Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

What if I used a Paypal credit card that expired a month after I created the account. They can't get me that way, right?

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

According to the good Hal, you'll be sent to collections for the $20 renewal fee. ;)

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

I'm more boggled by the fact that Hal "Smirking Asshole" Halpin thinks the way to serve customers/members is to insult them and call them thieves, and that the organization whose alleged purpose is to spread acceptance of electronic entertainment requires a snailmailed letter to cancel.

I did one of the postcards, and I sent in a regular letter as well. Cancel me, quit sending me junk mail, and never darken my doorstep again.

I did contact the BBB once about EBGames.com, the EB rep constantly argued with me and changed his story - once I told him I contacted the BBB, he fixed the problem real quick. Of course then he responded to the BBB and phrased it in a way that I was the problem and that he fixed it as soon as he found out about the problem.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Today I spoke with Seth, the membership account manager at ECA. He said there WILL be an online cancellation option up in the next few weeks. Hopefully it's not an outright lie. :)

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

See if you can get Seth to post here, maybe answer some questions and allay some fears.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

And get Hal on here too. That should be fun :)

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

How about an online cancelling of automatic renewal, which is what most people wanted in the first place? It's like ECA either wants people as a member fo' life, or not at all. As people have said before, I don't want to be automatically billed next year, but I don't want to cancel my membership - I'd like to remain a member on the off-chance there may be a useful membership benefit in the future.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

You know, we lose sight in the clusterfuck that has been this cancellation policy, but in reality, we shouldn't HAVE to cancel at all. We (at least some of us) have paid for a year's subscription. We should have the option to keep our membership for the year and then cancel. We need a way to just stop the auto-renew, but in light of everything else, I know that's asking too much.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Seeing as how it took him this long just to get back to me (I called on the day the story broke), I highly doubt he'll be coming here to chat. :lol:

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Agree with everyone here. Just let us disable/cancel the auto renew membership and most of us are going to stay member. And then when it's time to renew, maybe, why not?, some of us may renew. It's really that easy.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

I got the following in my newsletter:
I can't access the ECA's site or cheapassgamer from work. Does anyone know what this is about?

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

They removed the "we'll change the CC expiration date" bit, if memory serves.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

The lesson here is always use a pre-paid gift card like Visa Vanilla,visa gift to go or simon gift card.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

The ECA has stated that they will send collections after anybody who does that and has their auto-renewal fail. Probably and empty threat, though.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Definitely an empty threat. It would have to be hundreds, if not thousands of $'s for a collections effort to be worthwhile.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

I don't know. I have seen doctor's office's send $20 accounts to collections. The ECA would just sell a group of accounts to a collector for some amount less than $20. For a recent debt like this, perhaps $5-$10 per account.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Even lower than that. Debt collection companies buy debts for pennies on the dollar.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Depends on the likelyhood of collecting the debt. The more likely, the higher the price. It is only really old debt that goes for less than 10% of the debt amount.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Back when I worked at Blockbuster, they'd send TONS of customers to "collections" for $4 in late fees. I say "collections" because if memory serves, the collections agency was actually part of Blockbuster. So it was really more of a scare tactic than an actual threat, but it was still very effective.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

I once got a court summons because I didn't return Koyaanisqatsi & Stalker on VHS from my library.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

Philip Glass fans don't screw around.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

medical and student college bills are different but for something like this as long as they don`t have your social security number I don`t see them wasting time taking you to court for $20 dollars, think about it, a lawyer would cost at least a $100 hour an hour to represent them to get that $20 back.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

It's a donation paying in advance for your yearly membership. If you don't pay, you don't get the membership. There is nothing to collect on.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

That logic is just silly talk.. Hal does not agree.. ;) He'll sic collections on you still.

Re: ECA - BASTARDS CHANGED POLICY An Important warning to ALL MEMBERS!
 

LOL I'm not going to defend Hal but I don't think he threatened collections anywhere. That was just users speculating. Although if I missed something I would be interested in seeing it.