What happened?
As most Netflix users are probably aware by now, the rules of the game have changed and to share your account with someone outside of your household, you need to pay extra (3,99€/month in Belgium).
As I wanted to play by the rules, I added 2 extra member spots to my Premium subscription and sent the invites, only to find out that the “transfer profile” option that carries over the watch history and preferences from the existing profile, has gone missing in my account.
Having browsed through all the support articles without success, I reached out to Netflix Support…
The first person I was in contact with in their chat support suggested cancelling the 2 extra member seats so I could try again. Doubtful that it was going to change anything (as that piece was working), I went along and agreed to try again. So, the 2 extra member slots were cancelled, I saw them disappear from my account, and wanted to try again… but sadly, I noticed that the option to add an additional member was now unavailable.
In the meantime, I was asked the question whether my email address is valid, as according to their system, it was not. After getting that sorted and proving that my email address IS valid, I noticed the “transfer profile” option was now available in my account!
Yes! Everything sorted! Or so you would think, as here comes the kicker…
Even though the option I needed was now available, the option to add additional members outside of your household was now missing… The links to add any did no longer show up…
At this point, the support agent asked me to restart my computer, which then obviously did not solve the problem but required me to contact support again, with a different support agent.
So, this is where it gets funny… The support agent told me that I had already sent out 2 invitations to add additional members during this billing cycle and that’s the maximum that is allowed per month, but that I would get a refund as I was not able to use the previously sent invitations. Next option I would get to add members again is on June 17th (in 2 weeks).
When I asked if they could change that limit or reset the counter, as obviously I did not cancel those, but the other support agent did to resolve my technical issue, the answer I got was: Unfortunately, we can’t, that’s not how the system works.
My first experience with Netflix Support…
…was a bad one, to say the least. Not only did they abandon the case without a proper resolution, but they also left me hanging without the option to add additional members and pay for them to play by the rules they now put in place!
When you want to implement a change, at least make sure that your support staff has the proper options to help customers when things go wrong. If all they can do is sales support things like cancelling services, and point to support articles, then what’s the point?
Secondly, make sure they are properly informing customers. When the first support agent suggested cancelling the 2 additional member slots I had added to try again, he should have known that I would not be able to try again for another 2 weeks! Either he didn’t think of notifying me of that, or he simply didn’t know, which is even worse as I won’t be the only one running into this situation!
Lastly, it seems the only option the support agents have is to leave customers hanging with their problem. There doesn’t seem to be a proper escalation process to support staff that do have the power/knowledge to fix the issue at hand.
Hopefully, this post will be helpful to some of you. If you don’t see the option to transfer a profile when adding extra members to your Netflix account, do NOT let support cancel the extra members as you will not be able to add them again immediately! Worst case, you may end up having to wait almost a full month.