Skip to footer

Netflix will be raising its prices soon - for some accounts

If you were grandfathered in under older pricing tiers, your monthly subscription might be about to change.

|
Elise Amendola/AP/File
A person displays Netflix on a tablet in North Andover, Mass. (Jan. 17, 2014). Amazon is taking on Netflix and Hulu with a stand-alone video streaming service.

In May of 2014, Netflix gave its subscribers a heads up that it would be increasing prices from $7.99 to $8.99 per month for its standard streaming plan. However, current customers at the time were guaranteed at least two more years of the per-month price they were used to, while new customers had to pay the higher cost. And last October, Netflix implemented yet another monthly fee jump, to $9.99 a month.

Now, all those loyal subscribers who were grandfathered in at the lower cost are about to be subjected to the price increase. At an additional $24 a year, some customers may question whether the service is still necessary in a marketplace flooded with options.

Everybody Will Be Paying the Same Price by the End of the Year

About 17 million standard accounts are due to increase in price next month. While long-term customers were given notice back in 2014, they've probably forgotten by now that their rates are about to go up. When Netflix introduced the new price of $9.99 per month last October, it again warned current customers their prices would soon increase as well.

Now that time has come, and by the end of the year, all Netflix customers should be paying $9.99 per month for the standard streaming plan.

Check to See When Your Price Will Increase

Based on when you signed up for Netflix (and consequently when your monthly bill is paid), your account might be changing at a different time from everyone else's. In order to see how long your pricing is guaranteed, log into your Netflix account, and go to your profile. There should be an area for "Plan Details" that shows what type of plan you have and how long your price is good for. Based on that, you should be able to roughly tell when your price will increase.

The most common changeover date floating around the internet seems to be May 9, but you should know that Netflix is planning to notify customers by email and within the service itself to alert them to the upcoming price change.

More recent subscribers have a bit more time; if you subscribed before May 2014, Netflix is likely to begin charging you $9.99 per month in May. However, if you subscribed after May 2014, then your jump to $9.99 won't happen until October.

It's safe to assume that by October, we'll all be paying the same amount for the standard streaming plan on Netflix. Note that this final changeover comes as Amazon announces its streaming-only monthly Prime Video plan for $8.99.

This article first appeared in DealNews.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Netflix will be raising its prices soon - for some accounts
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2016/0421/Netflix-will-be-raising-its-prices-soon-for-some-accounts
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe