Unethical behavior of chess.com staff

I paid a premium membership to enjoy Chess.com without advertisements.  I open it today and there is a banner advertisent from wholesalechess.com.

Please dont sell me a membership that promises no advertisements and doesnt deliver, that is simply greedy and unethical!

I am very disappointed to discover that freedom from advertisements is no longer a benefit of premium membership.

We are very sorry to hear about your disappointments. Please understand this ad was put on the Chess.com homepage only for 24 hours as a one time thing since we thought that all Chess.com members would like to see this very good deal on a high quality chess pieces for your tournament chess sets.

Why dont just make ad page or just put link to ad for premium members. And if they are interested they will take a look. Or just pm them when new ad is on. There is nothing about spaming with ads, only that they will not see it in main window.

did U pay 4learn'n? or 2gt rid of ads

I still think this is an awesome chess site!

It wasn't like a pop-up ad or anything so it didn't really bother me, hadn't even thought about it

if you go to http://www.chess.com/membership.html and hover over the "no ads" for an explanation you will see this message:

"Premium Members will not see any external ads on Chess.com (other than the main homepage) and will see very few internal ads (announcing new products and services)."

sorry if you didn't read the details, but it certainly isn't unethical. we have always reserved the right to show chess-related ads ONLY on the homepage, and VERY infrequently (though we will show more during the upcoming holiday season).

as for greedy... we don't even make enough money off of ads to cover our hosting costs. you can call me stupid. you can say i have bad judgement - whatever. but greedy? come on. i'm in the chess business, providing chess enjoyment to hundreds of thousands of people around the world and barely making ends meet. please, don't call me greedy.

(yes, ahill713, your post struck a nerve :P)

I think you must take advantages of premium membership not too see their disadvantage ... I think there are no such ads which creats problem while playing .. All the ads are for own benefits only ....

And we were thinking Erik, that you host a chess for 800.000+ people, giving it all of your time, and good will and all that with nothing for you. Omg, you want to earn some money, how dare you!! You damn product of capitalism, you pig. You are not enough that you have so much members and great community, you want ads, you want them to pay for membership!! Thats outrageous!! I have never heard of paying members on the internet!! And ads, they insult me, I have to go puke every time I see ad on this web site. I am spitting on you (ptu, ptu)!!

As a premium member I'm quite happy seeing the occasional ad on the main page and gettin the occasional internal ad.  Bit of an overreaction imo.

There are people everywhere that look for things to complain about. When you have more than 70,000 members and only a handful are whining I wouldnt worry about it myself.

Nevertheless, the deal was so excellent it would have been a crime not publish it.

I once asked for the option to turn ads on as a Premium member (thinking they would mainly be chess related).  I'd be happy to have non-intrusive chess related ads on the home page all the time.

(people do need to lighten up a little)

Oh the humanity! You saw an ad?? (Gasp!) Look away! Look away!

The add did not bother me at all. I have looked at the website and the products are very good.

I was glad to see the ad for such a good deal on the HOME PAGE, I just don't want any distracting ads when I'm looking at a game, and I don't get any.

chess.com is a very content-heavy site (thank god), so ads can be a bit distracting. I also was a bit irritated at first, but the drama and intensity in parts of this discussion is far over the top. Like chrish said lighten up a little, and if ads are needed to keep up the good work, let's have them.

I became a premium member for two reasons

1. Avoid the pop up ads because they sometimes made my system run slow.

2.Get better access to opening explorer. I got rid of my chess library when I stopped playing in the early 90's. Now I'm back but have no printed resources. I also like the better access to tactics trainer.

I consider chess related ads on the home page to be a valuable service to the members. I do not begrudge the owners from making a buck.

No one sold you a membership, you bought one.