Ha! A man can't spend all his time attempting to make his organization implode.

As long as I'm coming clean, though, Ingrid Newkirk (President of PETA) and I actually share this username. I got Video Game and Book Talk and she took custody of Other and Blu-Ray Bargains. She LOVES discounted Blu-rays.

I'm not certain that the Gmail letters will have any success in cancelling accounts, but if nothing else it'll make Hal rethink his stated desire to "establish a paper trail".

They probably won't be accepted... they're basically postcards, not the certified mail that they're requesting.

Here's the card I just sent:

Especially now that people are sending fake ones.

no, the only way to call off the bounty hunters is by carrier pigeon... which will be the only way to cancel your ECA account once they get flooded with letters and decide that letters are only for the lazy.

Are you saying people can't send fake certified letters?

I just took a peek at my account, which I kept open just in case. At some point, I think I turned off the autorenew, and I don't see an order for next year.

Is this issue only if you want to cancel your membership, or does it relate to autorenewal as well?

If that is true..this is the most interesting post about this I have seen yet.

They don't differentiate between canceling your account and canceling autorenew, so we're assuming you need to cancel the account. Note that the main point of contention here is that the autorenew button DID NOT WORK... if you clicked it thinking that you opted out, they're saying you really did not, and they will charge you again.

LOL, exact same codes for everyone, they can't ban you if they don't know who you are because they are not unique

I still think they will try to weasel out, but right now it says nothing about certified mail, just that it has to be a written request.

That's correct, the TOS does not mention certified mail.

Yet....

It's not about what the TOS says. It's about the fact that if you don't send it certified mail, they apparently intend to claim they never received it -- and you won't be able to prove otherwise.

Sadly, JasonF is right. The thing of it is, even if you send a request certified, there is nothing to stop them from continuing to charge you. Your recourse is going to take far more time and/or money than the $20 they will be stealing. I think our only hope is that there is enough pressure applied to them via BBB that they buckle and add the opt-out to their site.

The BBB is actually toothless if the entity under investigation simply doesn't care.

What can happen, as I've experienced once, is that they can make the state's attorney general aware of a problem.

All I can say is that it's amazing how fast the 'bad guy who wants to stay in business' will contact you to resolve an issue when he's looking to get you to write a letter to the AG stating that everything's actually now fine.

Another online cancellation option. This one is a bit more costly than the Google alternative:

http://www.mailpoop.com

I think this particular move by the ECA is pretty shady. On the other hand, I'm not surprised that the ECA is making it difficult to cancel, considering how many people abuse various membership services to obtain discounts (e.g., signing up to get short-term discounts with the full intention of canceling before ever having to pay a dime).

The ECA offered a free year of membership with a coupon code. How is taking advantage of that "abuse"?

The ECA decided they wanted everyone to be able to sign up for free by printing a generic promo code in Game Informer. If they wanted to they could have killed the promo code after the first X amount of people signed up. I still haven't gotten over the fact that I paid for my membership and a month or 2 later they decide to let everyone sign up for free.

It would be a pain, but cancelling the card you joined with and having the card company issue a new account # would be one way of taking care of it I'd think.

Who cares about making it difficult to cancel? They don't allow refunds on membership anyway. They are making it difficult to cancel the AUTORENEW option. The only way to do that is to cancel your membership, without refund. If they made it difficult to cancel membership but allowed you to cancel autorenew easily, nobody would complain.