David Farnor | On 09, Aug 2020

Cancelling your subscription to a streaming service can be one of the trickiest things to do – not only because some interfaces don’t make it easy to find out where to go to do it, but also because it’s often difficult to remember to cancel in the first place.

That sinking feeling when you realise you’ve signed up for a service but not used it in ages is one almost everyone has experienced in this digital age. Now, Netflix is taking steps to combat it – after all, the last thing a company wants is for people to resent it for taking their money.

From this summer, Netflix has been asking everyone who has not watched anything on Netflix for a year since they joined to confirm they want to keep their membership. It will do the same for anyone who has stopped watching for more than two years. Members will receive their notifications either from the Netflix app or via a message to their email address. If they don’t confirm that they want to keep subscribing, Netflix will automatically cancel their subscription.

These inactive accounts represent less than half of 1 per cent of Netflix’s overall member base, the company notes in a blog post – a few hundred thousand in total.

If anyone changes their mind later, they can restart their Netflix subscription as they would when normally signing up.

“We’ve always thought it should be easy to sign up and to cancel. So, as always, anyone who cancels their account and then rejoins within 10 months will still have their favorites, profiles, viewing preferences and account details just as they left them,” explains Eddy Wu, Product Innovation. “In the meantime, we hope this new approach saves people some hard earned cash.”

Looking to cancel your Netflix subscription? Head to www.netflix.com/CancelPlan to stop your membership or downgrade your plan.

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