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Netflix Hikes Fees – After Taking Away the iTunes Discount Path

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Written by Charlie

If you are a Netflix subscriber that is disappointed about the loss of the discounted route through iOS, prepare for more disappointment with new Netflix fee hikes.

For those of you who subscribe for entertainment content from Netflix, you are in for a surprise soon. This is because Netflix has decided to hike their subscription fees going forward. This is bad news even more because they have closed off the iTunes method of getting a discount.

Netflix Hiking Fees

Link: New Netflix Fees

Netflix is taking their basic membership package of $8 and nudging it up to $9. The standard package of $11 is going to see an increase to $13 and the $14 variant will jump up to $16 per month.

The reasoning is that Netflix has invested a lot of money, supposedly $8 billion last year alone, in creating their own content. The problem for deal-hunters in the wire cutting pursuit is that they just shut the door on discounted Netflix membership by taking away the ability to pay in-app on iOS devices (and the discount came from buying discounted iTunes gift cards and using those for payment). Netflix hadn’t just ended that because of that but instead because they were done with having to dish over a significant percentage of their subscriptions to Apple for the in-app payment method.

For anyone that had taken advantage of that, this new increase is going to be a gut punch in the savings department. Fortunately, there are other services for those that would like it. Amazon has done a pretty good job of delivering a lot of content through their Amazon Prime membership program (which comes with a lot of other benefits as well for the $119 per year) and there is Hulu (which just happens to have an Amex Offer going on right now – save it to your card and get $5 back on $5 spending up to 4x).

Or, you could hunt up some Netflix gift cards on discount. Readers had said that it is possible to find them around.

There had been a lot of interest in the recent post about the discounted path through iOS ending and I know a lot of travelers use Netflix so I wanted to bring your attention to it.

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About the author

Charlie

Charlie has been an avid traveler and runner for many years. He has run in marathons around the world for less than it would cost to travel to the next town - all as a result of collecting and using miles and points. Over the years, he has flown hundreds of thousands of miles and collected millions of miles and points.
Now he uses this experience and knowledge to help others through Running with Miles.

4 Comments

  • As far as content, nothing comes close to netflix. Sucks for manufactured spend or discounted giftcards, but I doubt anyone is truly going to cancel their service for $2-3 more which is still the best bang of entertainment for your money.

  • So they have a successful formula where customers are pretty much happy and they’re making money, then they decide that that’s not good enough? Interesting. I imagine that my customers might be disdraught if I did a double digit increase on their prices just because I could. This seems pretty shortsighted.

  • I often see it quoted as closing the iTunes option for new subscribers, but I’ve never seen a confirmation that it will continue for current subscribers. Any idea about that?