Why Can’t I Watch a Show On Netflix? & How to Fix It

We have had a Netflix subscription for a long time! Like a really really long time. I love that my kids can watch cartoons and movies without commercials. I love that we choose when and where to watch them. I love that we can log into our devices and watch on the go. Except….for when we can’t. Wait…what?!

“Why Can’t I Watch a Show On Netflix?”

This is what my son said as he came out waving his iPad at me. Well, usually it means the password got typed in wrong, or his sisters are using it, but this wasn’t the case. The girls were with me. “Hand it here”, I said.

I was greeted with this screen. How were too many people using my account? The other people were with me. So I logged onto my netflix account from my computer to see what was going on.

I took a peek at my activity. Ummm….ALL of those programs except for Phineas and Ferb were not my family. NONE OF THEM! That is so scary to me. So I immediately changed my password to something super difficult. But my son still couldn’t watch a program we got the same error.

I then found this under “settings”. “Sign out of all devices”. So I clicked it. I got a quick screen that says it could take up to 8 hours for all devices to be signed out. WONDERFUL.

I then clicked on “Recent Account Access” at the top of the recently viewed programs page. While all these IP Addresses say US Fl only 1 of them is mine (which I blanked out). The rest are thieves! Apparently people in Peru, Germany, Mexico, and other exotic places we have never been are really enjoying Pokemon on my dime. Isn’t that nice?

I finally was able to log my son in, guessing that those Peruvians finally finished Pokemon. I have to wait a few more hours to make sure that the sign out of all accounts and the password changed worked.

The moral of this story is, change your passwords, change them often, and check your account histories even on Netflix. It takes 8 hours to kick those other people off, but hopefully it is fixed for good now. I am going to make my self a note to change it every few months to keep this from happening again.