Business ProfileforStarz Entertainment Group, LLC

On May 24, 2021, Better Business Bureau recognized a pattern of complaints from consumers regarding billing/collections and customer service issues. Consumers allege Starz Entertainment Group, LLC is billing for monthly subscriptions despite cancelling their service. Further, Starz Entertainment Group, LLC is auto renewing service without notifying consumers before charging their credit cards. Consumers also allege they are being charged for monthly subscriptions although having not signed up for service, and is advertising a “free trial period” but charges the consumer before the trial period has ended.

Additionally, consumers claim they are unable to easily reach Starz Entertainment Group, LLC  for service inquiries, billing questions, or cancellation requests.  Outside of experiencing extremely long hold times, consumers do not receive promised call backs from management when their calls have been escalated to “Tier 2” for assistance. Consumers also find it hard to cancel their service and/or obtain refunds for unauthorized charges because of not being able to reach a representative from the business.

As of June 9, 2021, Starz Entertainment Group, LLC is working with BBB to eliminate the underlying pattern of complaints.  The business has provided the following response:

"Starz offers customer support options online, via email, and via the phone 24/7, 365 days a year, and Starz makes every reasonable effort to resolve customer concerns as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible – with wait times significantly shorter than industry average and the vast majority of concerns resolved within an hour.  Starz also has an online cancellation process available and provides the customer with a cancellation confirmation email that also explains how long the customer can use the service through.  Starz is available through a variety of storefronts and partners for customer’s convenience.  As a result, sometimes a customer’s support or billing issues need to be resolved by those storefronts or partners.  Our customer support team does their best to help customers understand where they signed up and who to reach out to so that their issues may be appropriately resolved. 

Starz does not bill customers for monthly subscriptions after the customer has affirmatively cancelled his or her service.  If a customer cancels shortly after the new month’s billing cycle has already started, a delay in the charge’s posting by the customer’s bank may create the false impression that a charge after cancellation has occurred. Starz offers a free trial period, typically for a period of 7 days.  Some financial institutions temporarily place a small pre-authorization charge on a customer’s credit card to ensure a valid payment method was provided during sign-up.  This small amount is not truly a bill from Starz and will be released by the customer’s financial institution, usually within 14 days.  It is also possible that customers may have signed up for one of Starz’s special promotions that offers discounted service for some period of time, but typically does not include a free trial period.  Starz is in the process of providing even more customer transparency by increasing the amount of information that a customer can find in his or her account management portal without having to contact customer service.  Starz is also constantly evaluating our signup and cancellation processes to determine if there are options to improve customer experiences."