Netflix Plans Price Hike After Actors' Strike Is Resolved (Report) | TheWrap
Netflix Plans Price Hike After Actors' Strike Is Resolved (Report) | TheWrap
Streaming competitor Disney+ is looking to boost revenue with live sports tier
Streaming competitor Disney+ is looking to boost revenue with live sports tier
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Isn't that price gouging? Isn't price gouging illegal?
No, price gouging has a specific meaning relating to spikes in demand often in conjunction with a disaster, like doubling gas prices during a hurricane.
But raising prices for a non-essential good will probably never be gouging.
also, peak pricing is generally legal, price gouging isn't illegal everywhere, and the definition is sometimes vague due to, you know, how vague the concept is—the definition usually includes some version of "excessive" or "extreme" pricing.
So like, if you have trouble getting food into your grocery store after a disaster, and you have to charge a little more, you're probably safe—the idea behind price gouging ins more what happens when all the grocery store owners quadrupled their prices as they twist their moustaches and laugh, saying, "what are you going to do, not eat?"
yeah "price gouging" is not the same thing as "increasing prices a lot" or "increasing prices at a time that makes people think, ooh wee, that's not a very nice thing to do."
Price gouging is the practice of increasing the prices of goods, services, or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. Usually, this event occurs after a demand or supply shock.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
Price increased. Supply shock due to strikes. Sounds like price gouging to me.
You can’t really price gouge goods with elastic demand though, where demand rises and falls with the price. Luxury goods like streaming services even doubly so because they are in no way, shape, or form necessary things. If people pay the price for a luxury good that they don’t need, then by definition it’s a fair price.
Netflix isnt a necessity. Don’t like the price, don’t buy the service. It really is that simple.
Also, price gouging is only illegal in the US for necessities in declared civil emergencies.
"Supply Shock" is not "oh no, now we have to pay writers a little more" or "we'll have a couple fewer new shows in the next year," it's usually "the city's water supply has been tainted and trucks aren't able to get bottled water in as fast as before, now we can charge eight times as much for bottled water!" or "well, there was a hurricane that took out half the tomatoes in Italy, and for the next few weeks, the people who do have tomatoes have NYC Pizza shops by the balls."
And the price increase usually isn't a few dollars, but like, the prices doubling or tripling or more.
Keyword here being:
to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair.
Netflix is priced pretty evenly with every other streaming service and have been raising their prices steadily for the past few years. maybe if this was a one-time spike of like 200%, I'd agree with you (probably wouldn't because I don't believe luxury goods can be subject to price gouging), but this is just par for the course by now.
It's not really price gouging. There's no particular supply/demand crisis to take advantage of. There's plenty of supply of streaming. Even free stuff enough for a lifetime, so it's completely voluntary to throw this or that amount at some greedy company testing the price limits.
The supply has been cut by the strikes. Viewers want new content, not old content.
I honestly haven't seen anybody complain that there's nothing to watch, have you? Would you really say that people are in shock over the total lack of television available?
I mean, in the past week or so, I've seen new episodes of Only Murders in the Building, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, The Simpsons, Sex Education, Adventure Time, Archer, Tacoma FD, Star Trek Lower Decks, and Tacoma FD. That's just the shows I'm tracking, I'm sure I missed something good. On Thursday, we're getting new seasons of Loki and Our Flag Means Death. and HBO cancelled Winning Time mid-season because they really weren't that desperate for a few extra episodes.
Are subscriptions down? My friends don't seem too upset about the "shocking lack of content" that seems to exist in your head.
I honestly haven’t seen anybody complain that there’s nothing to watch, have you?
Now? No. Because they still have things they can release. When those run out, and they will relatively soon, they will be in trouble.
They've been pacing themselves. They planned for the strike well before it started. It's not going to dry up suddenly the day the actors get back to work.
They will have higher overhead from the writers demands, that cost is usually passed onto consumers
Bullshit. What they have to pay to the writers is minuscule compared to their profits. They're giving up less than 1% of their revenue.
I’m just telling you how it works, man.
Gotta show quarter over quarter growth. You don’t have to like it, but don’t take it out on me
They will still have that growth. Just a fraction of a percent less. And they are using that to justify raising their prices.
Imagine you're the CEO of a publicly traded corporation that is legally required to maximize profits for shareholders. Do you
A) choose an option that will earn less gross profit or
B) choose the option that will earn more?
If you chose "A" because you're a good person and not a greedy capitalist, congratulations. You've just been fired as CEO and the major shareholders just picked a replacement who will choose the second option.
Revenue growth down from 3% to 2% is significant, especially considering that's an even bigger hit to growth in profits. They want to make their investors happy, they have a perfectly reasonable PR cover to raise their prices by a few dollars a month, so they'll do it. What part of this is confusing?
Again, less than 1%. Read the article.
Here, I'll even paste the relevant part:
The guild then compared these costs to companies’ annual revenues and calculated the percentage that these costs would represent compared to those profits. The costs would account for 0.091 percent of Disney’s revenue, 0.214 of Netflix’s, 0.108 percent of Warner Bros. Discovery’s, 0.148 percent of Paramount Global’s, 0.028 percent of NBC Universal’s and 0.006 percent of Amazon’s, the WGA claims.
Are you really going to claim that 0.214% less revenue justifies a price hike?
Are you new to the idea of corporations?
Does "corporation does something that isn't illegal" equal "justifiable?"
does "corporation does something @flyingsquid would prefer it didn't do" equal "unjustifiable?"
one of their large investors saying "hey, hike prices" justifies a price hike. A profit reduction equal to .214% of revenue (and other concessions that could hurt the company in other ways) is far more than the amount of justification they need.
I guess your definition of 'justified' is much more capitalistic than mine.