MoviePass – Great Idea Awful Contract

Last year, a new service came out of the woodworks by the name of Moviepass. Moviepass was supposed to be the Netflix for movie theaters. Customers would pay a monthly fee of $30 and be able to watch unlimited movies. The service was prematurely shut down but has resurrected and I was lucky enough to get an invite. Extremely excited to be one of the chosen few, I was ready to sign up before my 48 hour invite faded away. After taking a look at the contract agreement that you need to accept to enjoy the service, the service no longer looked good, infact almost felt like a scam.

I dug deeper into the fine print for MoviePass and was instantly turned off. $29.99/month for unlimited* theatrical films at any theater that accepts credit cards. What they fail to mention is that it only covers 2D movies only, and one ticket per day, one ticket per film. This means no one day epic movie marathons or even seeing a good movie one more time.If you can still deal with that, lets see if you can deal with this fishy fine print.

It’s an annual subscription. If you cancel before 12 months are over (except for medical reasons or moving out of the country, known in the contract as “Legitimate Grounds“), you owe MoviePass a $20 cancellation fee, On top of that, you have to repay the full retail price of any movie tickets you’ve purchased with your account, assuming it’s greater than the amount of subscription fees you’ve paid which it most likely will be if you’ve seen more then 3 movies.

This too may be passable to many people but its these two conditions that really makes this service a bunch of crooks. MoviePass can terminate the subscription at any time, for any reason at which point you would be stuck in the subscription condition above. MoviePass can also increase the subscription fee at any time, for any reason – and no, that’s not “Legitimate Grounds” for you to terminate your subscription penalty-free.

This was looking to be one of the best services to come out this year and a perfect Holiday gift, but you would have to be a 100% stupid to agree to a contract that effectively says “We can charge you unlimited money for the next year”.