Netflix’s revised TOU Agreement : WTF?

September 13, 2011 Archives

All,

Netflix did it again. Screwing Deaf customers again and again.

You screwed me THREE TIMES, and I am cancelling you for the final time. You just don’t listen and care about Deaf and Hard of Hearing customers.

Why? Netflix is currently battling against two lawsuits filed by National Association of the Deaf and Don Cullen representing for deaf customers. Did you know what Netflix did? They revised their Terms of Use (TOU) Agreement on September 5, 2011 by adding this new clause…

These Terms of Use provide that all disputes between you and Netflix will be resolved by BINDING ARBITRATION. YOU AGREE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO GO TO COURT to assert or defend your rights under this contract (except for matters that may be taken to small claims court). Your rights will be determined by a NEUTRAL ARBITRATOR and NOT a judge or jury and your claims cannot be brought as a class action. Please review the Arbitration Agreement below for the details regarding your agreement to arbitrate any disputes with Netflix.

Check link about the lawsuit: NAD vs. Netflix and updates about the lawsuits here.

WTF?

Good bye, Netflix.

Amy Cohen Efron

Did you like this? Share it!

16 comments on “Netflix’s revised TOU Agreement : WTF?”

Thanks for the update. They revised the new agreement on September 5th, 2011 just many months after we had been members of Netflix???? I think our lawsuits should not be dead. Yes, you are right about “WTF” on Netflix.

Yeah, me too! I just cancelled my Netflix account last Sunday. WTF!!!

How ridiculous! I was considering getting Netflix, but not anymore. I refuse to support a corporation who ignores their deaf and hard of hearing consumers.

Thanks for the update. You go girl!

(e

http://www.ehwhathuh.com

u are Amy. today i finally open this i am soo sorry i thought someone remind me for update new movie i feel strange so i opened ohhh wow well not only same on my cable. My point is that we already buy with CC on our TV right it could be also hearing. But hearing people buy and can hear anything low or high or sound beautiful is that fair? NO Same as mine Netflix problem they told me that they have CC but i inserted my dvd player not appears also i saw many good lifestyle like exercise or mental health they have NONE CC.

You go, girl! Wow, this is your righteous anger (that’s also affecting me) for Netflix not providing access to information for the Deaf. More and more Deaf subscribers need to understand the magnitude of the problem that their right to access to information will be removed as long as they agree to their terms. Ridiculous! Why on the earth would Deaf subscribers want to accept that? Your educational vlog will help alert the others to be more aware about this issue so thank you for that.

We need to investigate about the provisions of the law in regards to providing subtitles in DVD. From my understanding, I haven’t seen any. Nevertheless, their terms of agreement shall be null and void if we are to have a law that requires subtitles in every DVD. The question is; can we make it into a law requiring subtitles or is it that a laissez-faire part for the government to give these free market movie industries their own power decision-making to provide subtitles or not or or perhaps we need to make some more noises?

Great vlog!

Ohh HELL with that! NetF@#ked it all up. That is one nasty TOU I’ve ever seen.

Gee Mi Nee!
Em

I am not a lawyer, but I agree with Dave that I don’t think our ability to join a class action suit against Netflix can be abrogated retroactively by this change, if we had already joined the suit. New members joining now, however, would definitely be bound by this TOU.

Well that takes the cake. As a public business they are bound by ADA to provide equal services as they do hearing people…but if they charge different prices for limited DVD (with captions) service by mail than for downloading movies (mostly uncaptioned) at unlimited quantities for a lower price, that is unfair differential.

I had thought maybe of signing up to see how far along they were in providing captioned downloads, but this Terms of Use that we MUST agree to gives us no way to be sure they will give us our money’s worth.

Netflix, I am profoundly disappointed and will not consider giving you my patronage unless you guarantee that all your downloaded movies will be captioned.

Talk to the lawyer anyway. Something tells me that this new language of the user agreement is not binding on current customers, only on those who sign up and agree to the terms after the revision date. CHECK. Do not let them scare you into thinking that you have limited rights just because they say so!

I completely understand what you mean. I agree that Netflix needs to improve the service for Deaf people. Especially, you mentioned that they are updating slowly, which I believe that we need to be patient because there are thousands movies, which it takes forever for Netflix to hire people to add/type it. I already called Netflix, they agreed with me that they need to update more movies, which I asked for several movies to be added… They DID! The movies via online is pretty NEW to Netflix, so it is supposed to take a while. Eventually, they established and divided the movies with subtitles, so we would not have to search and find it forever.

Especially, you complained about mailing DVDs. It is not their fault because it is based on economy issue. Do you realize how expensive the postage stamp by today? If you could not afford it, then I am suggesting you to budget your money because $20 per month for 2 DVDs is pretty cheaper than other services, such as Blockbuster or so.

Agreed! I feel so disgusting with Netflix. I just found out they have increased the charge on my account. They have not charged me extra before for streaming. Why now? Ridiculous!! Most of the movies on streaming have very limit on captions or subtitles. I was told WII will work on subtitles but not on Xbox. What difference does that make? It does not make any sense. I am not going to accept that. I am going to call Netflix again to cancel it. They make me sick!! 🙁

Its the same as the recent changes with AT&T DSL limiting the amount you can use it. They changed their Terms of Service and restricted customers to Binding Arbitration and No Class Action status. They get around the applying it to current customers by stating that “Continued Use of the Service” after receiving the notice (or after a certain date) constitutes acceptance of these terms.

[…] Amy Cohen Efron, for the heads up about this latest development! Tags: Deaf, Netflix, Politics Posted in Deafness Politics The […]

This BS! There trying to wiggle out of previous commitment so they don’t have to deal with needs of people like us! I was thinking of getting Net but now I will NOT!

OK I am a current netflix customer with severe hearing loss. the terms of use is on a continous updating system, you are bound by current terms of use in order to use their service period. I joined by more than a year, before the terms of use was updated to include the no anti-class action. At first they were informing me to the updated terms of use and whether i agree to the terms of use. As time went by I finally got final notice saying I had to click on “I UNDERSTAND” or cancel my subscription.

The new terms of use is not optional. This is legal. why? AT&T won a lawsuit in the supreme court that say contracts can include anti class action / litigation clauses and that it will uphold in court.

I don’t know how this will affect current class actions but there can be NO NEW class action.

Personally netflix should have been sued for lack of subtitles on streaming media because it goes through their service. and can be added to the content while it is in their possession.

dvd on the other-hand needs to be perused by the different publishers who make the dvd, netflix does not make the dvd, therefore they can’t add subtitles to the disk.

netflix was not just sued by deaf there is a case of netflix selling consumer private information. Also in past there was class action for netflix throttling streaming content on high users, in that case netflix lost.

This anti class action is about blocking all class actions regardless of type, so to be able to scam and violate consumers rights with no chance of having to face justice for their crime where the punishment matches the level of the crime.

Unfortunately this is something that needs to be fixed at the federal level by either making a new law that forbids the removal of class action among all consumer protection laws. OR amend the law which was affected by the AT&T supreme court ruling.

I tried going to my state representative to see if state law could be used to protect against it and the answer was no. They told me “The State of California Government” tried to enact a law, to put the teeth back into consumer protection laws, by re-adding class action, this was blocked by the federal government.

currently I been able to discover netflix, sony services, centurylink internet service, microsoft xbox include anti class action clauses

You need to contact your senators and representatives at the federal level to fix this. this can no longer be fixed in the court system because of the AT&T ruling by the supreme courts( 5 to 4 vote).

In a way, this is a lot like what happened to the American with disability act of 1990, where the supreme court took the rewarding of damages for wrong doing away for violations. it took a recent amendment to the law at federal level to put the teeth back in to the law.

Until we have “separation of government and big business” like “separation of church and state”. We the people are at high risk of loosing all of our constitutional and bill of rights and consumer protection when dealing with big business.

So what do we do about it?

Leave Comment

12 − twelve =