I’m old enough to remember when HBO’s
entire point was you paid for cable so you wouldn’t have ads. That was their business model.
Then sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (I dunno, that decade’s kind of a blur) they started sneaking ads in between shows, but not in the middle of shows. But you were paying a higher price, with a few ads. Then they started showing ads to everyone, and still making you pay. I’m still salty about that.
This was always going to happen. They’ll compound paying PLUS ads, and you’ll like it, because what choice do you have if all services are doing it?
So right after I signed up at the beginning of this year, they switched from HBOMax to "Max." I paid for a year in advance, and of course when I signed up there was nothing about them switching to a new brand. All of a sudden it was full of trash reality shows and ID Discovery true crime. I have no idea what possessed them to do that.
Then once it switched over I stopped being able to stream any new HBO shows on mobile and customer service won't refund me any amount. Not that I can even communicate with them effectively. It's all "chat" with AI or people who have no idea what I'm saying. Half the shows still won't play on mobile for me.
TL;DR I paid for a year of HBO. They changed their selection a few months in. I lost mobile access to a bunch of their shows. And now I'm losing even more features before the year is up. That's quite literally not what I paid for.
How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn't there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?
The number of apps I just stopped using because of this shit is ridiculous. I feel most bad for older customers who probably don't realize they're losing features and paying more for their subscriptions. They probably don't know how to properly sail the high seas either so they don't have a choice when wanting to watch their favorite shows. Oh well fuck it, Max can keep this up until they want to join Netflix up on the dusty shelf of bullshit streaming services that can suck my dick.
Max would be in my cancellation list if it wasn't because I get it for free because my cable provider from 2013 is too incompetent to update their database with the fact that I haven't owned that condo since 2015. Netflix is hanging on by a thread.
I currently pay for Paramount+ (great value) and Dropout (support indie creators). Prime doesn't count because I pay for it for the shipping, but once they start with ads, I'll stop watching it.
We're back to that place where the hassle of piracy is worth it again. The problem for studios is that technology has come a long way since the last time people had to think about "cord cutting" through piracy, and it's just too easy to do it now. The second golden age of television is coming to an end.
Don’t worry, we’ll shovel more garbage reality shows into your app and wreck the ux even harder. Here’s 40 seasons of people having diarrhea on airplanes. Expect price increases in 6 months.
the enshittification continues. how do you continue to grow when everyone is either already a customer or would never become one under any circumstances? you make the product worse and more expensive.
So what are people doing to get access to private trackers? Getting sick of this, cancelled all my streaming services that kept raising prices and set up Jellyfin on my old laptop.
the 'download' offering is funny because you know it's not a real download you can have faith in, it's some fake bullshit where they're allowed to let you hit a button
My prediction is that people will get fed up with this and just stop subscribing to these services. Eventually they companies will give up on the gouging and all their content will reappear on Netflix, and we'll all end up back in 2013.
Just canceled my service. I wasn’t watching too much on there already and this was ridiculous. They were already one of the priciest options and now I can either lose the 4k I was paying for, or bump up to $20/month? No thank you.
Is the selection even that good on HBO max? I know it probably has all the HBO shows but what I it like movie wise (for context in my country there is no HBO)
Oh BTW op just to let you know I removed your post about this on lemmy shit posting because it wasn't relevant (it's a shitposting community). Just to let you know.
I got the email yesterday and went ahead and canceled. All the months of zero content during the writer's strike made it pretty easy to do away with a lot of these streaming services. Gotta vote with that wallet!
I get HBO Max through my wireless carrier, but there's no way in hell I'd pay for it on its own. The Max app is just straight, unadulterated hot garbage.
Know what would solve this problem once and for all? If people collectively decided to boycott "popular culture" and entertain themselves without bowing to the copyright industry
I gave up on this a few months back as I found better alternatives. To be honest, it was a bit expensive and I was looking for ways to save money each month. There are better alternatives out there which you can definitely consider and save money on it.