When I signed up for Netflix more than a year ago, I used my credit card as my payment method. On the tenth of every month, the streamer would charge my credit card on file automatically. Life was good.
Then RBI Emandate happened.
While you can find all about this new regulation in my blog post titled RBI Emandate: Consumer Savior Or Revenue Killer?, here’s a tl;dr version:
Every credit card and debit card based mandate for recurring payment and auto debit (“Standing Instruction”) will now need to be re-initiated by the merchant in accordance with the new rules, and processed by the issuer bank differently from before.
Ever since Emandate came into force on 1 October 2021, all my recurring payments started bombing. Consequently, my Netflix account failed to renew automatically. (More at How RBI Emandate Can Become Consumer Savior).
I got an email from Netflix on the tenth of October 2021, stating that my account was on hold because my payment method on file was incorrect and asking me to update the correct MOP (Method of Payment). Obviously there was nothing wrong with my MOP – this was only Netflix’s way of conveying that it had not implemented Emandate.
When I tapped the red Update Account Now button on the email, I landed on a webpage that displayed my credit card on file. I entered the CVV and clicked a button to proceed. On the next screen, I was asked to enter the Mobile OTP from the credit card issuer. After I did that, I got an email from Netflix saying that my MOP has been updated. Since it was the same credit card as before, there was absolutely no updation involved here – this was only Netflix’s way of conveying that I had paid my subscription for the month.
While the email also said that my membership would continue automatically, that was not to be since I received a similar “account on hold” email the next month. I followed the same steps as above to resubmit my credit card on file.
Rinse and repeat for eight months. Same process. Same outcome.
On the ninth month, the same process repeated. But the outcome was different this time.
I wish the difference was as sensational as the one in the anecdote about Albert Einstein at Humboldt University.
Before migrating to USA and Princeton University in New Jersey, the founder of the Theory of Relativity taught physics at this university in Berlin. After he distributed the question paper for an exam one year, a student who was repeating the course pointed out, “Herr Professor, the questions are the same as last year”. Prof. Einstein quipped, “But the answers are different this year.”
I heard this story from the guide of the Berlin City Tour I did a few years ago. I thought it expressed the tectonic shift brought about by the theory of relativity in a very pithy manner.
My story is not so earth-shattering.
What happened was, at the end of the process, I got an email and SMS stating that my Emandate registration was successful.
While not sensational, this was very disconcerting. Because I didn’t know I was signing up for Emandate at all!
There was no message to that effect and, since all the steps were same as in the previous months, there’s no way I could have suspected that the outcome would be any different this month. But it was.
Besides, none of the parameters listed in the Emandate was provided by me:
- Max amount of ₹2000? Duh.
- Nowhere does it specify that the monthly charge should be ₹149.
- I signed up for monthly frequency of subscription. “As-presented” is a carte blanche that I definitely cannot accept.
- I don’t even know if I’ll be around on the end date in 2050!
I’m relieved that I won’t have to make payments manually from the next month. However, I’m a bit peeved that Emandate has been implemented in such a sloppy way. For all its noble goal, the actual implementation of Emandate does not achieve its basic purpose of providing consumers with more transparency and greater control over their subscriptions and associated recurring payments. What’s worse, it caused so much disruption to subscriptions for eight-odd months.
The pathetic CX is caused by a relatively minor problem in communications. If only HSBC / Netflix had mentioned explicitly in their latest communication that I’d be signing up for Emandate from this month and would accordingly be relieved of the pain of having to make manual payments month after month, I’d have been overjoyed. That one line would have changed poor customer experience to absolute customer delight. This is just another exhibit for how language plays a key role in CX, as I’d highlighted in my blog post entitled Communications – Low Hanging Fruit For Enhancing CX.
On a side note, as the following thread on Twitter would suggest, many people don’t even know that Netflix has implemented Emandate and started acceping credit card-based recurring payments for its subscriptions.
@varunkrish: Never trust UPI for auto-debits.
@vinayaravind: What do you use for Netflix?
@s_ketharaman: Credit Card. Netflix didn’t support credit card-based recurring payments for the 8 months since Emandate came into effect in Oct. 2021 but it appeared that they will start going thru’ successfully from next month onwards.
Given the ambiguity in communications, I didn’t want to declare success until I received the following messages from my bank.
Consider it done – my Netflix subscription renewed automatically this month!
All is well that ends well, and all that…