Yesterday, when I opened my Movie Pass app, it said that there were no available showings for the rest of the day... at 5 pm in the afternoon. It's 2:30 pm as I write this, and my local Regal has Hotel Transylvania 3 and The First Purge available to use Movie Pass with. That's it!
It's a far cry from the days of "See a movie everyday" that got me to subscribe in the first place. Even though there was no mention in this in the email from Movie Pass, they are also raising prices from $9.99 a month to $15 a month.
Yesterday, I canceled my membership through the app. Though we shall see what happens on my billing date if it was actually canceled. I've heard some horror stories online about people having issues canceling the service.
I'm sad to have to cancel but the service just isn't worth it. And for $5 more a month I can do AMC's plan that gets me much more for the money. Though I will probably wait to sign for up that until the end of the year, to see if Regal comes up with their own program.
Update (7/28/18) A few days ago, Movie Pass was all over the news because their service was down due to them having no money. They took out a loan to get it back up and running, but they have to start paying it back early August.
I think their death is possibly going to come next week, if they can't raise the money for the loans. From what I've read on Facebook, pretty much every movie this weekend has a surge charge of $5 and they have the new Mission: Impossible movie blocked so no-one can use Movie Pass to see it.
I still have my subscription because I'm waiting to see how things shake out. But if they keep going the way they are, I'll probably cancel before my next payment due date.
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At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post singing the praises of Movie Pass. Sadly, the company has pretty much killed what was a great service.
Things have been going downhill for a while. Right before Avenger: Infinity War came out, they changed their terms of service so you could only watch a movie once using your Movie Pass. I'm the kind of person who watches movies as often as I can in the theater and honestly being able to do that was a selling point for me to get Movie Pass in the place.
I've never had a problem with my app or the card, but their Facebook page is full of complaints of people having issues with both and not getting any sort of response from their customer support, which isn't good.
So I have just been rolling with it. I don't get to see a ton of movies because my husband works a lot and I can't get a Movie Pass for Emily because you have to be 18 years old or older. I did see a lot when she was in Michigan and it was nice to have the Movie Pass then.
But then Movie Pass rolled out surge pricing. Basically if a movie time has surge pricing they are going to charge you an extra $3 to $4 to see that movie. And that's just for a 2D movie and some of the movies are month old or older. They don't seem to have any rhyme or reason why certain movies are surged.
As you see from the picture above, Hotel Transylvania 3 at 10:45 pm is surged. A kids movie at a not kid friendly time. And people are screaming on the Movie Pass Facebook page about it, as tons of people post pictures of empty movie theaters that they had to pay surge pricing for.
Looking at my app right now, Ocean's 8, The First Purge and Uncle Drew are the only movies at my local Regal that aren't surged. I've been to the movies late on Sundays since I don't work on Mondays, and usually the theater is pretty empty.
Movie Pass's parent company's stocks keep dropping like a rock. When I looked it up right now, they are at 10 cents a share. I can imagine that the company will be folding soon and that this surge pricing is a last ditch effort to keep the door open.
Personally, I refuse to pay surge pricing. I'll use it for movies that don't have surge pricing. Hopefully Regal Theaters will roll out something like AMC's A List where you get to see 3 movies a week of any kind for $20 a month. I'd honestly just switch to AMC but the closest AMC theater is 26 minutes away and I don't think they have recliner seats. But if Regal were to do something like this, I'd cancel Movie Pass right now.
It's probably a moot point anyway. Movie Pass has done things in such a way that has gotten it so much bad will from the public that nothing they will do will probably keep them in business. So pour one out for Movie Pass. It was great while it lasted!
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