MoviePass - will it die a premature death or is it here to stay

...this seems to be working again? Checked this morning and all theaters and all screenings were showing up?

there's a period every morning where every movie shows up. if you can get to the theater, and they're open or have an outside kiosk, you're good to go. they'll disappear by 8, or 9, or 9:30. this has been going on for ages.... speculation is that this is a feature, not a bug, letting them maintain claims somewhere in their marketing/terms that allude to seeing "any movie."

sinemia is now launching a $30/month unlimited plan - possibly plus little per-ticket processing fees, i'm not sure? that might be a better fit for me than AMC's deal since sinemia seems to cover a bunch of the NYC repertory etc options...

goddammit!

i think you can upgrade your plan!

i'm really tempted on this one

Moviepass withdrawal is realz

i think you can upgrade your plan!

I looked before posting and didn't see anything on their site that enabled upgrading. Totally down to if possible: just saw that the nearby arthouse which Moviepass dropped a few months ago has Reagan-era horror on Wednesdays in October/Nov and cat-related films by Marker, Mazurky, Shindo and Schrader on Saturdays in November. I haaaaaaate pre-buying online, even without the three-step complication of Sinemia, but it'll pay for itself quickly if I drop Moviepass altogether.

login to your account and go to "Extend Your Premium Membership"

i've read like three FAQs and i still don't think i understand how sinemia works. do you buy tickets within the sinemia app, or does it like, generate a one-time credit card number that you then use in fandango or whatever other booking app? i assume the latter because of people griping about paying the fandango convenience fees. but sinemia's own crappy web documentation doesn't talk about third-party booking at all. it also keeps referring to physical cards which afaict they aren't making anymore.

It's shady, no doubt. I'm only still on because I have a physical card from earlier in the year. Still, I haven't brought myself to getting A-List and forcing myself to drive an extra 20 minutes for all mainstream movies, so...

Here's how it goes:
1. You don't buy the tickets in the Sinemia app. You pick a showtime and theater. They give you a temporary one-time use credit card number.
2. You go to Fandango/Atom/the theater's website and buy using those credentials immediately. They will pay for the ticket cost, but you have to pay the convenience fee (usually $1.50-3) unless you can get them waived, which you can with certain theater chains or the Facebook workaround.
3. When you get to the theater, you check in with the app to prove you are there. They threaten to cancel your account if you don't do this.

Note - on the Elite plans, you can see as many 2D/3D movies as allowed by only one specialty screening (IMAX, 4DX, etc) every 30 days, regardless of your pay period dates.

I signed up to extend my membership to the 30-a-month plan, and it got screwed up and extended my current plan and billed me twice. Wonderful. Contacted them on Twitter to hopefully get it fixed.

that's exactly what I expected would happen if I clicked a button that says EXTEND YOUR [EXISTING] MEMBERSHIP!

yeah, but i've used the same button before to change plans.
plus, i got charged $$ for the new plan, even though i'm still on the old one

thanks, nhex! super helpful. ugh I wish it was just card-based, this all sounds so fiddley. hmmm.

so fwiw sinemia is fiddley as hell, very far from the moviepass card experience, not something i would recommend to casual acquaintances the way i did with moviepass. so many clicks, so much scrolling, waiting, re-entering information... scrolling little number-wheels to pick out the time of the showing! bonkers.

but it works and it's a return to the "see whatever i want" model that made MP in NYC so glorious. presumably it will eventually die a premature death.

oh and over in MoviePass land: i haven't followed it too closely because i'm not in this category, but apparently people who cancelled or did not "opt in" to changed accounts, are now getting emails describing a new plan that they will be automatically signed up and billed for if they do not "opt out." some have gotten two versions of the email describing two contradictory plans but the "opt out" is the amazing part.

sinemia is charging $2/movie to all canadians now.

oh yeah, forgot to mention that. doesn't seem to be a US issue yet. as it is i'm paying 1.50 or 1.75 per movie to the theater's or fandango's CC convenience fee.

DC, you don't know about the Facebook trick?

it doesn't seem to work for me, facebook.com/movies doesn't know of the existence of my repertory theaters or the movies they play, but fuck FB anyway

ah that's a bummer. if the theaters are available on Fandango or Atom they should be available, but I know both of those services have blind spots

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/7/18073750/moviepass-staffed-by-dogs-director-of-barketing-chloe

http://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AfR6GdtWiqYsE8katDOAK463iOs%3D/0x0%3A500x500/920x0/filters%3Afocal%280x0%3A500x500%29%3Aformat%28webp%29%3Ano_upscale%28%29/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13406453/MoviePass_dog.png

Woof! I’m Chloe, the Director of Barketing at MoviePass. I’d like to explain why from time to time you may have had a “ruff” experience with us but it turns out that I’m a dog and I can’t talk. What I do know is that I see these humans working like crazy to make MoviePass better and better for you as fast as possible. They are so grateful for your membership and support while they work it out. We’re listening. We’re learning. We’re changing.

^the entirety of their email.

That dog must now be euthanised

yeah i stared at that email for like a full minute trying to figure out if there was some meaningful information i was supposed to be able to extract from it

Sinemia is now demanding I send them scanned photo ID to continue using the service. Seems to be something they've been rolling out irregularly to some users but not others. Hilariously, they don't even specify how to do this, and there's no web form for doing it, so I guess they expect it to just be emailed....?
Given how sketchy their whole system is (and how they keep falsely claiming their new things are specified in the TOS I agreed to) I say eff that. I expect to be initiating a credit card chargeback on them within a week. I think I got about a dozen movies out of them in five weeks' time so could have been worse, assuming I do get my annual plan dollars back.

meanwhile i successfully used moviepass to see the suspiria remake the other day, so if i can keep that up here and there, it'll soften the blow of losing sinemia, which i got to soften the blow of moviepass falling completely to pieces.

Doc, I've gotten through to Sinemia via email (support@...) in the past. You might want to try their FB or Twitter as well.
I just got on Alamo Season Pass (yuss!) so I dropped down to the 3-a-month Classic Sinemia plan for non-Alamo viewings. The 30-for-30 was nice for October though.
Still kinda tempted to do A-List on top of both of those, but I'm a madman.

Moving on to disputing my Sinemia subscription with my CC provider. Feeling a little antsy about it because the box you get to describe the issue online is nowhere NEAR big enough to explain exactly how shady these guys are being, but we'll see what happens.

Tempted to re-sign up for the $120 for a year All-Access plan (3 movies a month but all the theaters and showtimes are back) but it seems like they're probably gonna be bankrupt again in a few months. Plus the fact that you can't pay by credit card but it has to be a direct bank transfer seems pretty sketchy...

Also from what I've read it includes explicit language that they might randomly change how many movies you're allowed to see. I'd *consider* a monthly plan since I've recently been able to extract 2 or 3 movies a month from their janky, wheezing system, but no way would I sign up for another full year upfront with these clowns.

it's also been pointed out that the bank transfer, as unsettling as that is by itself, means no threat of credit card chargebacks. you're really just handing them the cash and praying they give you something in any way resembling the service advertised for any length of time.

Bank transfer only? Lol, wow they really want to be a fake gym membership
Id at least wait a month or two and see if the "all showtimes are back" thing is for real. They still need a bunch of angel investors who hope it'll be the next Netflix to survive

My final total with MP: $100 spent, 71 films seen in the theater. A dollar and forty-one cents a ticket. Granted there were a lot of hassles along the way, and since this summer it was almost useless most of the time, but man I had some great viewing experiences through this dumb thing.

i haven't seen 71 films in the theatre this decade

Between MP, the crash-and-burn Sinemia ride, A-list, and the Film Forum membership I've kept up with the last couple years, this was an all-time banner year for me on that front, probably never to be topped unless I suddenly start making a lot more money. If nothing else MP really gave me the bug for seeing everything I could. Sigh.

This year was amazing thanks to Moviepass - really living that dream of seeing movies all the time in the theater

My final total with MP: $100 spent, 71 films seen in the theater. A dollar and forty-one cents a ticket.

$90 spent*, 80 films seen, plus 8 that I'd gone to see bcz they were on Moviepass but it was down for one reason or another - so more spent on those 8 than on the other 80. God, what a year. If there were any confidence that Sinemia's new physical cards will work, the 30 dollars /30 tickets a month deal would be worth trying.

*dropped out in September, when there'd been nothing I could get into worth seeing all month (I swiped into an indie and watched Mission Impossible in the last week).

speaking of which, I tried to use Sinemia tonight and the online card was rejected - canceled, tried again, rejected again - then the app wouldn't let me cancel again

at least customer service got back to me within a half hour, refunded my service fees and gave me a "permanent" online card to use next time (much better customer service than Moviepass ever managed) but i missed the showtime of the movie i was gonna see tonight

I feel less bad about not taking advantage of Moviepass while I had it then I do having not taken advantage of Filmstruck, which had the added advantage of being in my house.

Yup

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/6/18212482/moviepass-mitch-lowe-khalid-itum-interview-2019

"The only reason anybody has issues [with us] is that, eventually, we failed,” says Lowe.

RIP Sinemia! Wow, that went even faster than expected. Glad I got my chargeback for the annual plan sorted months back, what a garbage fire of a company.

woof! that's a bummer but it was inevitable

... and they've filed for bankruptcy!

MoviePass, somehow, technically still in business

That’s all she wrote

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/moviepass-will-shut-down-for-good-on-sept-14.html

Turn in your (now useless) MoviePass card at our Concessions Stand and we’ll give you a FREE large popcorn https://t.co/Nk08w4Ke8p

— Music Box Theatre (@musicboxtheatre) September 13, 2019

death to all discounts via phone

Not so fast!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/moviepass-insider-makes-offer-for-subscription-service-11568718002

Theodore Farnsworth, chairman and chief executive of MoviePass’s majority shareholder Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., is leading a group of investors on an offer to purchase the company’s assets, a spokesman for Mr. Farnsworth said.

On Sunday, Mr. Farnsworth stepped down as chief executive of Helios in connection with his consortium’s offer for the assets of the public data-analytics company.

The offer is for MoviePass, the company’s other brands including the movie-time-listing service Moviefone and a film-acquisition business called MoviePass Films, according to Mr. Farnsworth’s resignation letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. ...

MoviePass’s parent on Friday said it was exploring all its options, including a potential sale of all its assets, and said it “is unable to predict if or when MoviePass service will continue.”

Mr. Farnsworth’s proposal represents the latest twist in MoviePass’s tumultuous run, which culminated last week when the theater-subscription service said it was again being shut down because the company had failed to recapitalize the business.

Husk of MoviePass up for auction, bids starting at $250,000, sez Variety.