Pushy membership offers

First of all let me start by saying I love chess.com. There is nothing to rival it. I have tried everything including FICS - and in comparison the competition are like an amateur vs Kasparov. Nothing rivals its greatness in my opinion.

Ok, now I have that out of the way, onto my only real complaint. When I was a free member I was inundated with emails and prompts to upgrade. What actually made me upgrade to gold was 1) I wanted the ability to do more than a single conditional move and 2) I actually believe that if you like an online community and get something out of it you should support it (I am a web designer myself and run a few community sites).

Anyway, I upgraded to gold seeing as it has nearly all of the features I could need (although I was a bit disappointed when a video I was watching got cut off 2 minutes in!) and it was reasonably priced. But since I have upgraded I have had at least 4 emails telling me I should upgrade to a diamond account. I am sure there probably is some setting hidden somewhere that stops these alerts, but what bothers me is that I am already supporting the site and I am being asked to support it more. It feels a bit pushy and makes me think that the site is more about money than it is about chess. I think that once someone upgrades they should not be pestered to upgraded further. The truth of the matter is that once someone is committed to supporting a site, they are far more likely to consider further upgrading on their own accord anyway, should the features appeal.

I know from experience that when a relatively new member such as myself comes along criticising a well loved community such as this they are open to passionate attack/defence from loyal members. Can I just say that I am not criticising this aspect out of spite or malice, I am just giving some feedback in the hope that it may help. I wonder, does anyone else agree with me about this or is it an over reaction on my behalf?

Anyway, that issue aside, I do love the site and I would like to congratulate it's founders and any developers involved in the site – it is a fantastic achievement.

uncheck your e-mail from your private setting ?

edit: correction- from your alert and e-mail setting

I will do, thank you, but my point is I would rather I the emails didn't exist in the first place.

I don't think I've ever recieved such an email. Maybe it's a setting somewhere.

Well just today I got an email saying:

Thank You for your Support, Harry!

Dear Harry,

I hope you've been enjoying your Chess.com membership over the last week. I just wanted to write today to say THANK YOU for your support and to let you know that I am always here to answer any questions you might have. I also wanted to explain one thing about memberships based on a question I frequently hear - you can upgrade or downgrade at ANY TIME without losing any of your membership credit. So if you wanted to temporarily upgrade to a Diamond Membership for one month (or even for a day) so you could watch a video or do some Chess Mentor lessons, you can do that. Then you could downgrade and your remaining credit is applied to your new membership. Or, if you wanted to go from a monthly to a yearly plan (or vice-versa), you could do that as well. At any time you can go to the Membership page and see see what your existing membership credit is and how to upgrade or downgrade.

 Click here to view your Membership Page » 

Again, I really appreciate you being a supportive member of Chess.com. Please let me know at any time if there is anything I can do for you!

Thank you very much!

Erik
Chess.com

I have had atleast 3 copies of that email before - I have been deleting them. Maybe the system thinks I nver had one becuase they are deleted?

you get what you pay for.

It only takes a moment of your time to decline.

voodoochili - i'm sorry about that. you should have only gotten that once. lots of people have questions about upgrading and downgrading, so we like to tell people about it. anyway, it might be because you are deleting it. can you try deleting it and then letting me know if you get it again? then we can try leaving it there?

thanks - and sorry :D

Ok will do, thanks for getting back to me personally, it makes a big differce! Impressed asI know you must be a busy man! 

I'll delete it now and see if I get it again.

By the way, maybe it is just my email program (Thunderbird) but the emails I get notifying me have an extra </td> - see below:

I was also a bit surprised and disappointed to get those emails after I signed up. Obviously I am already aware of the levels of membership and made my choice. Perhaps it would seem less pushy if it came after several months, not just after a few days and again after a couple of weeks.

And yes the barrage of messages to sign up for membership after you've joined is extremely pushy. It's the first thing I was warned about when a friend told me about this site. It is a great site and obviously they need paid support, but I really do think they could lay off a bit.

I eventually joined once I saw that I liked the site and would be continuing to use, I'm not going to lay out cash before I've established that. And the main reason I joined was to get the additional features, as well as to support the site, certainly not because of the constant messages urging me to do so. If anything, they made me less likely to join up, that's just the way I am.

Thanks for your carefully thought out reply and the video clip of a televised wrestling match. I now feel I have a much fuller understanding of how the chess.com email and account system works, due mostly to your highly valuable input. Are you a member of the support team? If not, you should be.

If you read carefully I wasn't complaining about the actual hassle of deleting a message - I was just saying it was off putting to be hassled out of more money just days after paying already.

Anyway, even if these emails do come back, it is something I can live with - I was giving some feedback.

I am glad to hear it is not just me who has had this problem then. I think like you say, maybe if these messages didn't come for a few months, or even if there were just less of them it wouldn't ruffle so many feathers.