Sinemia Terminating Accounts, Claiming Violation of Service

Over the last week Sinemia has terminated a lot of accounts citing violation of the terms and conditions. Users with terminated accounts are receiving the following message:

Users that have their accounts terminated are claiming that no violation of the terms and conditions has occurred and that instead Sinemia are simply terminating their accounts as they are unprofitable customers. Despite the message received claiming those with terminated accounts will be eligible for refunds, Sinemia has so far been unresponsive to e-mails asking for these refunds to be processed. In addition Sinemia has also stated that refunds would not be issued on a pro-rata basis but they would instead refund the difference between the payments made to Sinemia and the cost of the tickets purchased by Sinemia. Given that it seems Sinemia is targeting high usage accounts it seems like most people would be ineligible for a refund on that basis.

I’d love to hear from any readers with a terminated account, were you breaking the rules at all? Also feel free to go over and share your datapoints on the Sinemia subreddit.

Hat tip to reader Zack

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

39 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

vamsi balusupati
vamsi balusupati (@guest_741470)
March 30, 2019 20:54

thats true, i paid around 400$ with family plan of 4 . i hardly used twice. and they cancelled my account saying id is not matching. i took for my family. how could they say id is not matching and all senseless description. they cheated me. its a scam of sinemia with all the public. making $$$$$$ of dollars and cheating the public.

Daryl
Daryl (@guest_738012)
March 21, 2019 19:54

I followed their rules to the letter. I remembered to “check in” each time when I used my tickets. I was pretty shocked to be accused of abusing their system, when I did no such thing. I got the exact message shown in this article a few days ago. I requested a “usage history” and refund, but have yet to hear anything from them. It’s very frustrating.

steven chin
steven chin (@guest_735544)
March 15, 2019 16:46

Just tried to reserve movie ticket, was told I violated service, my membership was cancelled. Paid $120 for annual plan, $15 for physical card, total of $135 for 9 movies in 3 months. Sinemia probably figured I would be an unprofitable customer, so better to claim I violated service than to lose money on me. Besides, I paid for annual service, so even if I complain to credit card company, I won’t get any reimbursement. Never violated service, app was constantly having issues, needed to re-install, locked out at one point where they wanted my ID to prove it was me (stupid me should have not been so gullible to give them full driver’s license). I posted poor reviews on Trustpilot to get their attention. Definitely a bait and switch operation- poor customer service, no 1-800 number to get live attention.

Only a matter of time before they collapse or run out of new gullible customers- new version of a ponzi scheme.

Robert Putnam
Robert Putnam (@guest_731544)
March 6, 2019 19:38

I’m a high usage user. I paid for the yearly subscription because I’ll go see all movies at the theater, so $30 a month is a bargins for me. Everything was fine until I upgraded my cellphone, two weeks later my subscription/membership was terminated for violation of the terms of service agreement. I paid for 12 months up front because that is what was required to join. 3 months later I was cancelled. I tried to find out why and just got the standard form responses. I was and always have used my membership according to the terms of service. But I was cancelled because Sinemia was loosing money on me and since I upgraded my cellphone it gave them an excuse they needed to cancel my membership by saying that I was fraudulent activity because I used two different devices in the same month. Which didn’t take into account the deactivation of my old cellphone, thus I was only actually using one device per the terms of service agreement.

Carter
Carter (@guest_730868)
March 5, 2019 14:03

I’m on a 2-year prepaid plan, and got the termination message. Never did anything fraudulent. A few times, I had technical issues with the app and was unable to check in, but I would immediately email Sinemia about the issue and provide a picture of the ticket stub. Just last month, was asked for ID verification, which I provided and which they said was approved. I used to love Sinemia but they went consistently downhill, changing terms, creating hurdles. And now this. What a way to treat loyal customers. Going with Stubs A-List going forward.

FClBrI
FClBrI (@guest_730786)
March 5, 2019 11:50

What I want right now is to cancel the membership. I Just want to quit and I’m fine with no refund. Guess what? They have removed that “cancel my membership” choice now. I know they have this choice before, though in very small gray print. The customer service did reply to my question. Repeat of “You may cancel your Sinemia membership on your membership page.” was the only answer I can get. It looks like they have divided their customers into two groups: people unprofitable to them and those who bring in profit. Not using their service every month probably qualified me to the second group. Ban the former group and stop the latter from quitting. What a smart choice! Anyone know where to buy stocks of companies run by these people?

john
john (@guest_730758)
March 5, 2019 11:11

I paid an annual fee of $200 (couples plan — 6 tickets per month or two tickets for 3 movies) and used the card for 22 movies. I live in the New York area, so i used the card for seeing two 3D movies and 1 4DX), so it came down to two 4DX movies – $70 with tax and four 3D movies $80 with tax (an average of $20 per ticket for 3D). $3300 in value for a $200 fee….

Over the weekend i logged into sinemia and was prevented from purchasing a ticket… Checked the status and it said mine was a fraudulent account even through i never bought a ticket for anyone else, never bought any food etc..

Planning to look for some attorneys in the New York area to see if they can file a class action lawsuit. These were the terms and conditions when i bought the plan and they changed a lot ever since
: https://web.archive.org/web/20180404132457/https://www.sinemia.com/terms

Stryker
Stryker (@guest_730904)
March 5, 2019 14:58

I sympathize with you but it’s better to let go of some things in life. Sinemia is one of them. No need to get riled up on their changing T&C. Be happy you got a 16.5x return on your $200 investment.
Do join the class action lawsuit when it opens up.

Tommy Chen
Tommy Chen (@guest_730724)
March 5, 2019 09:39

This company is just as bad as MoviePass if not worse. Their ticket buying process is overly complicated and constantly fails. If you are lucky enough to get a ticket, it’s sometimes impossible to checkin on their app because it crashes so much and then they try to charge you for the full ticket claim fraud. They never sent me a physical card even though when I signed up it stated they would. They started charging processing fess 2 months into my subscription, so I was being charge for tickets I was unable to purchase because their cardless system fails on a regular. I was able to get a chargeback from Citibank and I’m glad to not have to deal with this company ever again.

john m
john m (@guest_730714)
March 5, 2019 08:33

My answer? Get a big screen smart TV. Stream. YouTube has it all. Much cheaper and you can pause for snacks.

Jason Smith
Jason Smith (@guest_730708)
March 5, 2019 07:33

This is why you should never sign up for a service that makes you pay upfront for a long period of time (like a full year). I made that mistake with ebay when i signed up for a 1 year ebay store and then they doubled my selling fees because my seller rating got below 97.5% (and that was only due to cancelling 3 transactions where the buyer never paid!). Now I only have a month to month ebay store and even though it is $5 more a month, it is still worth it.

meed18
meed18 (@guest_730932)
March 5, 2019 15:42

Usually true, but I sure wish I had done the upfront XM Radio lifetime subscription back in the day for a portable radio that was built like a tank. That $600 or so would have paid for itself plenty of times over.

JohnnyBoyJr
JohnnyBoyJr (@guest_734587)
March 13, 2019 23:50

They even tried to weasel their way out of that. Saying it was the ‘lifetime of the device’
Then that receiver was eventually made obsolete on their Network.
But yes, it would’ve been nice — I remember that offer.