When MoviePass announced they were shaving $40 off their monthly subscription price, pretty much everyone rushed to take advantage of the deal — so many at once that the company wasn’t prepared for the inundation of new subscribers and took a while to catch up with all the orders. Now, the company is rolling out a new annual subscription, a deal that sounds way too good to be true.

The annual subscription costs an up-front payment of $89.95, which translates to about $6.95 a month. You pay that large fee plus a small processing fee, and you’re good for the entire 12 months after that with the same deal: one movie a day for free. “Once your year is up, your plan will convert back into your $9.95 a month. Offer valid until it’s not. Limit two per household,” their website explains.

It does get a little tricky once you start digging into it. According to the FAQ, the yearly plan is the only one currently available to new subscribers, who won’t be able to sign up for the $9.95 monthly plan until this limited time promotion expires. Current subscribers can switch over to the yearly plan no problem, but if you decide to cancel it, you will not be refunded the remaining amount of money in your plan. This looks like a bit of a caveat to more cautious movie watchers who would rather wait and see how this whole MoviePass thing shakes out over the next few months, such as yours truly, who has had the subscription page open on her laptop for about a month but keeps delaying putting in her information until the app irons out its kinks.

Speaking of kinks, MoviePass is still having problems with its system that have only been compounded by the number of subscribers, such as the app glitching out, movies not showing up right in the app, the inability to pay online for tickets, not to mention the fact that some people still haven’t received their cards in the mail after months. This new annual subscription is a pretty ambitious move for a company still ironing things out, and one wonders what could have caused MoviePass to work out a new way to get more money up front. Maybe it’s to provide them with a larger security net while they keep refining their tech, or maybe it’s to temporarily quell the flow of new subscribers while people wait for the $9.95/month option to come back. If everything works out well, the $89.95 option is a good deal, but with the absence of a guaranteed refund, it had better be worth it. Three months isn’t enough time for the company to prove that.

Gallery – Movies With 'F' CinemaScores:

 

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