Late last week Apple surprised Apple TV Plus subscribers with an immediate price hike that bumped subscriptions from $9.99 to $12.99 a month. People were not happy.
A few subscribers followed through with their cancellation threats. Over on the r/tvPlus subreddit some noticed that attempting to cancel their subscription induces the service to offer them a discount to stick around.
One screenshot shows Apple TV Plus offering 54 percent off a subscription for two months. This knocks the price down to $5.99 a month before it leaps back up to $12.99.
From what we can tell, this offer isn’t for new subscribers, though Apple is still charging $99 for an annual subscription, which is cheaper than a month-to-month subscription, breaking down to $8.25 a month.
Some posters said that they tried cancelling last week before the price increase and weren’t given this offer. This leads us to believe that this offer only appeared because of the price hike.
Additionally, Apple has not raised prices on any of its Apple One bundles which combine services like TV Plus, Music and Arcade.
If you’re avoiding the $12.99 fee, you’ll want to cancel after the second $5.99 charge. For example, if you cancelled today, the $12.99 price would start again in November.
Apple has attempted to justify the rising price by saying that it doesn’t have ads on its library of content.
“Since it [sic] launch, Apple TV+ has expanded its deep library of hundreds of Apple Originals, with thousands of hours of premium programming across genres and brand-new releases weekly — all ad-free,” Apple told Variety last week. “Subscribers can explore a rich offering of thrilling dramas, epic sci-fi, feel-good comedies and live sports.”
How to prioritize your streaming subscriptions
When it comes to watching content online, constant price hikes have made streaming nearly as expensive as cable. It can be hard to decide which services to actually pay for.
We have a guide on how to decide which streaming services to cancel. And if you decide Apple’s service isn’t worth the cost, it’s a fairly straightforward process to cancel Apple TV Plus.
Apple may not be adding ads anytime soon, which is nice as a viewer, but further backlash to price hikes may change the company’s tune. While shows like “Slow Horses” and “Severance” are worth a watch, if prices continue to go up, they may not be worth the subscription.
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