Following up on yesterday's news that the Entertainment Consumer Association had clamped down on cancellation policies after discontinuing the best member benefit available, Ars Technica breaks the whole situation down from both sides of the issue as both the ECA and its angry members respond to the allegations. The consensus is that this whole mess makes everyone look bad. Essentially, some unpaid ECA members were taking advantage of the Amazon.com discount offered to members in good standing by gaming the system to use multiple discounts on single orders, leading to the end of that benefit and increased cancellation hassles in order to weed out those who were essentially poisoning the well.
After going over the complaints and the ECA's explanation... no one really looks good here. It's anecdotal, but we're only receiving complaints from people who signed up via the promotional offer. The terms of membership are clearly laid out and explained. If people are signing up, canceling, and then signing up again and again to take advantage of the membership's numerous promotional deals without paying or contributing to the organization's goals, that's lame... and the ECA is within its rights to protect itself. The ECA also sends members an e-mail reminding them of their upcoming membership renewal and the annual fee.
On the other hand, this is a group that speaks for consumers, and it's anachronistic to require a physical letter to cancel your membership. If a nonrenewal option was placed on the site, it should be honored. It's the job of the organization and its partners to find and fix exploits in promotional offerings. The current system is broken—badly—and needs to be fixed.
The list of member benefits is still long and the group is still doing important work, but this is a public black eye that should have been avoided. The ECA claims that this problem only concerns a tiny, vocal minority of members, but so far the coverage has not been in the group's favor. If nothing else, it's a reminder that you should always pay attention to what you're signing up for, read the terms carefully, and don't take anything for granted... even when it comes to consumer advocacy groups.
The ECA isn't helping their case here, but ultimately I believe it's the unpaid members that were taking advantage of the Amazon.com discount to blame. Benefits are not entitlements, and those who treat them as such ended up wrecking things for those of us paid ECA members out there who used the discount responsibly. I'll hang on to my membership for now (I'm paid up until later next year anyway), but hopefully once the issue settles down we'll see the Amazon discount return with some precautions in place to prevent those who would like to abuse the system from doing so.
