Netflix to allow user to ‘pause’ membership for up to 10 months

Users can pause their Netflix subscription only at the end of their billing cycles and not in the middle.

If users fail to resume the subscription once that time period expires, they will have to start from scratch. (REUTERS)

Netflix is testing a feature that would allow users to pause their membership for a period of up to 10 months. If users resume their membership within that time duration, they will still be able to access their viewing history, recommendations, rating and preferences. However, if they fail to resume the subscription once that time period expires, they will have to start from scratch.

As per a report by Only Tech, which first discovered this functionality, the Pause Subscription feature will be available in the Account section of the website.

However, there is a catch. Users can pause their Netflix subscription only at the end of their billing cycles and not in the middle. This limitation makes the Pause Subscription feature similar to the video streaming platform's cancel subscription feature as the company retains subscribers' viewing history and other details for a span of up to 10 months after they have cancelled their subscription.

While it remains uncertain why Netflix would want to implement a feature with similar functionality, it is easy to guess that the functionality has more to do with human psychology than anything else. Pausing something indicates that the state is temporary, while cancelling is a more permanent change. In anycase, the feature is still in the testing phase and we'll know more about it when there's a wider rollout.