This morning, we converted our monthly subscription to CBS All Access to annual. The price is right, however, the deal is a bit confusing on the actual sign-up process for existing subscribers.
Let’s break this LIMITED TIME OFFER down.
CBS All-Access customers who sign up for a full year of Paramount Plus right now will pay $29.99 ($2.50 a month) for the base version, and $49.99 ($4.16 monthly) for an iteration with no commercials. ViacomCBS is promoting this as 50% off the current $59.99 and $99.99 one-year price for Paramount Plus service. The conglomerate hasn’t announced Paramount Plus monthly pricing. But with the promo, CBS All Access customers are actually paying 58% less on a monthly basis for the $5.99 CBS All Access base tier, while getting a 59% break on the $9.99-a-month ad-free version
Paramount Plus Discounted by 58% for Current CBS All Access Customers | Next TV
Firstly, I dislike articles and blog posts that talk about deals that don’t actually link to or explain the process. Cinemablend is guilty of telling us about the deal, but how do we actually redeem it?
I went to Paramount+ and clicked on the banner. It took me to the CBS All Access account area where the deal is showing in the subtext, but not in the bolded amount, see picture below.
The limited commercials option shows $59.99/year, but the text says “the offer of 12 months of $30.00/year) ?!?!
What are we actually paying? $59.99/year or $30/year? The $99.99/year commercial free option doesn’t show any discount.
Went ahead and pulled the trigger for the yearly option and immediately received an email saying we’d be billed $59.99 in February 2022. So, guess we’re agreeing to pay $59.99 a year from now. Have to check to see what we actually were billed immediately. Was it $30 or $59.99?
Argh. It was $59.99. So, then did what nobody wants to do: call customer service. After 10 minutes or so waiting, a rep came on the line and sighed that there were “issues” with the offer working for everybody who tried to redeem it. Some were not allowed to include the discount code PARAMOUNTPLUS, which triggers the offer. And he couldn’t fix it without canceling our subscription. He did.
Then we were refunded like $3, not the $59.99. This was the pro-rated amount of what remained of the monthly subscription.
Ultimately, they never went through with the charge of $59.99 and our account was credited again. The answer from the customer service rep was to “sign up with a different email address” for a new account. I sure hope nobody else reading that wants to sign up for this deal goes through the process like this.
Paramount+/CBS All Access has to get this process figured out better. Really.
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