UPDATE: ECA Not Playing Nice With Members

UPDATE: ECA president Hal Halpin has released the following statement regarding the situation. According to Halpin, the issue is that a small number of exploiters were leaving and joining repeatedly in order to access discounts and offers. To combat this, the ECA changed its cancellation policy to require a written letter. Unfortunately, this new policy had repercussions for the ECA's normal members as well. While it could have been handled more transparently, it looks like this controversy is ultimately benign and that the ECA ran afoul of some good old-fashioned Internet outrage in the process. Hopefully the organization will work to make sure that their legitimate members have a hassle-free experience in the future.

We were disheartened to read some of the coverage and comments related to complaints regarding our member cancellation policies this morning. The issue seems to have begun following a guest article that I penned a few months ago, where I highlighted the various policy issues that gamers should be aware of – from Net Neutrality and Universal Broadband to Digital Rights Management (DRM) and End User License Agreements (EULAs). I concluded the piece by providing those who had taken the time to diligently read the article with a coupon code, encouraging them to sign up for a free trial membership… the logic being that we’d like to have readers who care about the issues among our ranks. For about four weeks following the publishing, we had a small bump in new member acquisition, but they were not coming from the article, unfortunately. These new members were coming from websites and forums that were solely promoting the coupon code, sans important reading.

Within a relatively short period of time, some of the new members found an exploit in one of our partners’ promotional codes and spread the word. The partner tried to resolve the situation, during which time we removed any references to the program, but ultimately it was decided that the offer be terminated. We advised members as soon as we were aware and reassured them that we were working on additional offers with new partners. We updated our website during the same timeframe in a long planned for Content Management System upgrade and an inactive back-end feature became visible, which looked to give some members the option to opt-out of the association. We were alerted to the error and removed the non-functioning feature immediately. Because it was viewable and then removed, those same few members became concerned that it was a feature that had been live all along and was suddenly removed. We then attempted to explain the situation and allay their concerns.

There were then concerns about the auto-renew structure of our payment system and business model related to that same function. We explained that we are working on ramping up infrastructure to become more automated going forward, but due to a small but active number of members who were repeatedly joining, leaving and re-joining the organization – in an effort to exploit our member benefits and unduly take advantage of our partners’ generous offers – we would require a mailed letter, as per our membership agreement. Needless to say, that incensed the exploiters who then contacted the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and their personal banks to report that we attained their membership under fraudulent conditions, in effect committing fraud themselves. Upon investigating the opened investigations, the respective banks and BBB all found ECA to be soundly reputable. We understand that several of the banks have since opened fraud investigations into their customers and that they take such matters very seriously.

Over the past few years, membership in the ECA has grown substantially, the primary reason for which is directly attributable to the important work done by the association, partnerships formed with coalitions, parallel trade associations and corporations, all eager to help defend the rights of game consumers. We have added many valuable benefits for members including discounts on games-related goods and services, purchases and rentals and a whole host of additional affinity benefits. We have several retail partners who offer significant promotions and several more, which are in the process of being finalized. It is important to note that the number of members who were/are involved in this unfortunate issue is very small and not representative of the organization as a whole. We sincerely thank the dedicated ECA members and the gaming community for their understanding and support on this matter and we look forward to continuing to grow the organization to suit the needs of the consumers.

Hal Halpin – ECA President

ORIGINAL STORY: Imagine you're a gamer who never has enough money to buy all the games you want to play (difficult, I know). Some guy comes along and says, "Hey, sign up for this free consumer advocacy group and get a discount on Amazon.com! All you need to do is give us your credit card information. You can cancel your membership at any time, but if you stay with us past the first year it's $20 annually." Sweet deal, right? Sure, until the Amazon promotion abruptly ends and the accounting department goes all Hotel California and won't let you actually cancel without jumping through some serious hoops.

That's more or less what happened with the Entertainment Consumers Association, as noted by enterprising members of the CheapAssGamer forums. The ECA still offers a set of discounts at retailers and services like GameFly and Direct2Drive, but the Amazon discount has since been discontinued. The organization also automatically sets every one of their members up for automated renewal of their membership. The catch is that the only way to opt out is via snail mail, and we all know how reliable that is unless you spring the extra cash to have it certified.

The official rationale is that "The org has grown too large to handle the volume. Please understand that this protects ECA from undecided or finicky members who are joining and leaving repeatedly in order to access current benefits which costs us resources and time. It also gives us written documentation, a paper trail to reconcile against."

Apparently, the ECA's website is more than capable of accepting donations and new member signups from all over the world, but processing cancellations is beyond its capabilities.

We've contacted the ECA for comment and will update the story as necessary.  Let's not break out the torches and pitchforks just yet, though; this seems like an awful lot of work to go through to swindle people out of a whole $20 per year. Hopefully this is simply a case of the organization's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It sure doesn't look great on the face of it, though, does it?