Upgrade confusion and no reply from Chess.com

Hi, I need information by tomorrow re my son's account( I sent a message to chess.com 4 days ago,no answer). I got him Platinum membership in August, I used membership credits for a diamond upgrade ( which expires on 17/12),to see if my son is really making use of it.

I want to upgrade now to diamond,but unsure of what to pay,I can't find info on how to do that.

I paid for 1 year Platinum, have now 8 months left of it. It says that my existing credit would be applied,which is around $40. His account shows the credits are down to $1.Did I have to "pay" for the temporary upgrade?  i saw that these credits go down anyway. Or do i pay full price for 1 year (Dec 2015)or until August 2015 or the portion for the remaining  8months? If anyone could enlighten me on that matter would be great. If chess.com could give some more explanations to that upgrade/credit system would be helpful, too. Thanks.

Gosh, it would be easier to explain quantum physics.

It's no wonder they haven't replied. Your description is totally confusing. I have never heard of anyone having "membership credits" to apply. Was this a cash credit?

I don't know what they charge in New Zealand but in the US, a platinum membership is $7 per month or $49 per year.  Diamond is $14 per month or $99 per year.  

Four months of a diamond membership would run you $56 and if you only paid $49 would explain why you have little or no "credit" to apply.

You do realize that they have business hours and don't work on weekends...

lets put it simple..

If you want to upgrade an account to a better one ( lets suppose it cost $100 ), but you already purchased another premium ( lets say you paid $50) and you used it for 6 months.

If you upgrade now they will 'return' the money for the remining period of the preovious account. More exactly they will "credit" you 25$ for the 6 months you paid the basic preium and will not use because upgraded toa better premiumship.

In the end your upgrade will cost 100-(50/2)= 75  

BTW all this is explained in the premium purchase page;

http://www.chess.com/membership?c=navbar

Even better, you can even 'downgrade' from a highest premium to a cheaper one. No monery required, youd new premium will last yust longer..

yes,thanks, I sent my message Friday,but we are ahead of time and in NZ it's now Tuesday afternoon. The membership credits come up when you go on upgrade. Everyone paying member seems to get them  and they can be used in different ways. I used them when someone here mentioned them. I did not write to support the same as here as I guess (hope) they know what their own rules are... We already had a problem  and they closed my son's account due to their strange system without notice or reimbursement,so I want to avoid that. Their communication was quite poor then,I really want to know what i have to pay and they should figure that out. 

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Thanks Ghillan, I would think the same way, i just had problems before when I wanted to downgrade(not wanting to keep the Diamond membership). I had no optionto do so and my son's account was deleted completely although I had paid. I will upgrade and see what happens.

O_o no account will never be deleted, EVER.

Even banned accounts are still there, just blocked. Maybe you mean closed? As far i know the staff never closes accounts, but the user can do that from the settings menu. Are you sure your son have not played with the setting and closed it by mistake?

I think i already said that, but YES!!!

Obviously if you already spent part of your year of diamond ( lets say 3 months), you will not get whe whole to be converted, just 3/4 as you already "spent" 1/4 of your membership. The rest can be "converted" to any other premium membership.

Check this page:http://www.chess.com/membership?c=navbar

It clearly states:

• How can I upgrade, downgrade, or change plans?

  You can change plans any time without losing your membership credit! Simply choose your new plan and your existing membership credit will be applied to your new membership plan.

Where membership credits is basically.. money. They call them this way because they are not returning your money back. THey convert the money you paid in credits and you can use those credits to change from any premium to any other. More expensive premium consumes your credit faster, less expensive membership , slower. That's all.

You can upgrade and downgrade as and when you wish.

well, it was closed. I only wanted to get rid of the Diamond membership so that they don't charge my visa card automatically, but when I cancelled the temporary Diamond upgrade (for which I used the membership credits) they just closed the account completely( and my son had no membership) and it took 2 days for them to re-open.

ah.. ok. Did you removed the visa details without disabling the renew?

Usually accounts get closed if you remove card details or put fake numbers on the visa, but dont disable the renewal. So they try to charge the renewal but are unable.

If you unsubscrive the proper way ( just removing the automatic reneval) or if you remove the card details AFTER be sure that you have disabled the automatic reneval you sould not have any issue.

The reason many people het the problems , so the myth about abbount closure due to premium unsubscribing, its because many people just remove the card details , but leave the automatic revewal on. So chess.com try to get the reneval but are unable to get paid hence the account closur until the thing its clarified.

I know that for sure, because there was a lot of discussion about this in one of my teams. I had a premium membership and was expiring, so i tested it myself ( on this account).

I removed the revewal and waited the end of membership. My account became again "free membership", without issues and without being closed.

Keep it in mind for future reference. ;-)

Go to site map= you will find all the questios anserd

Hi Ghillan, sorry for late reply. You are right, the account was only closed,back to free membership.But I had paid and it took them 2 days to reinstate the platinum. I also got an email re my upgrade question saying they can't upgrade for the remaining year,only for a full year. And yes, the amount of money that was left from the platinum membership was taken off the Diamond membership. maybe when i used the credits to upgrade i should have downgraded when the upgrade time was over? There was no information about it on chess.com. So I cancelled the Diamond mship(told chess.com account should stay on platinum ),expecting the account would be downgraded,but the account went to free membership, which of course I didn't want. I got it finally sorted,but there was no explanation of how I should have done it. Anyway, the account is now back to Diamond thanks to a good friend and no worries for another year. Thanks for taking time to explain everything. Have a nice Christmas!