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[FriendFinder](http://www.FriendFinder.com/ “FriendFinder.com”) is in the middle of a major network upgrade as it migrates hundreds of thousands of SpringStreet Network members on to the FriendFinder Network.
FF has rebranded it’s SpringStreet Networks acquisition as FastCupid.com and I’m hearing a lot of complaints about arbitrary changes to profiles, lost data and upset posts to the FastCupid blogs and in emails.
It looks like FriendFinder has taken all the profiles across the SpringStreet Network, integrated them into the FF database and are running them through the FF templates and supporting pages (billing, help, search, etc.)
In doing so many changes have occurred, many without warning to members, who are losing email, content and patience with FriendFinder.
Some of the complaints:
- Login names changes multiple times in 12 hours.
- Many are reporting lost email.
- New features and UI confusing most often called “complicated.”
- Profiles changed.
- Credits purchased recently have been deleted, forcing people into monthly subscription cycle.
- Many people say they feel insulted and are angry at the way the migration occurred.
My Salon.com profile seems ok, I still have the same questions, although the new User Interface leaves a lot to be desired. I have to say the new pages don’t look nearly as appealing as the originals, but FF has never been know for it’s design or user interface. Spending a few more dollars to have a designer go over the page assets and come up with better layout would have been helpful. As it stands, the clean SpringStreet look & feel is totally gone, replaced with bland FF layout. Sad.
Many people are confused about the new service tiers and pricing structure. Pricing moved from credit-based to monthly subscription. $22.94 per month for Silver Membership, and $34.94 for Gold. Gold and Silver members must pay an additional $19.95 to have enable regular subscribers to contact them.
Full details at [FastCupid](http://www.FastCupid.com/ “FastCupid.com”)
More details as I get them.
[tags: friendfinder, springstreet]
{ 16 comments }
1. The new database for Spring Street is COMPLETELY independent from any of the other FriendFinder sites.
We do not have any plans at this time to combine the databases. We are strongly committed to retain the unique character of the Spring Street network of sites.
2. Changing tires on a moving car is never an easy task. Due to some technical issues with the original site, we had to make the decision of migration earlier than ideal. The good news is that we currently have 20 people working on the live issues and are making progress every hour. A formal email will go out to all members shortly.
3. Part of the migration challenge is that it was impossible to perfectly sync the two databases in real-time. While no member data is lost, it will take a day to copy the data of the last few days into the new system.
4. The new site uses a hybrid of both credits and subscription business model depending on the date the member joined. We also have made some features free such as chat and instant messaging.
5. Design changes and improvements will be occurring during the next few days using the best of the old and new systems as a guide. We encourage members to post their rants in the Spring Street blogs as we listen to all feedback.
Thanks.
Andrew
The only problem is that they forged the email header so it looked like it came from my own address, and there was no other contact information.
This is not only seriously uncool, it may actually be criminal in states with strict anti-spam laws that prohibit using ‘from’ addresses that the sender is not authorized to use.
I immediately deleted my account information, but who knows if it’s really gone or if the deletion will even “stick” if they reload the old database.
They justified this with “honesty is the best policy” crap, but there are legitimate reasons for having multiple profiles. E.g., one person might have separate accounts for serious dating, casual dating (”hey, anyone want to check out ‘the Aristocrats’ this weekend?”), finding new friends, and partners for specific activities such as finding running partners.
These were all slammed together and “the most active” profile was the only survivor. People who only knew you by a different profile had to find you all over again.
This didn’t affect me personally, but the casual dismissal of real concerns disturbed me.
Old members should either get a full refund or be be given back their old features — full views of all profiles and the ability to contact members for $1, whenever they choose.
The new site’s disregard for member data is flagrant — exact birthdates are now posted for anyone to harvest. Andrew Conru’s response on this (in the blogs section) was to suggest that members alter their birthdate or month or year to protect themselves! Other users are reporting spam for the very first time.
The errors are legion — comments and blogs on the site document these in detail, but comments (and blogs?) are being deleted constantly.
What are you talking about? I’m a standard member at nerve.com and I can view profiles, as long as I’m logged in. And the Spring Street personals didn’t let you contact people for free, you had to spend money to buy “credits”, while the FastCupid system requires you to buy “points” to contact people if you don’t want to pay a monthly fee to be a silver or gold member (supposedly people’s credits on the old system are supposed to be converted to points on the new one, although it seems like they’ve been having some problems with this–I used to have 25 credits and now I have 0 points).
Glad to know that there is a happy minority of joyous users out there. So you feel that all is well, and you have all the features you used to have?
A standard member can only view one photo (that too not full size). I did not claim that you could contact members for free (read my earlier post), you paid a $1 (one credit) to do so. Now you need to use 1000 points. Old credits are being converted at the rate of 200 points for 1 credit, so you need to spend at least $5 to contact someone. Also, standard members can only email Premium members who have purchased the ability to get email from Standard members. The standard search basically only allows you to search by distance, no options on education, kids, keywords etc etc. The list goes on — all the features that we considered basic, are now available only to subscription members.
Check this page out (even though it gives only a partial view of how messed up things are for legacy users)
http://www.fastcupid.com/p/page.cgi?p=member_status&
There is something you can do besides just leaving the site: you can call and at least get a promise of a refund.
Various Inc (parent company of Friend Finder)
445 Sherman Ave., Ste. C
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Phone: 650-847-3100
Fax: 650-324-9379
Email: billing@friendfinderinc.com
They claim they are processing a refund of my unused $25.
Write Salon, The Onion and Nerve and let them know how messed up things are. If these partner sites walk out Fast Cupid won’t have a lot to talk about.
Chill out dude–all I did was correct some incorrect information in your post, along with complaining a little about the credits->points conversion, and that’s enough for you to sarcastically paint me as “joyous user”? Everything’s not so black and white, you know–one can be slightly dissatisfied with the changes and yet keep them in perspective without becoming a cheerleader for “The Man” all of a sudden.
A standard member can only view one photo (that too not full size). I did not claim that you could contact members for free (read my earlier post), you paid a $1 (one credit) to do so. Now you need to use 1000 points.
I think you still only need to use 200 points. Log on, then view someone’s profile, and you’ll see that under their photo it talks about your options for contacting them, it says you can send an email for 200 points. If that’s right, and the conversion was 200 points for each credit, then the price is exactly the same (although if my case is typical there may be a lot of people whose credits haven’t been converted to points at all yet).
And to me, it did sound like you were saying Spring Street let you contact people for free. Read what you wrote again:
Friendfinder has taken away the most basic of personal’s features from the newly designated “Standard” members, i.e. anyone who was on the site before the acquisition — viewing profiles and contacting people. To call this an upgrade is laughable. A lawyer would call this a breach of contract.
To me it doesn’t make sense to say they “took away” the feature of being able to contact people if the old Spring Street version didn’t let you do that for free either–no one would ordinarily say that raising the price on something that already cost money to do counts as “taking it away” (and as I said, I don’t think the price has been raised). And the implication that they used to let you do it free was reinforced by the fact that you listed it alongside the feature of being able to view profiles, which was (and still is) free. Maybe you didn’t mean this implication, but if not, you didn’t express yourself very clearly.
Also, standard members can only email Premium members who have purchased the ability to get email from Standard members.
Well, that just indicates that getting Premium membership without adding that extra fee to let people contact you free is kind of a waste of money, and personally I think the cost for both together is way too high. But this isn’t taking away from what we already had on Spring Street, it’s just adding extra, overpriced options.
The standard search basically only allows you to search by distance, no options on education, kids, keywords etc etc. The list goes on — all the features that we considered basic, are now available only to subscription members.
I don’t remember Spring Street allowing you to search by anything other than age, sex and distance–maybe the option existed and I just never noticed, but out of curiosity, how did you access it? Was there an “advanced search” option or something?
I have made a request through Spring Street that my profile and all personal data be deleted from the Various database. To the techsavvy, I ask this. Is there any way for me to ascertain that this has been done?
Nerve User says:” I think you still only need to use 200 points. Log on, then view someone’s profile, and you’ll see that under their photo it talks about your options for contacting them, it says you can send an email for 200 points. If that’s right, and the conversion was 200 points for each credit, then the price is exactly the same (although if my case is typical there may be a lot of people whose credits haven’t been converted to points at all yet).”
Do this: click on the “Points” link on your personals home page, and then click on the Redeem link.
The pages states: “Use your points to Contact and View Members by filling out the form below. How many Profiles would you like to see? Do you want to contact anyone? 1 credit to view a profile costs 100 pts. But, to contact a member this requires 10 credits. So, to contact a member it costs 1000 points! ”
Here is the link. I apologize for the interminable URL.
http://personals.salon.com/p/points.cgi?dcb=personals.salon.com&who=UmFuZG9tSVaj97bUSBVSb/W9yi5lM1B0jemwPDGLzZgnf8J6FQrACixeGvr6GovS4oVJ7HZEZK1NCvb_lQzk1UF/Kczi34hrTQ5coe9bBJxnfTYqxaGlr0exIRGr55Vh/mbXIm3o60evW6RQopIN1huRDS6FhVSVS/O5oFKuagCnW81MTsoTacD51_XIqZpJI8g0wwWC3Y5zE2evLd/BBpfbL/8FRRW3tesbX0yuQ7TubapVBghd40SeEna/timdpbigp663kr4pkteintblAF2iXlHpduD_BcwrkURq9yPHlt0KA6sD0e3kocRNBGks3zK9kjwExwC0beAuuOOdKT4ww_dDFd3jBc9w5cgg64c-&m=1719307_31635&type=batchviews&action=collect
Sad that you didn’t know about your advanced search options on the old site.
for a few days it was possible to contact other members using 200 points - or one old ‘credit’; I believe it now costs 1000 points (5 old credits or ~$10) and 100 points just to view the profile if you are not a premium (silver / gold) member;
premium membership costs about $20/month and a $20/month supplement to allow non-premium members (over 90% of the profiles) to view your profile;
while FF may not have taken away the ability to contact other members, they have quintupled the price for those using existing credits and limited the ability to even view a profile beyond the picture, age, location, and tag line;
They trashed my most recent emails, lost all of the credits (points) I had lost. Those have finally been restored after I sent multiple emails and called their customer service line (that was too busy to answer, small wonder). No one ever emailed me back in response to my complaints or returned my call after I left a voice mail.
The Spring Street Networks had a wonderful feature called “Get Matched” it was one of the things that I really liked about their site. Now that it is gone. As someone who has points, and doesn’t pay the subscription model, I can search by state or zip code. I can only do an area if I’m a silver or better member. And I only get to see one picture at full size. They’ve taken away a number of the things that made this site useful and workeable.
They also changed my login without telling me. That was annoying.
I’m pretty upset but haven’t made any decisions about leaving the site yet.
Why the elaborate title, are you trying to be sarcastic again?
Nerve User says:” I think you still only need to use 200 points. Log on, then view someone’s profile, and you’ll see that under their photo it talks about your options for contacting them, it says you can send an email for 200 points. If that’s right, and the conversion was 200 points for each credit, then the price is exactly the same (although if my case is typical there may be a lot of people whose credits haven’t been converted to points at all yet).”
Do this: click on the “Points” link on your personals home page, and then click on the Redeem link.
The pages states: “Use your points to Contact and View Members by filling out the form below. How many Profiles would you like to see? Do you want to contact anyone? 1 credit to view a profile costs 100 pts. But, to contact a member this requires 10 credits. So, to contact a member it costs 1000 points! “
That’s not what it says when I clicked on the “Points” link on my page. Instead, it says:
Redeem your points:
View and Contact members
(10 credits per contact)
100 pts for a credit!
Send an email.
(if you are over your daily limit) 200 pts
And did you actually try looking at a specific person’s profile and checking how much it costs to contact them? If you do, you should see that in the “Send __ an email” box in their profile it says:
You have two options:
1. Use 200 points
2. Upgrade to Premium Member. Our new monthly
I don’t know why your page tells you something different when you go to the points page–try logging into nerve.com’s personals site instead of salon’s to see if it makes a difference, if not maybe one of us has a buggy account or something.
By the way, one incredibly stupid feature of the new site is that you’re forbidden to mention your personal email address when contacting another member, on pain of having your account deleted…hopefully enough people will complain about this that they’ll change it, otherwise I don’t know how they expect people to meet up if they can’t exchange contact info.
Sad that you didn’t know about your advanced search options on the old site.
Why is it “sad”? Now it sounds like you’re trying to be patronizing…could you drop the attitude, please? I asked an honest question, please just tell me how it was that you accessed the advanced search option on the Spring Street site. Personally, I doubt I would have been interested since there aren’t really any basic profile characteristics that would cause me to absolutely rule out a person as a potential date without even reading their answers, except for maybe age which doesn’t require an advanced search.
Even more aggravating, although I can’t log in, I also can’t re-join because it says my email address and handle are already taken. (by me, duh!) I wrote them several emails as I was going through this hassle, so I hope I get some kind of refund for all the credits & contacts I lost.
1. Advanced Search has been restricted. It requires you to upgrade from Standard (which I was converted to) to Gold member or something. I had the ability to do an advanced search before, and now they want me to pay more! The basic search is useless.
2. Limited Photos - I can see one small photo for a profile, where as before I could see all, and large ones.
I’m so disgusted by this. I was told to call (650) 847-3199, and they WOULD NOT process my refund request, saying they’re confidentiality agreement (with the company they bought!!!) prevents them from viewing my credit card information. I’m calling bullshit on this one. They said I have to contact my bank to dispute this.
Is there a class-action lawsuit against them over this? I’d love to join it.
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