I'm thinking of purchasing a membership but...

I have one question.  Why isn't chess.com telling the truth?  When I registered I remembered seeing that chess.com claims to be Better Business Bureau accredited.  Here's a picture:

So doing my research, I naturally checked BBB's web page.  Turns out chess.com is NOT accredited.  http://www.bbb.org/sanjose/business-reviews/internet-gaming/chesscom-in-palo-alto-ca-1000000826

And there's also quite a few complaints.  I'm not too worried about the complaints, every company will have some, but it does concern me that chess.com thinks it's ok to lie and misrepresent it's BBB accreditation status.

Perhaps it's accredited under the name of a parent company?

Interesting a number of the complaints on the BBB were from people who had paid for memberships and were banned for alleged cheating.

Makes me wonder if one day someone is going to file a lawsuit against CC that will make them reveal their techniques for finding cheaters. No doubt, no matter how good their system is, there are false positives.

A quick Google search turns at least two reported incidents of Chess.com being sued for exactly what you describe, Kleelof.  Looks like they settled out of court.

That's interesting. If their methods were foolproof; why would they settle? That makes me wonder how many have been falsely accused and banned...

Can you provide the links. I searched and came up with a post in a forum about a chess teacher suing, but there was no mention of settling out of court.

I'm not a lawyer but as I understand it chess.com "settled out of court" resolving the issue by dropping the cheating ban.

That doesn't necessaily mean anything. Many parties will settle out of court simply to avoid a long, drawn-out and costly court battle.

Not wanting to start a new thread when one already exists, so I'll post my concern here:

How many people pay? I want the additional resources to learn more and get better that you get for a paying membership, but then I see this:

https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/palo-alto/profile/online-gaming/chesscom-1216-1000000826/customer-reviews

And suddenly I'm scared away. I have no interest in ever cheating, so that's not what concerns me. But the claims about shady practices regarding unauthorized payment. Are any of these concerns on bbb.org valid, or is it just salty cheaters mad they got caught?

I think the membership is worth it. Let's help Chess Dot Com make chess accessible to the world. You can start a new account if they unfairly flag you for cheating. I don't think they will do that to you though. It sounds like they accomodated that one customer giving them their money back. Doing something about cheating is a conundrum.

Subscriptions automatically renew if not cancelled before the renew date.  A lot of people don't really read the information and don't understand how renewal or the subscriptions work.  

Aren’t most, if not all, subscriptions like that? I just expect auto-renewal whenever I get a subscription.

Sometimes magazines and other companies renew early to steal another year's subscription. So cancel early if you want out.

Yes, that's pretty much how all subscriptions work.

if your concern is solely about unauthorized payments, i would not worry about that. of all the issues there are with the site, the payment plan is certainly not one.

other members i know that have paid subscriptions for the 'resources' say the cost is well worth it.

so, if i were you, i'd plop down the money and get to said resources. and, trust me, i don't advertise for the site!

It says "BBB", not Better Business Bureau.  In this case, it stands for Big Burgers (and) Buns.  Apparently Danny Wrench is a huge fan of oversize meat sandwiches and is a member in good standing of this organization.

gart, might want to check that link again.

Thanks for the responses.

Okay if it's just people crying about auto-renewal when they can cancel it at any time, then I don't see what the big deal is. But, because I'm naturally paranoid, I think I'll get a burner debit card and use that, just in case anything shady happens. But it sounds like it really was just people who were salty they got banned.

Hey