MoviePass Slashes the Price 20% – With One Caveat
MoviePass has been all the rage lately, going from around 20,000 users to over 1.5 million in the last 5 months. The program allows you to see one movie every 24 hours for a flat monthly fee. It is a pretty amazing program that I wrote a review on it a few months ago.
I signed up for MoviePass at $9.95 billed every month. They have recently reduced the price by 20%, to $7.95 a month. There is one caveat with this new deal though.
UPDATE: It looks like they charge a $9.95 processing fee bringing the total to $105.35 or $8.78 a month. Only a 12% discount instead of 20%
New Offer Details
It looks like this is a “limited time” offer. I put that in quotations because they don’t specify how long it will last. I would guess they have a target for number of subscribers they are shooting for and they will pull it once they hit that number.
The new deal is $7.95 a month, 20% cheaper, but the caveat is that you are billed for the full year upfront ($95.40). This may turn some people off, not being able to test the waters and cancel after a month etc.
This offer is a little bit more expensive than the Costco deal ($89.99) that I talked about in my review. But that seems to be sold out online for the time being, although there may still be some available in stores. This is still an improvement for non Costco members though.
Issues with this Offer
There are a few potential issues with this offer:
- As previously mentioned you can not test it out and then cancel
- You may be able to cancel and get a prorated refund but MoviePass’ customer service has not been very good so I wouldn’t count on it.
- MoviePass has been shutting down “abusers” and it is unclear if you would get refunded if shut down.
- If MoviePass goes out of business at any point you lose out on the money you gave them in advance.
- They have removed a few theaters from the program already. More may be removed in the future, including your favorite theater. This is most likely only in big time markets like NYC and LA.
On the liquidity point it sounds like MoviePass has a deep pocketed investor so I wouldn’t worry about it in the short term. They are probably getting enough cash flow from these yearly sign ups to float it for a while anyways. Their goal is to get subscribers into month 4 and 5 when they become more profitable, only going to one or two movies per month.
Conclusion
I have enjoyed my MoviePass membership immensely, going to one movie a week for $10 a month. But others have had issues with MoviePass and their customer service department. That is something to consider when you are shelling out $100 for a yearly service.
Knowing what I know now I would probably prefer this deal over the $9.99 per month plan but I haven’t had any issues thus far. I may be singing a different tune if I had run into some issues and was unable to get it resolved.
What do you think? Is this a better offer or do you like the monthly billing better?
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I live in Washington and our nice theatre with seats that recline and foot rests is $16.50. I’ve had movie pass less than a month and seen at least 7 movies. Even if it stopped tomrrow I will still be so far ahead. It’s worked flawlessly. I recently asked someone at the front desk of the theatre how many people are showing MoviePass and she said somewhere around 50 percent. So clearly it’s catching on. Letting people stay grandfathered in to $9.95 only helps promote to the people who are unsure about paying $105. I can and frequently do vouche for it when speaking to people. As someone else mentioned I think a lot more money comes back from concessions. At the theatre I go to they have a full menu you can order from with meals no less than $8 and you can order beers to if you decide. So I’m guessing places like this it’s easy to spend more then you would have on a ticket which more then makes up for the lost income from ticket sales. I actually think this could stay around if more people sign up. MoviePass just needs to work out deals with theatres in the long run to keep it viable.
I think you win highest ticket price contest – at least the highest I have seen :).
Thanks for the comment – You would think theaters would give them a massive discount on the ticket prices to get people to the concession stands where they make $12 for a 50 cent tub of popcorn.
Lol that’s not even the highest, they have a living room theater that has couch type seating (which I don’t like) they are $18.50!
And I agree with your point. Giving a discount on ticket price is the same concept Vegas uses to get people there and then they spend way more money while there. Seems to work for them.
I’ll wait and buy the Blu Ray for that price lol
For a married couple it is essentially $20 per month. We go about once per month and the little theater in town charges about $7 per head at the time that works best for us. If we lived in a more expensive location and had plenty of choices, then we might get the moviepass thing, but it really does not work for us.
True it has to make sense. I used to go to 4-5 movies a year because of the cost of it. Now I go to 3-4 per month. If you would want to go to more movies per month then this can help change your pattern but if 1 is all you want or have time for it wouldn’t really work (unless movies are $12-14 a piece)
The question is whether moviepass will be around by the summer and whether they can survive it. I can just imagine thousands of parents buying their kids a pass for the 2 months of summer and kids going ever day to the movies. That would destroy the program.
I think that would prolong it actually. Since they are charging the full year up front they could take the hit and then once school started back up their usage would drop off big time.
People have been using Moviepass for years (before it was “mainstream” and so cheap), so I’m not worried about it.
Been with them over a year already and it’s paid off. Others used to be members when it was $20 a month years ago and they’re still around.
I think people are just worried because they keep lowering the price and there is no way it can be profitable at 8 or 10 dollars a month.
Movie theaters make all their profit with the concession stand. When there are empty seats it’s to their advantage to let people watch the show for free.
It’s a GREAT deal. I was skeptical of it but it’s worked well. I just don’t see how they will stay in business for the long term. I heard a “big data” company owns the majority of it but really I’m not sure what can honestly be gleaned as there is not really any useful data, IMHO as people I know that use it are going to any movie they can even if it doesn’t necessarily appeal to them.
I myself went to 10 movies last month in my first month of it. The movie theatre where I go is $14 a movie. I know others that go to at least 5 to 7 movies a month with it. I didn’t know if it goes belly up that you’d lose your $100. I’d have to believe that you could just dispute it with your credit card and they would refund the difference. Also, hard to believe Costco wouldn’t stand by their customers in the event it went out of business. You’d think at least they would do a pro-rated refund.
Honestly, I don’t expect it to be in business long and really don’t care. I’m enjoying as many movies as I can. I typically didn’t go to many movies. Maybe 4 or 5 per YEAR but I’d make sure they are all good movies. Now I’ll just go to any movie even if I heard it sucks (i.e. 15:17 to Paris, Call me by your Name, etc).
Wife and I only go on average 2 times a month and at $80/year it’s still a good value and that’s why we pulled the trigger. Based on $14/ticket the break even point is about 6 movies. We could go once a month and it would still be valuable.
Not everyone has the ability to go as much as they want and that’s what they’re banking on though. Same idea behind a food buffet.
MoviePass is a great deal but in reality it is a Ponzi scheme. Ill risk $10 but not $100. I’ll be in shock if they are still in business a year from now.
I kind of feel the same way but I think they are counting on people forgetting about it after the newness of it wears off. They are also buying rights to some movies and then pushing them on users etc.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I think they will be around for a year…I don’t know about renewing it in year two though.