YouTube/Maury Shessel
- MoviePass competitor Sinemia has terminated a slew of accounts this month that it claims engaged in "fraudulent activity."
- But more than 50 former Sinemia subscribers have contacted Business Insider saying their accounts were terminated unfairly.
- A frequent complaint from some of these subscribers was that Sinemia terminated their accounts when they tried to book tickets, despite not violating its terms of service.
- A new YouTube video shows a subscriber checking that he is a Sinemia member in good standing and then trying to book a ticket to "Captain Marvel," at which point his account is terminated.
MoviePass competitor Sinemia and some of its former subscribers have been at war since the beginning of March.
The movie-ticket subscription app has been on a spree of account terminations, claiming many subscribers violated its terms of service and engaged in “fraudulent activity."
But more than 50 former subscribers have contacted Business Insider this month, saying their accounts were canceled unfairly. Others have flooded Reddit and Twitter with their complaints about the service.
Many told Business Insider that they had received a form email from Sinemia listing potential reasons they could have had their accounts canceled. But Sinemia refused to give these former customers a specific reason they had been terminated, and the company confirmed to Business Insider last week that it wouldn’t share more details, saying “fraudulent accounts will change methods and find different ways to commit fraud once they understand how fraud is detected in our system."
But one persistent complaint Business Insider has received from former subscribers is that Sinemia appeared to terminate their accounts right as they tried to book tickets.
One Sinemia subscriber recently documented this phenomenon on camera, and the resulting YouTube video appears to show his account was indeed terminated right after he tried to buy “Captain Marvel” tickets, despite being a member in good standing.
Here is the video:
In the video, the user checks that his account is valid, then attempts to book a “Captain Marvel” ticket. He then shows his account being terminated.
The notice he gets is the same form one that many users have sent to Business Insider, which includes a list of five potential reasons for cancellation:
- Unauthorized use of the Sinemia card/cardless outside of its intended purposes, resulting in fraudulent financial activity.
- The use of multiple Sinemia accounts in the same device resulting in financial abuse.
- Reasonable suspicion of fraud and/or abuse.
- Sharing one’s Sinemia membership information to purchase tickets for other persons.
- Manipulation of location data resulting in deceptive ticket purchases.
It does not appear from the video that this subscriber transgressed in any of those five ways during the time in between when he was a member in good standing and when he was terminated.
Sinemia has not responded to a request for comment.
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Source: Business Insider – nmcalone@businessinsider.com (Nathan McAlone)