My family was going to cut the cord and quit cable, but for several years, our cable company offered discounts that made it more economical to stick around.
Each time we were poised to leave, we’d planned to try a service like YouTube TV. Then we’d choose from a menu of popular streaming services — Max, Peacock, Amazon Prime, Apple+, Paramount and Netflix, some of which we already had — to satisfy our viewing appetites.
We decided to keep cable and the streaming services we had — at least for now — but then Netflix changed its pricing last May.
It’s made us all a little crazy.
Leading up to the change, Netflix said more than 100 million households were sharing passwords. The crackdown seemed to have worked. In the first quarter after the change, it added nearly 8.8 million new subscribers worldwide.
Including my family.
When Netflix was brand new, we piggybacked on another family member’s membership that allowed subscribers to watch on up to four different devices. As our three children got older, they, too, streamed from the same shared account.
Prices rose over the years, but as a family, we continued to share one account — as allowed by the rules.
But under the subscription model Netflix introduced in May, it declared that accounts were for use by a “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,” it said in its announcement.
“People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch Netflix,” the website says.
NEW ACCOUNT, NEW PROBLEM
The family member whose account we had been using wasn’t part of our “household” by Netflix standards, so we got our own account. Fair enough.
Our two younger children were at college out-of-state and our oldest was out of school and living on their own, also in another state. While they’re all part of our family, Netflix doesn’t consider them part of our household.
We didn’t want to pay more than we had to, but we also weren’t trying to get one over on Netflix.
Even if we tried, Netflix would probably figure it out.
“We use information such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device signed into your account is part of your Netflix Household,” the website says.
No argument from us about our oldest kid, who is financially independent.
But the college kids? If the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers them part of our family, Netflix should, too, we felt.
We opted for the Premium membership, which allows a household to watch on four devices at a time. You can add up to two extra members “who don’t live with you.”
It would cost $22.99 a month, plus $7.99 each for two extra members, or a total cost of $38.97 per month. That’s $467.64 a year.
One of our kids — who was physically in our household at the time — made those account changes for us. Or so we thought.
THE ERROR AND THE FIX
The college kids have used the account to watch at their school-time homes, but they’ve also wanted to watch in different places, such as at a friend’s house. But pretty often, they’ve had login issues because they’re signing with a different device at a different IP address.
A text from a kid, usually later at night, saying, “Hey, there’s a problem with Netflix,” was not uncommon.
The sign-in page would ask if they wanted to change the location of their household. But that didn’t make sense, we thought. While it was something we’d have to fix — we were paying for the “extra members,” after all — it wasn’t a priority so we’d tell them to change the household location so they could watch what they wanted.
When we finally looked to address the issue, getting customer service help isn’t exactly easy. The website offers a Q&A about services, and there’s a chat feature, but each time we logged in for the chat, it said: “Wait times for chat support are longer than usual right now. Check back later.”
As a consumer, that was pretty frustrating.
As a reporter, we asked Netflix why kids in college are not considered part of a household.
A spokesperson referred us back to the May announcement defining households, saying “a Netflix account is meant to be shared by people living together in one household” and extra members could be added.
Then we did something we should have done at the start. We took a closer look at our account.
And alas, we found the answer.
Our kid who set up our account? He signed us up for the Premium membership, but he never went through the additional steps to add the “extra members.”
That explains why the kids always had problems when they tried to log in.
So we added the two extra members and transferred their profiles so they wouldn’t lose track of their progress on shows.
We’re still a little ticked off that Netflix won’t consider our kids — our dependents on our tax returns — to be part of our household.
But the cost for extra members is still cheaper than it would be for totally separate accounts.
So much for the big savings we got on that cable bill.
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Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on X at @KPMueller.
