Spain, Portugal, Canada and New Zealand join the Latin American countries in which Netflix has already implemented new plans, with the requirement of an extra price tag to be able to add different homes where to stream their content
After its experiment in Latin America -which included countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic-, Netflix’s action plan to limit the use of a single account by multiple people in different households has spread to Spain, Canada, New Zealand and Portugal.
“Today, over 100 million households are sharing accounts — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films,” the platform said in a statement. “So over the last year, we’ve been exploring different approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we’re now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months, starting today in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Our focus has been on giving members greater control over who can access their account.”
This is a change within the subscription plans offered in those 12 countries, introducing the possibility of streaming in different homes at the same time, but only at an extra cost for each extra household.
In those countries, Netflix members must enter a default location in their profile, to set that place as the default for streaming. The system does take into account the possibility of watching Netflix, without paying extra, during travels and such.
However, in order to use Netflix in other locations or households, an extra price must be paid -depending on the plan- that will enable the addition of new members (with new default locations, etc).
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account with features like profiles and multiple streams,” the company said. “While these have been hugely popular, they’ve also created confusion about when and how you can share Netflix.”
With the new plans, members subscribed to Standard or Premium plans in all 12 countries can add an extra member sub account for up to two people they don’t live with — each with a profile, personalized recommendations, login and password — for an extra CAD$7.99 a month per person in Canada, NZD$7.99 in New Zealand, Euro 3.99 in Portugal, and Euro 5.99 in Spain.
