Crave changes subscription tiers without notice

On October 26, 2021 many Canadian streamers woke up opened their Crave app only to discover that the service had changed their plans. Twitter was full of unhappy customers. We talked about Crave’s issues before when they re-launched the service back in November 2018 here.

 
 

So what exactly happened?

Without any notice to their current customer base Bell’s Crave changed their subscription model. Crave’s old subscription tiers use to look like this:

The base plan was $9.99 per month and included what Crave called Crave Originals, Showtime, Hit TV series and you could watch it on any device where Crave was available.

Beyond that, you could add on to the base package with the Movies + HBO add on for an additional $9.99 per month and / or the Starz add on for another $5.99 per month.

Customers also had the choice to buy these packages on a yearly basis with yearly subscriptions..

 

The Big Change

What ended up upsetting a lot of people is the change without any notice to their subscription tiers. They now look like this:

 

What Bell has done with Crave is change what was their base plan of $9.99 per month and made it into a mobile only plan. So there were plenty of people who woke up and tried to access their monthly / yearly base Crave subscription like they have always done via the Crave app on their smart TV, Apple TV, Amazon Firestick or Roku device only to be told they can no longer access it and if wanted to do so would now need to pay double the cost. The mobile only plan also does not let users cast the picture to other devices like your TV through things like the Chromecast.

Now imagine if you had already paid Crave a yearly subscription fee of $100 and now all of a sudden being told that if you want to watch it on the devices you have been watching it on you need to pay them another $100.

 

On top of this there is zero information about Starz on their website and if it is still an additional add on and how much it is and there is zero information for French users of Crave and where the Super Écran plan falls.

It’s also again worth noting that Bell did not give any of their current customers a heads up notice about this. There was no email sent, there was no social media announcement.

They did eventually put out an official press release here late in the afternoon after these changes had been rolled out leaving all of their customers confused. Unfortunately even the press release offers zero insight on why this was done.

 
 

None of these subscription tier changes came with any new features, content or redesign of the app. It didn’t address any of the major issues that Crave has had.

One of the big issues many of people run into with Crave is their device limit. Crave tells you that you can only have a maximum of 5 devices registered with one Crave subscription and only 4 of those 5 devices can be using Crave concurrently at any given time.

Many streaming services limit how many concurrent streams you can have going at the same time, but no other streaming service limits how many devices you can access their service on.

Imagine you have a household of a family of 4 and you have a Crave subscription you share within that household. You’re going to make sure that all 4 members of your household have your Crave login info for their phones, tablets and most likely computers and other smart devices. Limiting it to 5 devices maximum makes zero sense. It means you have to manually delete devices from your profile and the only place Bell allows you do manage these devices is via the Crave website.

Netflix, Disney+, Apple+, Amazon Prime and every single other streaming service do not have any such policy.

Comparing Crave to HBO Max

It’s worth noting that in the US HBO Max still costs $14.99 US a month. HBO Max did recently roll out a $9.99 a month plan but is accessible on any device. It’s not a mobile only plan, instead their $9.99 plan is ad supported.

If you’d prefer to use HBO Max rather than Crave, we can help.

About Kutko:

Kutko is a Canadian based cord cutting company that offers help to every day Canadians on how to get rid of cable and cut the cord.

If you are interested in cutting the cable cord and not sure where to start then get in touch with us and arrange your free phone consultation today.

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Check out some of our other blog posts.

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