Access to subscription content blocked: Consumer advice center warns Disney+

The North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center has issued a warning to Disney+, claiming that the streaming service blocked access to subscribed content as part of past price increases to force users to decide. According to the NRW consumer advice center, Disney has issued a cease-and-desist declaration as a result of the warning and must take a different approach to possible future price increases.

The consumer advocates are concerned with a pop-up that existing customers saw in Disney's apps. Users were informed of the impending price increase via this pop-up shortly before their subscription period expired. Customers had to decide whether they wanted to agree to the price increase or cancel their contract.

From consumer advocates' perspective, this procedure was problematic because the pop-up could not be closed until a decision had been made. In this respect, the consumer advocates argue that Disney denied active subscribers access to their paid subscription content and put them under pressure to decide.

Users must give their consent

It is understandable that Disney informed its users of an upcoming price increase with such a pop-up. After all, subscription prices may not be increased unilaterally in Germany. This means that streaming services such as Disney+ require the explicit consent of the user to increase the price of an active subscription. Clauses in the terms and conditions of Netflix and Spotify, for example, that were intended to override this obligation have been declared unlawful by courts.

In practice, streaming services must therefore obtain permission for a price increase. As a rule, operators inform their customers of this via email notifications. However, if a user does not respond, this is interpreted as an objection. In this case, subscriptions are canceled at the end of the subscription period.

However, emails are easy to ignore. With the pop-up in the apps, Disney apparently wanted to explicitly draw its users' attention to their situation. However, according to the consumer advocates, the streaming service should have ensured that this information panel could be closed.

“Consumers must not be pressured into accepting contract changes by technical barriers,” commented Iwona Husemann, a lawyer at the NRW consumer advice center, on the injunction obtained. “Access to services that have already been paid for must not be linked to acceptance of new conditions.”

(dahe)