Buy third-party TV subscriptions at your peril
THE popularity of Netflix is increasing with many households opting to subscribe to this in place of other television streaming services.
Netflix has told me that third party sellers can sell its subscriptions and that they do not need to be approved. The only stipulation, it says, is that third party sellers cannot sell at a discount or promote any offers.
This means that literally anyone can buy and resell a Netflix subscription and, as I’ve discovered from several readers included here, this is a breeding ground for fraudsters.
Evelyn purchased a Netflix subscription on ebay, from a third-party seller. Shortly after starting to use the service she discovered that it would have been more than 50% cheaper to purchase direct.
She contacted the seller who simply said, “we can charge whatever we like, you chose to buy from us at this price so we have done nothing wrong”.
Kate also purchased a Netflix subscription from ebay. Following the purchase, she received instructions on how to use the service. This include a specific instruction, in bold capital letters, not to change the password.
At the time she thought nothing of this. However, the service was very intermittent as sometimes she could gain access and on other occasions a message would appear stating that someone else was using the account.
She contacted Netflix and it came to light that the ebay seller had sold the same subscription to multiple buyers and that you could only view on one device at a time.
She tried to contact the seller but, of course, got no reply.
Ashwin purchased a Netflix subscription from ebay, advertised at 10% off (which, according to what Netflix told me, is against the rules).
It then transpired that he had in fact purchased a six-month subscription, at the same cost as a 12 month.
He too received specific instructions on the use as follows ‘(BEWARE) You are NOT allowed to change anything on the account. You can use any profile on the Netflix account you are provided with. If the Netflix account stops working it will be replaced. ENGLISH ONLY The account will stop working if you do not adhere to these instructions’.
The Consumer Rights Act provides that a seller cannot sell goods they are not legally entitled to sell, which applies to Kate and Ashwin. Under criminal law what happened to them both is simply fraud.
I’m told that many people are falling for what I can only describe as scams within these Netflix subscriptions.
I would urge Netflix to allow only approved third-party sellers to sell subscriptions and to do more to help combat this fraud and protect consumers.
Dean is solicitor-advocate, barrister, arbitrator at Consumer Dispute Resolutions Ltd and consumer lawyer of the year (2018)