This Disney+ Streaming Habit May Cost You Hundreds Of Dollars

Like many streaming services, Disney+ has an autoplay feature that allows users to watch their favorite shows for hours on end. Yet, this very feature may just be wracking up some hefty bills for Disney+ streamers.

According to USA Today, streaming service subscribers have been discovering fees added onto their Comcast bills every month. When contacting them about the extra charge, customers are reportedly told that they have reached their monthly data usage. Most of these people had no idea they had a monthly limit to their data usage, let alone that their casual streaming would cost them an extra $10 a month.

"It's a hidden tax," Luke Bouma, CordCuttersNews editor, said. "Another way to make extra money off you."

Comcast offers about 1 terabyte of data per month, which runs out pretty quick when you have Disney+ or any other streaming servie's autoplay running for hours a day. The $10 a month extra charge is meant to provide you with 50 more gigabytes a month, which equates to 150 more hours worth of streaming.

Digital Trends boiled down how easy it is to run out of 1 terabyte worth of data each month. Those who play video games around five hours each day would run out of data within three weeks. Standard video games consume, at most, 300 megabytes per hour. Considering how Netflix and Disney+ streaming services come out around three gigabytes of data per hour for HD video, it’s easy to see how it could eat up your monthly data plan so quickly.

If you have a Netflix account ($12), a Disney+ account ($7), and are with Comcast, your monthly streaming service payment just went from $19 to almost $30 a month, and that’s if you don’t go over again. If you are an avid Disney+ streamer, or if you have kids who enjoy using the app, it will likely be a lot more. Going over your limit is very easy, but Comcast will eventually stop charging for extra data. However, that’s only if you’ve already hit their $200 overage cap.

It’s being described as a “profit center,” a means for cable companies to make money off the era of streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix.