agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Pay Dirt,

My wife and I recently cut the cord on our cable bill and switched to a full-time streaming service. About a month ago, we were at my father-in-law’s house visiting and the topic of our cable situation came up. I offered to let him test out our streaming service at his house (it allows multiple logins from different locations). Fast forward a couple of weeks and he’s now canceled his own cable service and using mine full-time. He hasn’t offered to pay us any money and has even commented about how much money he’s able to save now. What’s the limit for mooching, narcissist in-laws who don’t know boundaries? This seems past it.

—Cut My Cord

Dear Cut My Cord,

Let the older man replace his cable if it’s not prohibiting you from watching the newest HBO series. Someone making a profile under a streaming service you’re already paying for with no additional costs to you isn’t a reason to start a war. Instead, try asking him to sign up for a different streaming service and then share the login with you. Then you’ll at least have something new to discuss during your next family dinner instead of dwelling on your disdain.

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/father-in-law-streaming-services-personal-finance-advice.html

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Man, I really want to know what the backstory is for this vitriol, because honestly, even if the old man is a raging narcissist, I am finding it hard to imagine a scenario where this is the last straw.

Okay, besides the fact that what the columnist is advising is at the very least a violation of every damn TOS out there and at most theft,* yes, LW's response seems just a liiiiiiittle out of proportion.

*Not that I don't live in a glass house here, but I wouldn't be advising that in a published advice column.

Especially as LW offered the password to FIL in the first place! So if it's theft, it's not the sort LW actually cares about, so why they're pretending to care now I just don't know.

Using your streaming service in someone else's house while you're there is usually not a TOS violation; letting them use it full-time while you're not there is; and I think it's reasonable to assume another person will also see that difference.

Like, I am not going to condemn the practice, I use a borrowed Netflix password, but "thing that does not violate TOS" is not going to be ethically the same as "thing that violates the TOS" to everyone.

I mean, if it's really such a bother, maybe just...quietly change the password and/or email for the service? (Yes, he'll probably ask about it, but then you can say, "oh, I thought you were signing up for your own account", as we're paying for X screens here already. It's only $X/month, still saving you lots of money!"

Like, that's the gentlest way I can think of to enforce a boundary that's obviously been overrun (even if it seems trite to the observer).

LW set up the account at the in-laws' house, put their password in, and... didn't log out? I hope, at least, that LW gave them their own profile.

I would assume, if this happened to me, that the other person was fine with me sharing their account. I would probably double-check, but I would believe they intended me to be on their plan.

The "mooching, narcissist in-laws who don't know boundaries" part really caught me off-guard since it seemed to come completely out of nowhere and I have so many questions for the LW now. Like, did you talk about him setting up his own service? Have you spoken with him about cost-sharing? Like it is SO NORMALIZED to password share for things like this - my best friend has me on her HBO Max, I share a Disney+ account with my sister, and my mom is on my Hulu with me on her Prime. Some of this is quid pro quo, some of it is "yeah, you may as well just sign on because we never use it." It doesn't sound like it's costing him anything extra to have his FIL on the streaming service and it doesn't sound like it's impacting his ability to use it so the reaction seems disproportionate

OK, clearly "mooching, narcissist in-laws who don't know boundaries" has at least *some* other history behind it, but, yes? If someone offers to let you "test" a service (or use it while they visit!) then you should at least check in with them if it's ok to keep using it before you transition to it entirely? Like, I don't care how normalized it is, "you can test it out with ours" != "you can cancel your cable and rely entirely on ours forever", that is a pretty big boundary violation? (Especially since it almost certainly is a TOS violation, and even if it's widely ignored, it's still a risk they're making you take.) And the obvious solution here is you're regretting it is to just change your login and fail to mention it to him.... but now that he's cancelled his cable he sounds like he will 100% pull a fit about how you've pulled the rug out from under him if you do that, which is almost certainly on purpose, to make sure you won't.

Edited 2023-02-21 15:22 (UTC)