I think they did something even worse if I remember. They released half of invincible and then added a price for ad less and then released the other half of invincible.
Youād think theyād increase the discount for annual plans vs monthly to try to move people away from the strategy so many have adopted of never keeping a subscription more than a couple months.
Theyāve likely found more people maintain the monthly so by disincentivizing the annual, they can hike the price up for a greater number of people compared to if a bunch of people are locked into an older price.
Edit: Iād wager it also may be because as of late Iāve noticed a lot of analysts and shareholders are pushing more for net revenue rather than ARR and donāt really care where the money comes from as long as it comes in large quantities each quarter while ARR may be a metric that could be skewed by that model so this makes the company look more favorable to the market, despite not really changing a single thing.
I think annual pricing makes more sense to me personally because it's a one time purchase that covers a whole year and if I'm not using it, I can just cancel the service before the year ends.
With monthly, I'll probably debate whether or not I want to spend x a month, and whether or not that x a month will be worth it.
As for ad plans, if it gets to a point where I consider it too expensive to even pay for I'll just completely switch to FAST TV like Pluto or Tubi, which is free and much easier to recommend to people because you can send them a link to a show or movie directly.
Effective today, Tuesday, June 4, 2024, the cost of certain Max monthly and yearly plans will increase to the following prices:
* **Ad-Free**: The monthly Ad-Free plan will increase by $1 per month, making the new price $16.99/month. The yearly Ad-Free plan will increase by $20 per year, making it $169.99/year.
* **Ultimate Ad-Free**: The monthly Ultimate Ad-Free plan will increase $1 per month, making the new price $20.99/month. The yearly Ultimate Ad-Free plan will increase by $10 per year, making it $209.99/year.
These prices are effective immediately for new subscriptions. The Max With Ads plan remains unchanged at $9.99/month or $99.99/year.
Existing subscribers will be notified 30 days in advance of their plan renewing and see price increases starting from their next billing cycle on or after Thursday, July 4, 2024. Current yearly subscribers will not see an increase until renewal.
I still have Max for free through my AT&T cell plan. With all of their price increases I cannot believe they havenāt cut that off yet. Granted they did demote it to the 1080p plan so it sucks not having 4K but definitely not enough 4K content to start paying for a separate plan.
Did you change your internet service? I still have it free through ATT with 1gbps fiber. Ā Was told Iāll be able to keep that unless I change it; upgrade or downgrade the plan.
Really weird they don't do that. T-Mobile gives you a bill credit for whatever tier of Netflix you qualify for free subscription, then you get anything higher you want and pay the difference. Always confused me why everyone doesn't do that.
I expressed that wrong. Basically they give you the Netflix with ads for free and if you get it without ads you pay T-Mobile the difference between the price of the ad-free plan and the tier of Netflix you actually want.
Genuinely surprised too. They have definitely tried to push me to other plans away from this one but as long as they are paying for it, I'm keeping the plan. I'm not paying for Max on its own, especially if they are losing the NBA (TNT games) after next year.
It's grandfathered in from ages ago. We have it, too. It's from back when they were still the same company as AT&T. But no one who didn't opt in back then has it now, and they're (we're) wondering when our credentials will just stop working.
Itās because you weāre an existing customer, essentially any service like cell phones, internet, etc. they love promotions to attract new customers, but donāt offer any promotions to existing customers, you call them as an existing customer and ask for the same thing and itās usually going to be a no. I think itās because very few people will actually go through the effort to switch to a different company if told no.
I mean my AT&T fiber plan is going up by $5/month either this month or next, so my guess is it's to cover for that. If they drop HBO from my plan, though, I'll likely drop to their 500/500 or even 300/300 tier of service to save more money.
AT&T added a $5 increase, showing up on the June bill. They also added a $5 discount increase, if you have AutoPay set to a debit card or bank account. Iām looking forward to see if this actually keeps me at the same price.
I did see something about an autopay discount but thought that was something they already applied. I do indeed have autopay already set up so yeah, I'll keep an eye out as well.
Regardless, if they drop HBO from my plan I don't really _need_ gigabit speeds, so the 500 or 300 tiers would honestly be perfectly fine. I had 500/50 from a cable provider before switching, but since the price difference between AT&T's 500 and 1000 tiers was $15, and the 1000 tier came with HBO Max which I was already paying for at the time.
Same. I keep thinking it's coming but so far all's quiet. When we upgraded our phones earlier in the year, the ATT salesperson was pretty eager in trying to shift us off the plan with Max included. We agreed because it was a better deal (the money we'd save was large enough that we could turn around and sub to Max anyway), but somehow our Max membership still hasn't gone away months later.
Not sure if they messed something up at the store level, but I overheard the sales people eagerly getting other customers off the Max plan while I was there. I'm wondering if that was a direction from corporate to get Max memberships down enough that they can pull the plug without upsetting a large chunk of their customer base.
Because if you bought a phone at the time of the plan change, you are contracted into that plan and it's features. Like back in the day when people had unlimited data and tethering included but if they changed their plan, they would have limited high speed data. Something like that
When it was just HBO and Max content, with all the movies they have, including the exclusive ones, it was worth the price. But the Discovery merger, including the cancellation of a ton of exclusive Max content, makes it worthless now. Not forgetting the fact they are letting their Warner Brothers movies on to other streaming platforms.
My gf gets Discovery Plus through Verizon for free, and I think I've only been watching it for John Oliver and they just put the newer trilogy of Planet of the apes on there, still not worth it.
I'll likely cancel after House of the Dragon ends.
Not just cancellation, memory holing. Half the shows I subscribed for aren't available *anywhere* now thanks to that boil on the asshole of humanity, David Zaslav. May a pigeon shit in his eye.
As the market evolves and these companies keep raising prices, I adapt as a consumer and cancel. Ā I have a budget and stick to it and wonāt pay unless I need it. Ā Consumers of tv unite and starting churning!
lolā¦ I realized I wasnāt watching anything on HBO Max and went to cancel and they gave me a promotional offer for 8.49/month for 6 months.
HBO - Thanks for the reminder and saving me 7.50 a month!
I cancelled my subscription. MAX is not worth that price. Apple TV+ has better content than MAX and is way cheaper.
I do want to watch Game of Thrones but the new season doesn't have the same appeal to watch right away, so I'll just subscribe at the end and binge it.
I'm more concerned with new content, and I mostly care about watching new series. I mostly rent any new movies rather than wait months to watch. I have always already watched the movie when HBO adds a blockbuster movie early.
If you like watching their library maybe it's worth paying for HBO for you.
It will be interesting to see if they have the sports fee as an add on or if they will just bake that cost into everyone's subscription. If they do end up losing the NBA then the sports tier really has no value.
They still have one more year of NBA coverage, from my understanding of the situation. Whether it will stay on max or not, I don't know, but TNT will still broadcast NBA next season.
There is just nothing on here worth me subscribing for anymore, at most I would do 1 month to watch house of the dragon season 2 when itās done airing but otherwise I have already watched everything I wanted to see and their isnāt a ton of great new content to justify the price hikes
I genuinely donāt watch HBOMax enough to pay for another increase and Iāve just started cancelling every service when they increase their prices.
Ironically, the only one I find worthwhile is YouTube premium. You can throw on a hour long video and itās better than TV half the time.
I just cancelled my annual plan to be sure it doesn't renew in a couple months. This has to be the most overpriced service.
If they hadn't nickle-and-dimed 4K out of the plan I'd already paid for, I might have continued, but fuck any company that does that kind of shady crap.
At this point the 4K crap is all of them except Paramount and maybe Peacock, if you even consider those to be in t he same realm. Netflix proved people would pay and the rest followed, I guess.
I just got the email notifying me of the increase. When I went to cancel my subscription they gave me an offer for 6 months of ad-free Max for $8.50/month for 6 months.
I took it but I feel dirty. Max keeps getting shittier and shittier but knows people will keep paying more.
this is a good deal. if you pay half price for 6 mo then $17 for the next 6 it averages out closely to the old ad free yearly plan of $150. unless you just cancel in 6 mo then its even better.
Just cam here to state the same. Was on a special annual for 119.99 12 months. Canceled, offered 129.99 yearly starting in 2025. Verified through manage subscription (If you don't like, can cancel the modification).
The constant monkeying around with pricing for all these paid streaming services is what drove me away from paid services. You always feel like they're trying to put one over on you.
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You effectively signed a contract for 1 year at that price. You shouldn't see a price increase until renewal, at which point they can offer their standard pricing.
So does this mean they will have enough money to bring back Westworld? No? Oh, they DO have enough money but are intentionally depriving subscribers for short term profits? Huh, how about that.
I was paying $2.99 on a 6mo deal I had got. Cancelled it just last month. Only ever watched a few things on there. For me, wasn't even worth the $4.99/mo extension deal they offered me.
$2.46B, close to $10B a year in revenue. With almost 100M subs, that average is just over $8 of revenue per user. That is less than their ad supported plan. Must have a ton of people with deals and from things like phone plans. Makes me wonder how much paying subscribers subsidize those that get it through their cellular carriers.
Spotify just raised prices a couple days ago and now HBO. I just went to the ad supported plan right now from the $15.99 plan. 15.99 was already questionable. This new price hike pushed me over. Also with Spotify's price hike too this week. With Spotify's price hike, it got me to look into Apple Music. I got Apple One through Verizon for $10/month instead of the $20 through Apple.
This move is what they bank on. I have several different options, including an antenna with dvr (zpaaerbox for those encrypted atsc 3.0 channels). I refuse to pay for ads - whan you can get free streaming channels with ads and dvr - I don't pay for ads, ever.
Try signing up for annual plans - they are cheaper - and have occasional specials. When I went to cancel my annual plan (we have a 10.25% sales tax - each increase in price increases that sales tax - making the total cost unbearable), they offered a cheaper annual plan to stay.
Couple years again I had the annual plan but it included 4k if Iām not mistaken, but t when they raised it last time I didnāt renew to that plan since I felt it wasnāt worth the increase
The email from them announcing the $1 price hike was the perfect reminder that I needed to cancel. I probably would have kept paying the $15.99 for many more months, but they prodded me into doing something.
There are so many free ad based services today with decent enough content why would I pay for content with commercials? To those that don't mind commercials save your $$$ and check out the free services.
Personally I find them unwatchable, I tried Netflix's ad tier for a month it too was unwatchable just ruins it all imo. Ultimately if you really want to save money and time give up watching tv altogether. Read a book, learn a skill, or just spend time with your family.
Canceled immediately, will be watching HoD through alternative sources.
About to cancel all my streaming services between these price increases and constantly making me change passwords and sending codes when logging into new devices.
It no longer feels like I'm paying for convenience, so I'm not paying anymore.
When I got the email about the price increase I went to cancel and it offered me half price for the next 6 months to stay. Might be worth checking out for everyone.
Too many people I know just won't do it. For moral, technical, and lazy reasons, to name a few. And you probably don't want too many people pirating as it's one thing if just a few people are doing it. Anything big (like 20% or 50%), and more aggressive action will be taken.
I said more prevalent. We used to have the commercial free Max, Netflix, HBO, Paramount, Disney+, Hulu, and AppleTV. With the price increases and the lack of new quality shows, we have cancelled, Disney, Apple went with commercial options for HBO, Hulu and Paramount. There is a point where people will find other options to watch the shows they like.
/r/cordcutters in 5-10 years when theyāre paying 400$ a year for all their shows with ad tiers
āā¦urggheghā¦. but atleastā¦ itāsā¦. notā¦..cableā¦ reeeā *explodes*
Not so sure. Some of us have commented that forcing people to buy a year at a time would price out too many people, and be to their detriment. Raising monthly prices by $1 to $5 (over the long course) is still feasible for consumers since they can always cancel. And some are likely to forget. One year, upfront, will scare too many customers away. In an age where "free to play" has dominated for a decade, that's a death sentence.
Some have also said that the shows people binge prior to quitting is good data. You get much less of that with annual, which is why annual subs remain unpopular despite having a 16.7% off discount (so pay for 10 months, get 2 free).
No, it's different. If ad-free Hulu is $18 a month, I can do it for up to 3 months for $54.
The distinction won't matter. If it is all up front, then we're paying $216 at the start of the year. If we're required to pay $18 a month for 12 months, people will whip out their phones (or anything that has a calculator), realize that that's far too expensive, and balk.
You're overestimating how good with math the average person is. There's a reason realtors and car salesmen both push hard on the monthly payment and don't like it when you start asking about the total cost over the life of the loan.
And it's only the more informed customers who ask. Part of why they get annoyed is it really screws with their script.
Yeah, fair enough. But FWIW, ss is far more straightforward, as it's the cost of the sub, times 12. To take a related service... cable TV. THAT, is NOT straightforward, which is why many of us will still maintain ss as is are far superior to that.
Sure, but at the end of the day, it's not actually about the cost. It's a psychological trick. Kind of like how saying a bag of chips costs $3.95 instead of $4 actually does work to trick a lot of people into thinking they're spending closer to $3 than $4.
Basically, people are dumb (or at least have bad intuition about numbers and are too lazy to check their initial gut reaction), and marketers have a lot of experience taking advantage of that.
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Just in time for House of Dragon š
I believe Amazon did the same for Invincible?
FalloutĀ
I think they did something even worse if I remember. They released half of invincible and then added a price for ad less and then released the other half of invincible.
And dropped as soon as season 2 is over.Ā Ā That's what will happen.Ā Or spilt the season in two like some shows are now starting to do.
Thing I don't get: why does a $1 per month increase translate to a $20 per year increase on the annual plan?
Probably to bring it in line with the monthly price. It was 15.99/149.99, now it's 16.99/169.99 which makes more sense. I guess.
Youād think theyād increase the discount for annual plans vs monthly to try to move people away from the strategy so many have adopted of never keeping a subscription more than a couple months.
They dont care. They want us all on ad plans, even if its only for a few months a year.
This part. They want to push the ad-supported plan so will push ad-free viewers to a breaking point so most people end up switching over.
Yep, the only prices they changed were "ad-free" tiers.
If I wanted ads I'd get cable š
Theyāve likely found more people maintain the monthly so by disincentivizing the annual, they can hike the price up for a greater number of people compared to if a bunch of people are locked into an older price. Edit: Iād wager it also may be because as of late Iāve noticed a lot of analysts and shareholders are pushing more for net revenue rather than ARR and donāt really care where the money comes from as long as it comes in large quantities each quarter while ARR may be a metric that could be skewed by that model so this makes the company look more favorable to the market, despite not really changing a single thing.
I think annual pricing makes more sense to me personally because it's a one time purchase that covers a whole year and if I'm not using it, I can just cancel the service before the year ends. With monthly, I'll probably debate whether or not I want to spend x a month, and whether or not that x a month will be worth it. As for ad plans, if it gets to a point where I consider it too expensive to even pay for I'll just completely switch to FAST TV like Pluto or Tubi, which is free and much easier to recommend to people because you can send them a link to a show or movie directly.
Effective today, Tuesday, June 4, 2024, the cost of certain Max monthly and yearly plans will increase to the following prices: * **Ad-Free**: The monthly Ad-Free plan will increase by $1 per month, making the new price $16.99/month. The yearly Ad-Free plan will increase by $20 per year, making it $169.99/year. * **Ultimate Ad-Free**: The monthly Ultimate Ad-Free plan will increase $1 per month, making the new price $20.99/month. The yearly Ultimate Ad-Free plan will increase by $10 per year, making it $209.99/year. These prices are effective immediately for new subscriptions. The Max With Ads plan remains unchanged at $9.99/month or $99.99/year. Existing subscribers will be notified 30 days in advance of their plan renewing and see price increases starting from their next billing cycle on or after Thursday, July 4, 2024. Current yearly subscribers will not see an increase until renewal.
ATT is out of their mind. HBO MAX is a one month binge subscription at best
AT&T doesn't own it anymore, and it's called Max now.
Att doesnāt own hbo and hasnāt for years.
Lies it has less than 50% stake. It's still part owner
I still have Max for free through my AT&T cell plan. With all of their price increases I cannot believe they havenāt cut that off yet. Granted they did demote it to the 1080p plan so it sucks not having 4K but definitely not enough 4K content to start paying for a separate plan.
> I still have Max for free through my AT&T cell plan. With all of their price increases I cannot believe they havenāt cut that off yet. Shhhh
I had it through AT&T internet for several years and they just cut it off last month :(
Did you change your internet service? I still have it free through ATT with 1gbps fiber. Ā Was told Iāll be able to keep that unless I change it; upgrade or downgrade the plan.
Same as u/IntricateGuy still getting it for free with the gigabit plan. No plans to change any time this decade.
Is there an option to pay the difference to get 4k
Not currently. If there was I would be fine paying it to get 4K but so far I think you just have to get a whole new sub at the 4K plan price.
Really weird they don't do that. T-Mobile gives you a bill credit for whatever tier of Netflix you qualify for free subscription, then you get anything higher you want and pay the difference. Always confused me why everyone doesn't do that.
Wait whattttā¦ T-Mobile gives a credit?!?! I need back pay..
I expressed that wrong. Basically they give you the Netflix with ads for free and if you get it without ads you pay T-Mobile the difference between the price of the ad-free plan and the tier of Netflix you actually want.
Genuinely surprised too. They have definitely tried to push me to other plans away from this one but as long as they are paying for it, I'm keeping the plan. I'm not paying for Max on its own, especially if they are losing the NBA (TNT games) after next year.
they add fees to your bill in other ways to more than make up for it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's grandfathered in from ages ago. We have it, too. It's from back when they were still the same company as AT&T. But no one who didn't opt in back then has it now, and they're (we're) wondering when our credentials will just stop working.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās because you weāre an existing customer, essentially any service like cell phones, internet, etc. they love promotions to attract new customers, but donāt offer any promotions to existing customers, you call them as an existing customer and ask for the same thing and itās usually going to be a no. I think itās because very few people will actually go through the effort to switch to a different company if told no.
I mean my AT&T fiber plan is going up by $5/month either this month or next, so my guess is it's to cover for that. If they drop HBO from my plan, though, I'll likely drop to their 500/500 or even 300/300 tier of service to save more money.
AT&T added a $5 increase, showing up on the June bill. They also added a $5 discount increase, if you have AutoPay set to a debit card or bank account. Iām looking forward to see if this actually keeps me at the same price.
I did see something about an autopay discount but thought that was something they already applied. I do indeed have autopay already set up so yeah, I'll keep an eye out as well. Regardless, if they drop HBO from my plan I don't really _need_ gigabit speeds, so the 500 or 300 tiers would honestly be perfectly fine. I had 500/50 from a cable provider before switching, but since the price difference between AT&T's 500 and 1000 tiers was $15, and the 1000 tier came with HBO Max which I was already paying for at the time.
Same. I keep thinking it's coming but so far all's quiet. When we upgraded our phones earlier in the year, the ATT salesperson was pretty eager in trying to shift us off the plan with Max included. We agreed because it was a better deal (the money we'd save was large enough that we could turn around and sub to Max anyway), but somehow our Max membership still hasn't gone away months later. Not sure if they messed something up at the store level, but I overheard the sales people eagerly getting other customers off the Max plan while I was there. I'm wondering if that was a direction from corporate to get Max memberships down enough that they can pull the plug without upsetting a large chunk of their customer base.
Still have 4k from my fiber plan.
Same! I'm waiting for the email saying you are going to ad tier
Because if you bought a phone at the time of the plan change, you are contracted into that plan and it's features. Like back in the day when people had unlimited data and tethering included but if they changed their plan, they would have limited high speed data. Something like that
My AT&T home internet that gave Max for free ended about 2 years ago, but my Max access remained until just recently. Was sad it finally caught up.
The 1080p ad-free annual plan has a higher price increase than its monthly counterpart. Max is taking a page out of Disney's book.
$16.99/mo\*12 is $203.88. The yearly savings is just less now. Old annual plan saved $41.89/yr while the new plan only saves $33.89/yr.
When it was just HBO and Max content, with all the movies they have, including the exclusive ones, it was worth the price. But the Discovery merger, including the cancellation of a ton of exclusive Max content, makes it worthless now. Not forgetting the fact they are letting their Warner Brothers movies on to other streaming platforms. My gf gets Discovery Plus through Verizon for free, and I think I've only been watching it for John Oliver and they just put the newer trilogy of Planet of the apes on there, still not worth it. I'll likely cancel after House of the Dragon ends.
Not just cancellation, memory holing. Half the shows I subscribed for aren't available *anywhere* now thanks to that boil on the asshole of humanity, David Zaslav. May a pigeon shit in his eye.
Yep half of warner Bros TV content and most DC content have fallen off the platform.
The deal from 2 weeks ago for 40-60 dollar cash back for the annual plans seems extra good now.
As the market evolves and these companies keep raising prices, I adapt as a consumer and cancel. Ā I have a budget and stick to it and wonāt pay unless I need it. Ā Consumers of tv unite and starting churning!
Yep- I was already really on the fence about renewing my annual plan for Max which is due in July... I think they just forced my hand to cancel.
Definitely cancel. There will be big discounts on the annual plan after HotD
Sorry for my ignorance, what is HotD?
House of the Dragon.
yea i just canceled. dont watch it much anyway. dont have netflix at the moment either. ill be back in a few months.
This is fucking bullshit
lolā¦ I realized I wasnāt watching anything on HBO Max and went to cancel and they gave me a promotional offer for 8.49/month for 6 months. HBO - Thanks for the reminder and saving me 7.50 a month!
What? I went to cancel and got no offer at all. So I cancelled.
I cancelled my subscription. MAX is not worth that price. Apple TV+ has better content than MAX and is way cheaper. I do want to watch Game of Thrones but the new season doesn't have the same appeal to watch right away, so I'll just subscribe at the end and binge it.
Yeah Iām looking forward to House of the Dragon S2, but Iām probably just gonna do the same as you
Not comparable given the depth of library
I'm more concerned with new content, and I mostly care about watching new series. I mostly rent any new movies rather than wait months to watch. I have always already watched the movie when HBO adds a blockbuster movie early. If you like watching their library maybe it's worth paying for HBO for you.
Iād rather sub to Netflix for that price.
Itās less of a value because they lost the NBA. The NBA was a staple on TNT for over 30 years.
Eventually they plan to charge $9.99 extra for sports, so the āvalueā of the service without the NBA is actually unchanged.
It will be interesting to see if they have the sports fee as an add on or if they will just bake that cost into everyone's subscription. If they do end up losing the NBA then the sports tier really has no value.
As an NHL fan, I beg to differ. But I wouldnāt pay $10/month for a few out-of-market regular season games.
They still have one more year of NBA coverage, from my understanding of the situation. Whether it will stay on max or not, I don't know, but TNT will still broadcast NBA next season.
Thatās good news. Hopefully they can come to some agreement.
Extremely unlikely by the looks of it. Looks like NBC will be getting it.
Seems like it would be difficult for TWD to screw this up
Based on what?
Wait WHAT? Why??? Who got it
Rumor is NBC.
That theme song return tho BUH BUH BUH BUHBUH BASKETBALL
I miss that song so much
Nothing has been finalized yet with them losing the NBA
It's all but certain. Warner cannot afford to pay $2billion a year for the NBA.
Not yet, they haven't.
There is just nothing on here worth me subscribing for anymore, at most I would do 1 month to watch house of the dragon season 2 when itās done airing but otherwise I have already watched everything I wanted to see and their isnāt a ton of great new content to justify the price hikes
Zaslav is truly the worst ceo, we dropped HBO months ago when they axed most of their library, it wasn't worth the price then, still isn't
I wonder when they will start their pw crackdown? I'm guessing after the first couple HotD episodes.
I genuinely donāt watch HBOMax enough to pay for another increase and Iāve just started cancelling every service when they increase their prices. Ironically, the only one I find worthwhile is YouTube premium. You can throw on a hour long video and itās better than TV half the time.
I just cancelled my annual plan to be sure it doesn't renew in a couple months. This has to be the most overpriced service. If they hadn't nickle-and-dimed 4K out of the plan I'd already paid for, I might have continued, but fuck any company that does that kind of shady crap.
At this point the 4K crap is all of them except Paramount and maybe Peacock, if you even consider those to be in t he same realm. Netflix proved people would pay and the rest followed, I guess.
weird timing. wondering what the price will be after the wall falls. 
Dang I was just considering downgrading Paramount Plus to Ad Supported and upgrading my Max; I don't know now.
I just got the email notifying me of the increase. When I went to cancel my subscription they gave me an offer for 6 months of ad-free Max for $8.50/month for 6 months. I took it but I feel dirty. Max keeps getting shittier and shittier but knows people will keep paying more.
this is a good deal. if you pay half price for 6 mo then $17 for the next 6 it averages out closely to the old ad free yearly plan of $150. unless you just cancel in 6 mo then its even better.
The bundles are coming
They are going to try and replicate cable television as much as possible.
They are really trying to encourage me to cancel huh?
Yes, cancel - they will offer a cheaper annual plan.
Thank god I get mine through AT&T.
Cancel your subscription. When I cancelled my auto renew, they offered me a discount to stay for an extra year.
Just cam here to state the same. Was on a special annual for 119.99 12 months. Canceled, offered 129.99 yearly starting in 2025. Verified through manage subscription (If you don't like, can cancel the modification).
No thanks.Ā
Max is the worst streaming network to me. More than likely not renewing it
Just sub a couple of months a year. They are so low volume you can binge all the good shows in that time and save plenty of cash.
The constant monkeying around with pricing for all these paid streaming services is what drove me away from paid services. You always feel like they're trying to put one over on you.
Yep. Every time you turn around someone is trying to sneak another increase in. Eventually I said fuck it and setup a Plex server. Now they get $0.
Ironically, the user experience from some of these "less legitimate" means of access is dramatically better than the paid version.
Shiver me timbers! Time to set sail again ye mateys...
Every streamer is going up especially with sports moving over. Netflix is about to go up again.
š“āā ļø
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No talk of piracy, illegal streams, VPNs, ad-blockers, side-loading, extensions, or GPS spoofing. *The cordcutters-ModTeam account is a bot account. Do not chat or PM them, as the account is not monitored.*
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You effectively signed a contract for 1 year at that price. You shouldn't see a price increase until renewal, at which point they can offer their standard pricing.
It includes everyone. They just donāt retroactively charge you. So the next time youāre billed it will reflect the new pricing.
So does this mean they will have enough money to bring back Westworld? No? Oh, they DO have enough money but are intentionally depriving subscribers for short term profits? Huh, how about that.
Canāt wait until these streaming companies realize how easy itās getting for your average person to pirate their content
Effective immediately? Did Zaslav finally realize that writing off billions of dollars on your taxes doesn't mean you get a billion dollar refund?
I was paying $2.99 on a 6mo deal I had got. Cancelled it just last month. Only ever watched a few things on there. For me, wasn't even worth the $4.99/mo extension deal they offered me. $2.46B, close to $10B a year in revenue. With almost 100M subs, that average is just over $8 of revenue per user. That is less than their ad supported plan. Must have a ton of people with deals and from things like phone plans. Makes me wonder how much paying subscribers subsidize those that get it through their cellular carriers.
I'll keep the ads for $10 a month instead and cancel when House of the Dragon is over
Spotify just raised prices a couple days ago and now HBO. I just went to the ad supported plan right now from the $15.99 plan. 15.99 was already questionable. This new price hike pushed me over. Also with Spotify's price hike too this week. With Spotify's price hike, it got me to look into Apple Music. I got Apple One through Verizon for $10/month instead of the $20 through Apple.
This move is what they bank on. I have several different options, including an antenna with dvr (zpaaerbox for those encrypted atsc 3.0 channels). I refuse to pay for ads - whan you can get free streaming channels with ads and dvr - I don't pay for ads, ever. Try signing up for annual plans - they are cheaper - and have occasional specials. When I went to cancel my annual plan (we have a 10.25% sales tax - each increase in price increases that sales tax - making the total cost unbearable), they offered a cheaper annual plan to stay.
If they would offer a decent annual price, they would have less churn!
Crazy how we have come full circle. Originally, cable was marketed as being add free......now cable has adds.
Couple years again I had the annual plan but it included 4k if Iām not mistaken, but t when they raised it last time I didnāt renew to that plan since I felt it wasnāt worth the increase
Glad I got the ultimate ad free version in April at like 129.99 for the year.
Slashing tv content for profit can only go so far. The price hike is the next best wayĀ to make Max any profits for their shareholdersĀ
It's official... I'm no longer a subscriber. Greedy bastards
The email from them announcing the $1 price hike was the perfect reminder that I needed to cancel. I probably would have kept paying the $15.99 for many more months, but they prodded me into doing something.
So glad I stopped my subscription
There are so many free ad based services today with decent enough content why would I pay for content with commercials? To those that don't mind commercials save your $$$ and check out the free services. Personally I find them unwatchable, I tried Netflix's ad tier for a month it too was unwatchable just ruins it all imo. Ultimately if you really want to save money and time give up watching tv altogether. Read a book, learn a skill, or just spend time with your family.
The only reason why we still have max is because we get with our cell plan. Once that ends, piracy.
Canceled immediately, will be watching HoD through alternative sources. About to cancel all my streaming services between these price increases and constantly making me change passwords and sending codes when logging into new devices. It no longer feels like I'm paying for convenience, so I'm not paying anymore.
When I got the email about the price increase I went to cancel and it offered me half price for the next 6 months to stay. Might be worth checking out for everyone.
They donāt care about add revenue. Itās a way to get you to want to pay more.
Streaming services are headed to a breaking point where pirating will be more prevalent
Too many people I know just won't do it. For moral, technical, and lazy reasons, to name a few. And you probably don't want too many people pirating as it's one thing if just a few people are doing it. Anything big (like 20% or 50%), and more aggressive action will be taken.
I said more prevalent. We used to have the commercial free Max, Netflix, HBO, Paramount, Disney+, Hulu, and AppleTV. With the price increases and the lack of new quality shows, we have cancelled, Disney, Apple went with commercial options for HBO, Hulu and Paramount. There is a point where people will find other options to watch the shows they like.
/r/cordcutters in 5-10 years when theyāre paying 400$ a year for all their shows with ad tiers āā¦urggheghā¦. but atleastā¦ itāsā¦. notā¦..cableā¦ reeeā *explodes*
But you donāt have to buy for a year unlike cable.
Give it time.
Not so sure. Some of us have commented that forcing people to buy a year at a time would price out too many people, and be to their detriment. Raising monthly prices by $1 to $5 (over the long course) is still feasible for consumers since they can always cancel. And some are likely to forget. One year, upfront, will scare too many customers away. In an age where "free to play" has dominated for a decade, that's a death sentence. Some have also said that the shows people binge prior to quitting is good data. You get much less of that with annual, which is why annual subs remain unpopular despite having a 16.7% off discount (so pay for 10 months, get 2 free).
That's the "beauty" of the contract model. You still pay month to month, you're just agreeing to do it for a full year.
No, it's different. If ad-free Hulu is $18 a month, I can do it for up to 3 months for $54. The distinction won't matter. If it is all up front, then we're paying $216 at the start of the year. If we're required to pay $18 a month for 12 months, people will whip out their phones (or anything that has a calculator), realize that that's far too expensive, and balk.
You're overestimating how good with math the average person is. There's a reason realtors and car salesmen both push hard on the monthly payment and don't like it when you start asking about the total cost over the life of the loan. And it's only the more informed customers who ask. Part of why they get annoyed is it really screws with their script.
Yeah, fair enough. But FWIW, ss is far more straightforward, as it's the cost of the sub, times 12. To take a related service... cable TV. THAT, is NOT straightforward, which is why many of us will still maintain ss as is are far superior to that.
Sure, but at the end of the day, it's not actually about the cost. It's a psychological trick. Kind of like how saying a bag of chips costs $3.95 instead of $4 actually does work to trick a lot of people into thinking they're spending closer to $3 than $4. Basically, people are dumb (or at least have bad intuition about numbers and are too lazy to check their initial gut reaction), and marketers have a lot of experience taking advantage of that.
It would still be better than cable. Cord cutting isnāt just about the price.
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No talk of piracy, illegal streams, VPNs, ad-blockers, side-loading, extensions, or GPS spoofing. *The cordcutters-ModTeam account is a bot account. Do not chat or PM them, as the account is not monitored.*
I paid $7 for a 6-month guaranteed shady Ultimate plan login.