extension account without giving permission

david,

Thank you for your reply. I will wait for a responce from the support team.

Rsava,

I have been unable to respond in time because of my health issues. Only played on this site for one month. Besides how should i know this without a reminder or visiting this site. Knowing i did not automatically extent my membership.

Hi david! I was glad to see your answer.  I did not see the option to turn off automatic renewal from my account page. When did you add it? Does it still work? Trying to contact 'support' is too disappointing. It takes a lot of time and they often do something wrong. Last time instead of deleting automatic renewal from my premium membership. They canceled my premium membership itself :) If you realy care about saving time for your workers and users  why not automate the process by giving people diside if they want automatic renewal from the begining? It would definitly save a lot of time for 'support' and disappointing for users of your service. I don't write to ' the relevant authorities' because i did not give up on you yet. And as your well know if would give up I just find another chess website instead of trying to sue you. Thanks for idea   though. You know I am sure of it that money related issues are touching so if you would 'set this as part of the premium membership sign up process' it of course would  not 'outweigh the benefits of doing so' for users. I do not believe that it woud cost much you can just take out autorenewal at all and put in the 'fine print' that if you want autorenewal write to 'support' :) Don't like it? Why? Of course because this way you wan't get money that you don't deserve. As I sad earlier I ready to pay for the service I just don't like when some body try to trick me. 

Or, here's an idea. You can be a responsible adult and put a reminder on your calendar (or other reminder method you use) that your memberrship is about to renew, do you still want to do that.

I get a reminder pop up every year in December that asks that question. So does my wife since we share a household calendar. Not that hard.

Surprisingly, I also get them for things like oil changes, dentist appts, doctor appts, pool filter maintenance, etc.

I am resonsible to remember things in my life, no one else.

Correct. However the OP finds it easier to blame others for his failings, calling them cheats and thiefs.

 To be fair, that wasn't the OP, but Dzimitry who started that business.

http://www.chess.com/help

Read the TOS when you signed up.  Ignorance is not an excuse.

I have no idea when the option was added: I am not on the development team that implements such things and have only been on officially on the Moderator team since April. Nor can I tell you whether it "still works", or indeed, if it ever worked: it should be relatively simple to test, although if your renewal isn't due for another 10 months, you might need to leave a note for yourself somewhere...

Unfortunately, the Support team makes mistakes sometimes as well, but will do their best to correct any errors. It does help to have some patience with them - things do take days rather than hours generally. While most auto-renewals are done on a yearly basis and therefore don't have to be actioned immediately, I think the Support team does act on Billing related requests more quickly.

I object to your assertion that chess.com is trying to "trick" anyone. You don't like the standard business practice that chess.com uses regarding auto-renewal of payments: that's fine. But we don't try to stop you from cancelling your subscription or make it hard to do so - we even provide an option for you to cancel your auto-renewal without having to contact the Support team. You don't have to call anyone during business hours; you don't have to give us written notice. I think chess.com is actually very open and transparent on this issue, and happy to have our practices and record stand against any of our competitors.

If you don't think we "deserve" your money, don't give us any. Guess what? Chess.com still lets you play chess here, post in the forums, and tries to recoup some of our costs through advertising. Some folks install ad blockers, but we don't try and stop people from doing that. I understand that you are philosophically opposed to the auto-renewal model that we and the overwhelming majority of businesses use, but you would be better off arguing for it as a a personal preference rather than trying to claim that it is some sort of moral imperative. Calling people "undeserving", "tricksters" or "cheats" is not a good way of getting them on side to do something you'd like them to do - which I personally think is a pretty useful tip for all of life (out in the real world as well as in here digitally).

 RohirrimElf, have you heard back from the Support team yet? If not, drop me a PM and I can check with what few contacts I have on that side of things as to wherebouts your query is at.

I don't find any means of disabling auto renewal on my account page. Is this only on the up and coming v.3?

No, it's here on V2, just worded a little strangely.  The big yellow box?  That's what you want:

You have a Diamond Membership, scheduled to renew on December 30, 2015. Thank you for supporting Chess.com! To cancel your Premium Membership, click here.

Yeah, I'm too literal minded for that to work. Thanks

david wrote "But we don't try to stop you from cancelling your subscription or make it hard to do so - we even provide an option for you to cancel your auto-renewal without having to contact the Support team."

and "I have no idea when the option was added: I am not on the development team that implements such things and have only been on officially on the Moderator team since April. Nor can I tell you whether it "still works", or indeed, if it ever worked.."

So david if you are indeed the staff member why wouldn't you ask somebody who is competent in this area?

I just upgraded my account to a premium membership. And I was able to cancel the automatic renewal from my account page without having to contact the Support team (Thanks God!). But my question is why do you think, david, the cancelation of the automatic renewal is disguised as the cancelation of the premium membership? Don't you think it is another part of the same scheme? If it is not don't you think they should write "To cancel the Automatic Renewal, click here."  instead of the frase " To cancel your Premium Membership, click here."  It does not cancel the Premium Membership. Another lie or just clumsiness of the one who wrote it? Anyway why wouldn't you fix it? Just do not tell me it is too expensive :)

    "So david if you are indeed the staff member why wouldn't you ask somebody who is competent in this area"?     Because David may be located thousands of miles away from the finance department, in a different time zone. 

Accountability!  

Do you demand that your power, and gas companies remind you that your bill is due?  Of course not...

Do you expect your landlord/finance company to call/email/text you that your payment is due?  Of course not...

Your chess.com profile has a big ole box that lets you know when your membership will renew.  Quit making excuses, quit expecting others to do your work.

Certainly that wording is unfortunate, and I don't think that should take much to change: they may wait, however, until V3 is fully rolled out before putting in the effort to fix it, because the http://www.chess.com/home/account.html page doesn't quite take you to the same place in V3. You could help by trying the new interface and seeing if you can find the "Cancel auto-renewal" option and, if it's not there or not clear, submitting a Bug Report, who are looking at those very closely at the moment.

I am also a huge fan of Hanlon's Razor: a phenomenon is far more likely to be the result of a mistake than of malice.

And lastly, a life tip that I have found very helpful is to assume positive intent: give other people the benefit of the doubt. I haven't seen anything yet from chess.com that would make me conclude that they're actively trying to confuse & cheat people, and I do feel that I've seen a little bit more of what happens "behind the scenes" than many.

Cheers ~ David...

      " But my question is why do you think, david, the cancelation of the automatic renewal is disguised as the cancelation of the premium membership"?                                           A course in reading comprehension should clear that up. 

"Certainly that wording is unfortunate, and I don't think that should take much to change: they may wait, however, until V3 is fully rolled out before putting in the effort to fix it.." Come on, david, it takes 5 minutes or less to change one word for another. 

 If I was a programmer on the development team with access and authorisation to the Production environment, then sure - if the text has been implemented as a stand alone page (as seems probable), as opposed to being extracted from a database depending on the language settings of the person's account (something that's only just occurred to me now).

Take it up in Site Feedback & Suggestions: log a Support ticket. That's the best way of bringing it to the attention of the people who can do something about it.

So here's what it looks like over at V3.  Home>Settings:

Membership 

Could be clearer that you're canceling the autorenewal and not your membership, but a marginal improvement.