QWAFA X NEW

arbitrarily cancelled my paid-up annual membership part-way through, while my membership had a full year remaining to run. The group's president, Milind S, cited an alleged new membership policy that he admits did not exist at the time that he himself actively solicited me to "re-sign up" for an annual membership for $150, which I duly paid on August , 2019. He explicitly refused my refund request, using unprofessional, abusive language when doing so.

*** is a professional society that arose in late 2019 from the contentious split-up of a previously existing society with a somewhat similar name. Last August, the emerging *** sent an email blast pitching a "re-signup drive" (soliciting early membership fee renewals) to myself and other paid-up members of the former group that it had split from. I was invoiced on August , 2019, I paid and received a receipt for the $150 membership early-renewal fee, and I was promised in writing that the membership I had just purchased would "EXTEND for 1 year from the current expiration date....would be good through 1//21."

In January 2020 I received a communication (unsigned) from *** that stated that:
1) their membership criteria had changed subsequent to my purchase of my membership,
2) the annual membership extension I had purchased for $150 some 4 months earlier, which would have run for a further 12 months from the date of this latest communication, was no longer valid, and
3) to avoid immediate loss of the benefits of the annual membership I had already purchased from that group, I was asked to pay an additional $1,200 for a sponsor-level membership.

Because the group had solicited and sold me a current paid membership with the written promise that it would run through the end of January 2021 (not 2020), I asked them to refund my existing membership fee, rather than try to cancel it arbitrarily after a few months. ***'s president Mr. S responded in the rude manner described in the first paragraph above