I wanted to post my discussion with Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest for everyone to see so you will know why I stopped paying chess.com for my Diamond membership and became a Lichess patron.
TheoGantos2
Hello Erik, I am writing you because I believe that there is a process failure at your company. One issue appears that your staff are not accountable to us, the customers. I have made suggestions and bug reports and seemingly they drop into an abyss. People are allowed to violate your fair play rules arbitrarily without consequences. Not saying we need to have people wear a red C on their chest for engine use, sandbagging or other violations, but more transparency is required for me to continue to pay for this service. Would be happy to provide more info if you are interested.
Regards,
Theo Gantos, II
erik
18 days ago
Hi. Please do say more.
TheoGantos2
1. There is no forum for positive criticism on your site. Dissenters are muted, their threads deleted for mentioning competitive sites to point out some feature or policy difference. Without real feedback, top management believes their own marketing. Is your corporate image so fragile?
2. "Abuse" reports receive short shrift. All I get to any report is an automated non-informational response essentially saying, "We received a report from you, not saying which one, or any details, no assigned tracking number, we may have taken some action, but you don't deserve to know."
3. Bug reports- Apple used to be notorious for not responding to bug reports until they have a fix. ("Admit no bug before we fix it")I I once submitted a detailed bug report on Apple's Xserve software, including a fix to their PHP code which I had a contractor write at my expense, it was never responded to (except an acknowledgement that they received the report) for nearly three years, when someone said in an email "Hey is this still an issue, the latest software has a fix!" Seriously? Three years and they never read the report. Serious issues exist with chess.com mobile app connection/disconnections which I have replicated and made reports which to this day have gone unanswered. I fixed the problem by permanently removing the chess.com app from my iOS devices.
4. Customer service- I lost my email to my old account Theogantos which I opened back in 2009 I believe, recently had contacted support for help to reactivate the account with a different email, after wasting time trying I gave up and just opened a new account.
continued-
5. Company Hierarchies tend toward self-defense and conservatism unless top management is radical about re-engineering and re-invention. People get complacent and like routine, this can kill an organization. Only top management can shake this up by being an upstart in their own company,
Thank you for your attention, I do appreciate it, by and large I do like some of the features, but seemingly chess.com needs to refocus on core values and less on expansion variants, 5D chess, etc. When a (non-premium) user such as VeryBadChess2007 is allowed to deliberately sandbag his blitz rating below 800 by losing to bots and other people like a total dufus without consequences why am I paying for a Diamond membership?
I thank you for your time, be well and safe.
Regards,
Theo Gantos, II
erik
18 days ago
Thanks for your thoughts. I can tell you are passionate and thoughtful. I think these are all fair points. Frankly, most of what I can say is that these are the challenges of working at scale. We are huge now. Millions of users. Every day, tens of thousands of Abuse Reports, Support Tickets, Bug Reports... it’s just a nearly impossible flood. And chess honestly just isn’t a big money maker. We can’t afford the staff we would need for a high-touch personal experience like you are suggesting. We do answer almost all supper requests. We do triage all big reports. We do process all abuse reports... but it’s a massive battle daily to do it, especially in the face of so many trolls, cheaters, jerks, and problematic users. We are doing the best we can. We have volunteer moderators too because we just can’t handle the volume otherwise. And some of them are more or less aggressive, sensitive, whatever. It’s just not something we can micromanage. So, we set our vision, put forth our goals and values, and do our best.
erik
18 days ago
I feel super confident in those things: our vision is to help people enjoy chess. Our values are kindness, and positive user experience. I wish we were able to guarantee a perfect experience, but we can’t. Jerks get though. Sandbaggers sometimes don’t get caught. Cheaters cheat for a while before they are caught. It’s just an unfortunate truth. That said, I am hugely proud of our team overall for what we achieve given our scope of problems and available resources. Our customer satisfaction rating for Support is far above 90%. Our user base is growing. It’s not perfect, but we are doing our best.
TheoGantos2
18 days ago
I don't feel confident. Seems as though currently your organization's reach exceeds its grasp, you lost me as a diamond member. I am sorry to say I am downgrading.
erik
18 days ago
Understood. Thanks for your support though the years.
TheoGantos2
Thank you for your time to hear my concerns. Be well.
@TheoGantos Whatever you think of chess.com , I appreciate Erik's honesty in his reply. It also feels like generic issues that could be lobbed at any chess server.
Hope you like it here @TheoGantos
Funny that someone on their youtube streeam got kicked for saying ' you must not have seen much of the world if you think fiona is the most beautiful woman in the world. " i really don't see how thats worth kicking someone. @TheoGantos
You're going to find the exact same stuff to varying degrees everywhere. Well except you generally won't find the CEO of most sites engaging thoughtfully with your issues in a private way. But like Erik said, Chess.com is currently by far the largest site and so you're going to see more of the nasty stuff there.
In general I don't understand paying your loyalty to any site over the other. They all have their own thing. Lichess is fun for the silly 0 second premove nonsense stuff. Chess.com is nice for a huge playerbase and some incredibly nice software (now a days... used to be the worst). Chess24 is nice for seemingly never-ending events and streams with literally the strongest players in the world. They each have their own thing going for them, and in the end that's good for everybody.
There's also one little nuance relegated to history now that's nonetheless still relevant imo. When the ICC (the internet chess club - former 'king' of online chess) started to die, online chess itself was dying. There were a handful of efforts to startup something new, but nothing really caught hold. Chess.com did in a big way and they're a big part of the reason that now a days at nearly any given moment there are hundreds of thousands of people playing online chess - it's by far bigger than ever. They've got that marketing/advertising glam that keeps this game growing, which is good for everybody. So not really a perk in the present, but online chess today is as big as it is in large part because of that company and so I think that at least deserves some recognition.
@ck_russ nothing against chess.Com. But its not good for a single person and you had yahoo chess, playchess, chessmaster, fics and many others. Agadmator isn't good for chess. They can all do their thing why not. But we shouldn't make up bogus claims that chess is better thanks to them.
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