Netflix Will Not Charge Tesla Drivers Extra Under New Password-Sharing Rules
When Netflix posted rules against account sharing that are currently in effect in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru on its American Help Center page by accident, the rules made a lot of people very angry and were widely considered a bad move.
Netflix quickly walked the error back, but a few days later it announced new measures intended to curb password sharing were going into effect in Canada, as well as several other countries, though not yet the United States. Among other guidelines, these new rules require users to log into their accounts on their home Wi-Fi every 31 days to ensure that their devices are recognized by the service as belonging to the primary account holder.
Owners of Tesla brand electric vehicles were left wondering if this applied to them, as well. Since the service is often integrated into the electric vehicles’ interfaces, the news caused some concern. Would they have to login to the service in their car every month? What if they’re forced to park too far away from their router, and can’t access their home Wi-Fi?
According to a post from Drive Tesla Canada, Tesla owners in Canada won’t have to worry about these issues. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to the website that the new rules won’t apply to Teslas, and that owners could continue to use the service as normal in their cars without having to log in every month.
Netflix support agents online had been warning Tesla users that they may have to purchase an additional member on their account for $7.99 per month. This is a new feature in the countries that saw the new rules take effect in early February, with which users can add a friend or relative to their account for around half the price of Netflix’s ad-free Standard plan.
However, the streaming giant has confirmed that Tesla owners will not have to purchase an additional member to continue using Netflix in their cars. The company did not release additional details on if it would be introducing new rules for Tesla users in the future, or if they would continue to be exempt from efforts to stop password-sharing.
The confusion from Tesla drivers highlights one of the reasons Netflix is rolling out its new account-sharing guidelines slowly across the globe. The rules have not yet taken effect in the United States, and the company may well be tweaking them behind the scenes as a response to the confusion, negative feedback, and increased cancelation rates it has seen since introducing them in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain.
It’s unlikely that the company will be changing course, however. Netflix has estimated that over 100 million users are sharing passwords around the world, and the company is determined to see sharers start paying. Executives have confirmed that rules against password-sharing will be widely released in the first quarter of 2023, so American users should expect to see them soon.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.