say it's justified.
 
I am a US resident, and my wife told me about this plan about two weeks ago. We were planning on signing up for Netflix in the near future, so we did sign up about a week ago.

I received an e-mail from Netflix today that states that they are raising rates, and that we will not be affected by the rate increase for two years.

So, the two year clause applies to everyone in the US, too.
 
Let's see how that goes. First they didn't charge tax then one day they did. Better not start charging me other fees to jack-up the so called $7.99 even more. So in 2 years it's going to be $9.99 or $12.99 a month plus tax and fees. I am not using Netflix 100% though. I got to consider if it worth it. OTA HD has THISTV, 24/7 movies Free.

The Six Million Dollar Man and Bonic Women on daily. Neither Netflix or Amazon had those running. Right now I got my PCs running as media box and can watch anything from Youtube on HDTV. Some guy on youtube made his own Star Trek Series each one around 4 hrs long though.

A lot of them doing that now making their own productions to continue the series. I don't see Netflix offering these. I like Netflix when they weren't so huge, now they're growing and the greed will start asking for more money from it's customers. Just watch and see. $1 a month equals $12 a year. Right now that's just $12 it could be $144 extra. You never know?
 
Careful what you wish for, this path that the US seems to be going down with respect to net neutrality is a slippery slope and you would be kidding yourself to think that it is anything more that an attempt to boost the profits and control of the major cable / internet providers.

If you are paying for 200G of data per month then that 200G is paid for. If the ISP then charges Netflix for data (to you) the ISP is double dipping; both parties are paying for the exact same bits to travel the network. The charge to Netflix is passed on to you their customer, so it is in fact you that pays twice.

When the ISP introduces this multi-tiered cost structure it becomes impossible for the consumer to accurately compare products and pricing from the ISP and this is exactly what they want. We currently see something similar in mobile phone plan pricing.

Try comparing mobile phone plans when each contains a different cap, flag-fall per call, rate per 30sec of talk, rate per distance, data cap, overage prices. When ISP's begin charging service providers (Netflix, Steam, Youtube, Origin, Skype, Dropbox etc. etc) all at different rates, with different levels of QoS and then charge you the customer again on different plans - how can you compare any of this? Will ISP (a) have good Netflix but horrible Steam gaming but reasonable overage charges, but ISP (b) has bad Netflix, good Steam gaming, horrible Skype but unlimited cap.

What if you pay for Netflix but your ISP is in an agreement to provide Hulu priority bandwidth, will you have to pay out your contract and change ISP's to one that has priority with Netflix?

Now lets say the ISP introduces it's own version of a competing product (say Netflix) and gives that service priority bandwidth, while charging their competitor a fee. With the control that Time Warner and Comcast hold over internet in the US and the fact that both are media / content empires, will they push services like Indy Films and Netflix out of business? If it starts here, where does it end; what is the price to the consumer, innovation and indeed the US Tech economy.
 
Not really a big price increase. I was expecting 20-30% price increase if they want to do all the things they + the fact that they started paying US ISPs tons of cash for bandwidth.

now all I need is for then to come to my country too.
Yeah I was expecting a larger increase.
 
The increase is worth it, because now I will be able to download the next series of House of Cards from Pirate Bay, as well as a lot of other stuff in HD:D.
 
I had got a message from Netflix saying thank you for being a Netflix customer. To bring you more movies an etc we have to increase the current rate to $1 more. For being a current customer such a long time you current rate will not be increased for the next 2 years. So I am good until this time in 2016. By then I bet it will be $2 more just have to wait and see?
 
I honestly don't mind. I would gladly pay $20 a month if that included a more broad selection of movies. I just want to minimize my program list to watch the movies and TV shows I want to watch.
 
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