[dba-Tech] Predatory Marketing 101: NetFlix.ca

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Thu Sep 29 10:33:22 CDT 2011


Attention, all Canadians:

Stay far, far away from netflix.ca. It pales in comparison to
netflix.com(its parent, with 100* as many titles available) and it
also exhibits
predatory marketing, which disgusts me. The old (and I thought banned)
practise of "Include me in". I signed on for a free trial month at
netflix.ca, and during said month all I did was browse the available movies,
downloaded none, previewed none, deemed the service as a total failure, and
left it at that. Suddenly this morning I get an email bill for October! I
didn't do shit in September, so I'm expected to fork over $7.99 for October?
To make matters worse, I have apparently already forked it over, via my
PayPal account.

I'm going to fight this in every available way: emails to Jian Gomeshi,
letters to the newspapers, broadcasts to every eGroup to which I belong, and
potentially, should I accrue enough victims, a class-action lawsuit. These
fuckers have NO right to such business practises. I thought they were
outlawed a couple of decades ago, in the cable-tv era. Perhaps I am right,
which reinforces the strength of said potential class-action suit, or
perhaps I am wrong, in which case the path is toward a change in the law
which forbids such automatic inclusions, and demands instead an email (at
least) from the vendor and a reply from the potential customer, who did
nothing more than a 30-day trial.

Effective today, I have officially cancelled my alleged membership in
netflix.ca, so they won't ding me again, but I'm still out the $7.99 for
October. And although that's an argue-for-peanuts strategem, multiply me by
the number of people who fell (and may in future fall) for this trap, and
suddenly we're talking about millions of dollars, scooped from unwary
customers. This SUCKS!

Anyone similarly victimized by this evil company is invited to reply to me
off-list. I will gather the names and try to accumulate enough of same to
launch a class-action suit.

Arthur


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