The Reason Why I Don't Buy Membership (And You Should TOO!!!)
Hello!!! I know I have been inactive for a while of posting blogs, but we are bringing it back!!!
Now here is my reasons why I don't buy a premium subscription!!!
1. There are better free alternatives!!!
Here are some examples: Lichess and maybe analyzing (AFTER THE GAME) using Stockfish. They also say their puzzles are "better" than chess.com!
2. Chess.com doesn't put enough effort to help their community.
What I mean by that is they don't cater to the community at all or rarely. Here is one example. When they made the Chess.com support bot I'm 99% sure they didn't get any feedback before making that change.
3. Getting Muted or Banned for no clear reason.
So, let's say you are playing a game or chatting then you get banned or muted, no email description saying why you were muted/banned. Like it could say this: "You Have Been Banned For Cheating" or "You Have Been Muted For Spamming In The Live Chat" or something like that you know?
4. Barely Any Action For Spam Accounts Spamming In Forums.
Here is what I mean. Lets say you go to the forums looking for some chess tips. Probably the first thing you are going to see is a Hindi title or random numbers that leads to a "phone number", that is Chesscom's responsibility to somewhat manage that or at least create a 24/48-hour timer for new accounts to post another forum. Also, a filter list like @delcai007 was saying in a forum once
5. Cheaters
Yeah I know there are cheaters everywhere but still somewhat of a problem especially at lower levels
6. Trolls
I know trolls are everywhere but Chess.com can control it to some extent. First and foremost, if you go to the Chess.com subreddit you can see all sorts of stuff that trolls send like hateful chats etc. Also I have seen NSFW stuff from a few trolls on Chess.com so that's another reason why I am not buying membership. (Just To Note There are 8-year-olds who play on Chess.com or even socialize without knowing the consequences!!!)
7. I kind of get "a lot" of gifted memberships
I got probably 5-7 gifted memberships in a year which may not seem like much but it is astronomical to the people who only get one or 2. Just to note some of them were 1 month Diamond Memberships. Also probably has to do with me being popular.
8. Support
You might have seen I referenced this in number 2 but I thought I should make a thing about it. The Chess.com support is really REALLY bad. For a 250 million company you would have thought it would be really good customer support right?? *nervous chuckle* RIGHT??! WRONG!! One advice I would give them is get rid of the Chessica bot and keep the Gmail one. AI is just not the right move. Also when it first launched a lot of people hated it!!! I had one ticket take 20 days and that was with me sending a ticket every 3-5 days!!! ITS A KNIGHTMARE!!!! *I had to include a pun lol*
9. No Decisions in Updates
Now this might be not that big of a deal on the surface but if you dig deeper, you realize what this is it's actually a pretty big deal. For starters, that means NO community input which means that Chess.com spits out really bad updates. For instance, look at the new game review. A ton of people hated it. Another instance is the new profile page!!! A lot of people hated the fact that it looked bad and that they removed views, but they added them back. I miss not being able to see my followers. ;-;
10. Vacation Abuse
Now I have probably never experienced this because I play with my chess.com ffriends, but i know people who have been vacation "abused". There was this one post in Chesss.com Beta that showed 3 months. Yeah, I know 3 MONTHS!!! Also, kind of pay to win for the daily games, eh???
11. More immune to bans
This is just a theory so don't take this seriously, but it could be possible that Chess.com lets premium accounts off the hook a little more than free accounts. Just a theory btw.
12. Chess.com Report feature is Bad!
Remember those guys that say "Report and Move On" (even i say it i know). Well actually you are better off reporting it to their Chess.com Subreddit or EnPecan and it would take a few hours instead of nothing happening. Kind of weird isn't it, that if you are buying premium, you can't even report properly??? Almost everyone you ask will say "go to moderators and beg them." Why??? Why not just have a proper report system in place? If you can't do it, why does it exist at all??
And yeah those are my reasons why I don't buy chess.com membership. Also, because I don't feel like its worth it as well. But yeah, hopefully you enjoyed it and follow me for more interesting blogs where we dissect what is really going on. Also comment!!! I like your opinions and if I missed anything let me know!!!
