If all you did was read this blog, you’d think that my two mortal enemies in life were Netflix and Hulu. In truth, I do like both services. I don’t like them enough to stop complaining about their prices. That’s true. And, when it comes to the way they implement those massive price increases, I think I have a fair beef with them. Here’s my latest story.
It all started with the last price increase… last year
Before the 2022 price increase, I paid for Disney+ and Hulu separately. I had gotten into Disney+ for a special price when they launched, and I was paying annually. As for Hulu, I paid monthly and never failed to remember that time I told the whole internet I’d never pay for Hulu. But when the last price increase hit, and it was well over 30%, I looked at the bundle. I mean, it didn’t seem like I had a choice. I hit upon a very decent price. If I paid for a year in advance, I could get the Disney Trio Premium bundle, which included Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for the equivalent of about $10 a month. That effectively dealt with the price increase for a year.
And then, several months ago Disney announced that they would be raising prices to $24.99 a month for the Trio bundle. That’s a 150% price increase in one year. That’s a bigger price increase than gasoline! My first thought was that I’d simply cancel. After all, there really isn’t anything on either service I can’t live without at this point.
And then, I got sucked in by Ahsoka and decided to wait another month. And then Moonlighting became available on Hulu. Still not worth $25 bucks but darn it, I was sucked in.
Duo Premium?
When the 2023 price increase was announced, it was said that Disney would have a new bundle called Duo Premium that would only have Disney+ and Hulu, for $19.99 a month. Keep in mind, in a year I had never once used ESPN+. I was definitely not going to miss it. That would still mean I’d pay double what I paid for the previous year, and that still stinks. But it stinks a little less and I thought, well if I go month-to-month I might be able to just cancel it when I know I won’t watch it.
There was only one problem. I went to change my plan to Duo Premium, and… it wasn’t there. I could change to Duo Basic, with commercials, but there just wasn’t a Duo Premium. So I reached out on Reddit and other places, trying to find out if anyone could confirm that there was such a thing as Duo Premium. The best answer I got was that it would be available after the price change.
And… it wasn’t. The day of the price change, and for a few days after, I checked. There was no Duo Premium in sight.
Not everyone has the great customer service that Solid Signal has
As it turned out I had a few hours to spare this week, I decided to reluctantly try Disney and Hulu’s customer service. After all there was a time that Disney was known for excellent hospitality, at least at its parks. Maybe I’d get lucky.
The person I spoke to was very nice. They explained that in order to get Duo Premium, I would have to suspend my service. Then I could re-activate my service and choose Duo Premium at that point. That sounded pretty stupid, but ok, I said let’s try it. The rep suspended my service. And then, things went a little sideways.
The link they gave me to sign up for Duo Premium didn’t work. They transferred me. I got another person who gave me a better link. I signed back up. At that point, I figured that it could have gone worse, right?
Except, Hulu didn’t work. Disney+ did, but Hulu didn’t.
When I looked at my account on disneyplus.com, it showed I had the Disney+ and Hulu Duo Premium bundle. When I looked at my account at Hulu.com, it said my account was suspended. I waited about 15 minutes, thinking that maybe it needed time to catch up. That didn’t help. OK, back to customer service.
It took a little while for me to get a person who could help me. They explained that I needed to go to my Disney+ account and activate Hulu from there. The directions they gave me on where in my account to go didn’t work. The menus they said were there… weren’t there. Simple as that.
They put me through all the level one tech support hoops. Yes, I tried a different browser. Yes, I rebooted my computer. All of that stuff. And no, the menus they said were there, weren’t.
Because I’m determined and I wanted to get Hulu back, I started poking around the menus that were there. I found the place I needed to go and I told the customer service rep about it. I got kind of a brushoff when I suggested they update their notes.
By the way, I’m not affiliated with Disney, but if you happen to need this information: go to disneyplus.com and sign in. Then click on your account picture and choose Account. Then scroll down to “My Disney Services.” Click on the Hulu icon to activate it.
This is not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. But it’s at least in the top 100.
Why would you force your customer to cancel service in order to change their plan? Why would you then require them to reauthorize one service by digging into the menus on the other service? Here’s another good question. Why should any of this need to be done on a computer when most people stream using their phones?
The answer is: someone decided that making their computer systems easy to use wasn’t as important as making them work with some internal database. I see this all the time. Often times it’s not about being helpful or serving the customer. It’s about making one internal person’s job easier. Usually this person is an executive who doesn’t have to use the computer systems they’re forcing others to use.
I guess it doesn’t matter why it happens. The point is, it’s stupid. It’s dumb. And it’s definitely not what you want to do for a person who just said to you, “hey I know you’re doubling my price but I’ll still pay it and won’t complain.” I think that’s the real message here.
At the risk of sounding like an old fogey…
I remember when Netflix’s streaming package was free if you had their DVD package. I remember when Hulu was 100% free and didn’t even have commercials. I also remember when gas was 71¢ a gallon. But that’s another whole rant and I admit that was 35 years ago. But it was only a few years ago that streaming was a great value. Today you’ll pay over $100 for just the top five services ad-free, and that doesn’t even include a live TV option like DIRECTV Stream or Sling. I also remember when you could actually find content on these apps that you wanted to watch, and when some of that content didn’t bop from service to service.
The bottom line folks: streaming stinks. It just does. Come back to satellite TV. It’s as good as you remember and probably doesn’t cost as much as you’re paying for streaming. Want to know more? Call us at 888-233-7563.
