Marvel
- MoviePass competitor Sinemia has been canceling many accounts this month, claiming the subscribers engaged in "fraudulent activity."
- More than 100 users have contacted Business Insider and said their accounts were terminated unfairly.
- Sinemia said in a statement to Business Insider that "since the beginning of March, Sinemia has removed approximately 3 percent of its accounts due to misuse or fraudulent activity."
- New research from social-media analytics company Crimson Hexagon shows that online sentiment around the service has been overwhelmingly negative in general — and has gotten worse since the cancellations began.
Since the beginning of the month, MoviePass competitor Sinemia has been on a run of terminating accounts, and some former subscribers are livid.
More than 100 users have contacted Business Insider this month and said their accounts were terminated unfairly. One user even went so far as to document on video, and post on YouTube, the process of getting his account canceled while trying to buy a "Captain Marvel" ticket.
However, Sinemia said it was only canceling the accounts of those who had engaged in "fraudulent activity" and that it was offering partial refunds to these customers based on "the difference between a user’s membership payment and fees and ticket purchases to the user’s payment card."
Earlier this month, Sinemia had said these terminations have affected a "very small number of user accounts" and that "more than 99% of the Sinemia users are using the service as intended." The number of affected accounts appears to be on the rise. In a new statement to Business Insider on Thursday, Sinemia said "since the beginning of March, Sinemia has removed approximately 3 percent of its accounts due to misuse or fraudulent activity."
And research by social-media analytics company Crimson Hexagon, provided to Business Insider, shows that online sentiment around the movie-ticket subscription service has been overwhelmingly negative in general — and has gotten worse since the cancellations began. Crimson Hexagon pulled data from Twitter, blogs, forums, Reddit, Tumblr, and online comments for its analysis.
“Sinemia’s negative conversation has been growing at a much faster rate over the years and has reached a peak of negativity since the company began deleting user accounts,” Crimson Hexagon said.
The firm found that the sentiment was 74% negative (26% positive) overall, and 83% negative (17% positive) since the slew of terminations began this month:
Crimson Hexagon
Here is the graph of how online conversation about Sinemia has evolved over the past few years:
Crimson Hexagon
The cancellations are not the only issues to plague Sinemia.
More than 400 disgruntled subscribers have contacted Business Insider since November on topics ranging from "misuse fees" to demands for copies of their IDs. Some customers filed a class-action lawsuit in November, which was amended in late February, alleging Sinemia ripped them off by introducing a new "processing fee."
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See Also:
- Share your opinion — become a BI Insider!
- MoviePass’ parent company raised $6 million by selling new shares, and sent its stock crashing another 50% to under one penny
- MoviePass walks back its claim to be ‘profitable’ and declines to say which investors ‘did well’ during its 99.99% stock drop
Source: Business Insider – nmcalone@businessinsider.com (Nathan McAlone)