Funny thing is that by doing this scam, they can lose their non-profit status and get themselves in trouble with the federal government.

Spoken like a criminal. A small minority of members had similar thoughts, but they've all now had their federal taxes increased 50%and are under investigations by the feds.

-Hal

Thanks, I was going to wait and watch but there's nothing to lose by sending that, and it'll be amusing to see their excuse as to why those cards don't actually count as mail for cancelling purposes.

I have no idea what their accounting department is actually like, but the mental image of Angela, Kevin and Oscar getting buried neck-high on Monday once the mail arrives under a pile of Christmas card cancellation requests has me giggling like a schoolgirl.

HA!

I'm not a member, but even I want to send them a cancellation gmail card.

Watch them claim a postcard isn't a letter...

I dunno.. You might find yourself made a member and some how they'll get your credit card info.

The eca has no one to blame but themselves. They're the idiots that decided to let everyone and their mother sign up for free. If they had not done that, I doubt there would have been an issue.

yeah..you're not a member but if you send a cancellation request, they'll send you a invoice and a note if you don't pay they'll send to a collection agency ...lol

I'm not a member, but I sent them a GMail post card anyway.

It read,

"Dear ECA,

I hope you learned a lesson.

Happy holidays!"

More likely, they'll claim they never received any postcards. Should have sent them return receipt requested ...

Hahaha. I sent the gmail card... I just sent a regular one because I can see the guy going "what a bunch of assholes" and throwing out all the 'this is awkward' ones, lol. I'll send a registered letter sometime next year if that doesn't work... I've got till mid-September to quit.

I still can't get over the fact that all this is over 1 column/bit of data that represents either a 0 or 1. That's what really gets me mad. Their database can't handle 1 fucking bit of data per customer? Yeah, that's bullshit. What a bunch of scammers. I feel bad for the people that actually bought a membership to this crooked organization.... heck, I didn't even get a chance to use the Amazon discount!!

I'm sending them one asking if they know of any good Amazon deals.

As far as subscriptions go, my credit card expired on Netflix's website, but the charges continued going through. Only when I added Blu-ray was my card denied, until I changed the expiration year.

Wow, you ECA guys have balls coming on other forums and trying to build fear in people's minds.

That's the president of the ECA, Hal Halpin, btw. Hey Hal, how does it feel to run a non-profit organization into the ground with only 2 maneuvers? That's skill right there.

You're telling me that you didn't think that gamers would tell each other that ... for free... they could get 10% off Amazon for a year? That that information would stay secret? Right.

I can't think of one online organization that I can't quit over email. I was going to keep my ECA membership for a couple more months (after the Amazon discount was annihilated) than decide if I wanted to keep it after that but I just hate the overall attitude of your organization. But you've made it such a hassle to quit that I'm anticipating that it will take MONTHS before I can do so.

Sent my postcard.

The sad part, for them, is that if they would allow people to cancel without problem right now there wouldn't be any uproar. In my case, I'd actually consider paying $20 if I thought they were doing good for gamers. But they just looked really bad in this case.

I sent one in, but I'm not holding my breath that my membership will actually get cancelled. They've now proven themselves to be totally untrustworthy so I have no reason to believe they'll put their money where their mouth is. It's pretty disturbing that they totally wiped out the feedback board on their forums.

I did see this in the comments on digg though. Thought it was interesting:

Don't look up! GoVegan's joke could fall on your head at any moment!

It makes total sense now.. GoVegan is Hal...

Oh no, did I read something too literally?

Remember to use your winky faces more liberally! I'm easily confused.

It did seem weird that the douche ECA president would have 3000 posts on DVDtalk.

Or absolutely brilliant! Maybe he's just really committed to the subterfuge!

Rob, I hope you've canceled all your credit cards and gone into hiding, because Hal's gonna sic his bounty hunters on you now...

And we all know that once Hal orders his bounty hunters... the only way to cancel them is for him to send the bounty hunting service a registered letter in the mail and wait a month.