MoviePass is down again, days after it ran out of money

‘Mission: Impossible —
Fallout’ hit theaters this weekend.
Paramount

• MoviePass is experiencing technical difficulties, as
  many users complained Saturday evening that there were issues
  with checking in on the app and purchasing a ticket on their
  MoviePass card.
• MoviePass, which borrowed $6
  million days ago, acknowledged the issue and said it is working
  on fixing it.  
• MoviePass is also still
  charging users surge prices for films that have been out for
  weeks, or are not showing at peak times. 
• Customers are worried that this
  is the end of MoviePass. 

MoviePass is having quite a week. On Saturday evening, many users
experienced technical difficulties when trying to purchase their
tickets at movie theaters. This same issue
surfaced Thursday, and it was because MoviePass ran out of
money.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday, the
owner of MoviePass,
Helios and Matheson Analytics, said that it borrowed $5 million
in cash following Thursday’s “service interruption” because the
company was unable to make certain required payments.

“The $5.0 million cash proceeds received from the Demand Note
will be used by the Company to pay the Company’s merchant and
fulfillment processors,” the filing said. “If the Company is
unable to make required payments to its merchant and fulfillment
processors, the merchant and fulfillment processors may cease
processing payments for MoviePass, Inc. (‘MoviePass’), which
would cause a MoviePass service interruption. Such a service
interruption occurred on July 26, 2018.”

According to the filing, Helios and Matheson borrowed the money
from Hudson Bay Capital Management. The total demand note was for
$6.2 million, “which includes $5.0 million in cash borrowed by
the Company from the Holder and $1.2 million of original issue
discount,” it said. 

On Saturday night, after similar complaints of the app and
cards not working, MoviePass said
in a tweet that it is  “working towards a fix on this
technical issue. In the meantime, all e-ticketing remains fully
functional.”

This has users worried considering what happened at the end
of the week, and that the service is applying its newly
introduced
peak pricing to empty showings and films like “Ocean’s 8,”
that have been in theaters for weeks.