MoviePass is reportedly still charging customers
The defunct movie service charged some customers twice more after going under, a report says.
- I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
MoviePass went under in September.
Defunct movie subscription service MoviePass has reportedly been charging customers more than a month after going down. "A variety of mysterious charges" have appeared on former customers' credit cards, according to a Friday New York Post story.
MoviePass, a subscription service that allowed customers to purchase multiple movie tickets for a monthly fee, shut down services on Sept. 14 when its efforts to recapitalize were unsuccessful.
One customer told the NY Post she was charged twice for the amounts of $9.95 and $5.64 in September. Another, who cancelled her account way back in January, was charged twice in September, too, and filed a fraud claim with her bank according to the report.
MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told CNET in an email that the report was false, and that only one subscriber was charged $9.95 on Sept. 15, before being refunded that amount.
"The stories on Twitter and elsewhere where subscribers are claiming they have been charged following the September 14, 2019 service interruption are completely false," he added. "Those who were charged in August or September (before September 14) had the service restored until September 14 and then received refunds after the September 14 service interruption."
MoviePass parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
MoviePass came under fire last year by reactivating accounts and asking former customers to opt out of being subscribed again. And that came after MoviePass mayhem that included surge pricing at peak times, a temporary service outage attributed to insufficient funding and a Mission: Impossible blackout.
In August this year, the company also faced criticism after it was reported that MoviePass changed passwords to keep users from ordering tickets. Later that month, it then left customers' credit cards exposed online.
First published at 4:28 p.m. PT on Oct. 18.
Updated on Oct. 22 at 3:05 p.m.: Adds comment from MoviePass CEO; Oct. 24 at 1.08 p.m.: Adds additional comment from Lowe.
