BackgroundOn 11/28/23, I became a new subscriber to Hulu Live streaming service. The service fee was $89.99/month and was described by Hulu as containing:Hulu (No Ads) + Live TV, Disney+ (No Ads), and ESPN+ (With Ads)The service with no advertisements is Hulu’s most expensive offering. According to Hulu’s website, the no-ads service applies to Hulu’s streaming library, which includes movies and other content. Here is a fact that consumers should be aware of.1. Many customers receive Hulu content via wireless 5G home Internet, including our household. Wireless networks normally experience switching between base stations. When such switching occurs IP addresses may change. This is a normal characteristic of wireless networks. 2. However, Hulu’s service interprets this as an event where the subscriber may have moved to a new home, or is attempting to use the service at another address. Each time a perfectly normal handoff-induced IP address change occurs Hulu stops the live streaming service. Customers attempting to watch live streaming are blocked with a notice stating, "it appears you have moved." Each time, we must call Hulu tech support and re-authenticate the account, a process that has taken a half hour or more each time.3. Since December, 2023, at least four such interruptions by Hulu occurred.4. Worse, we discovered that the service was converted away by Hulu from the premium no-ads service to the lower tier that includes ads. This was concurrent with the interruptions. We were not notified of the downgrade but we continued to be billed at the premium service rate while actually receiving the lower tier service.Whenever content that is supposed to have no-ads, Hulu maintains an ambiguous position as to whether the service was working properly. There is a documented lack of transparency or clarity concerning what constitutes “no-ads” service, and that lack of transparency goes against the ability of consumers to make an informed purchasing decision. If the contents of the service being paid for “depends” on a case-by-case basis then product substitution is impossible to detect. Consumers, especially those with wireless home internet should be aware of this business practice. Unfortunately, nearly all of the paid-reviewers don't mention this.
