The Death Knell of Movie Pass
The once innovative subscription based company Movie Pass has had a horrendous fall from grace in just a matter of weeks. The twist and turns of Movie Pass soon-to-be downfall would be worthy of a Mel Brook’s comedy….if, you know, real people weren’t losing lots of money.
It was a great idea. Customers pay a monthly price of – roughly the equivalent of a single ticket – and are able to see a movie every day at their local cinema. Why pay the full price every time when you can do it only once a month? What could go wrong with that?
Well….a whole lot apparently. Surprising exactly no one except the owners of Movie Pass, the company has been haemorrhaging money and looks to be awaiting its last rites. The company has tried a myriad of ways to stop the bleeding but many speculate the wounds are just too severe. Initially, the service offered a movie a day. It then introduced surge pricing where customers would have to pay a small fee on top of the monthly fee for movies that were in high demand. Finally, it moved it down to three movies a month, which at the price is still a bargain. However, recently The New York Post reported that when customers tried to use the pass it often resulted in being given ONLY a choice of two specific movies at a given theater.
So a customer may have only the choice to watch Slender Man or The Spy Who Dumped Me with their pass. The CEO of movie pass Mitch Lowe told the paper: “Unfortunately, in order to stay financially stable we’ve had to curtail the service. We had to right the ship as far as the amount of money we were burning. This has been a challenging time for us and our customers. We’re just trying to save our service to be able to be available long term.”
It is no surprise then that customers started cancelling their subscriptions. Movie Pass has seemingly gone back to its 3-movie-a-month plan, but the story doesn’t end there. Business Insider is reporting that people have recently cancelled their subscriptions are being re-enrolled into their 3-month plan, without their consent. When they try to cancel again they receive an error message, thus making it impossible to cancel the service.
Now, after reporting a loss this quarter (ending June 30th 2018) of a whopping $126.6 million dollars a class action lawsuit has been filed. Believing he and other investors were misled about the company, shareholder Jeffery Braxton filed suit against Movie Pass CEO Ted Farnsworth and CFO Stuart Benson.
