Netflix cleaning up dormant “active” subscriptions

If you’ve been subscribing to Netflix but you haven’t been using it for one reason or another, the streaming giant might just delete your account. They are planning to start canceling active account subscriptions that have been dormant or unused for the past twelve months. Don’t worry though, you’ll still get notice before they totally remove your account, in case you still want to continue subscribing or you actually forgot that you were still paying for something you weren’t using.

Since Netflix is a recurring subscription, as long as there is money in your linked account, you will be charged monthly and will be considered an active account. Even if you’re not using it or forgot that you still had it, it will be a recurring charge on your credit or debit card. You might think it’s highly unlikely that someone would forget they subscribed, but it happens more often than you think. Either you created a new account or someone got sick and they forgot to cancel or you just haven’t found any compelling reason to watch but you continued to subscribe.

The Netflix account purge will be for those who are still active or paying subscribers but have not opened their account for the past 12 months. You will get an email from them or in-app notification, asking if you still want to be subscribed to the service. If there is no confirmation from the user, then the account will be automatically canceled. In case you change your mind when you’re canceled, you can always restart it any time you want.

Netflix says there are only around 0.5% of their total subscriber base that accounts for these dormant subscriptions. That would be around a few hundred thousand which seems like a big number but is just a small drop in their bucket. They have also factored in these probably canceled subscriptions into their financial records so it will probably not be such a significant loss for them.

With the advent of more and more video-on-demand subscription services, we’ll see in a few months whether the likes of Disney+, Apple TV, and the upcoming HBO Max will significantly affect Netflix’s user base. In an ideal world, people would just have 1 or 2 subscriptions but these companies keep coming up with more products and so the idea of cord-cutting has become practically useless.