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I came across a press release stating that “Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp., is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.”
H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit:
“This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in…Match promotes the policies of integrity to protect members, and yet they themselves, we allege, are misleading their entire customer base.”
In a separate suit, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)’s personals service is accused of posting profiles of fictitious potential dating partners on its Web site to make it look as though many more singles subscribe to the service than actually do. Yahoo is accused with breach of contract, fraud and unfair trade practices.
Yahoo posting fictitious profiles? If they are responsible for all the fake Russian bride profiles on the site, they certainly deserve to be raked over the legal coals. But for some reason, I have a difficult time thinking Yahoo is responsible for the fakery.
The Match suit plaintiff claims a Match employee went out with him to make sure he didn’t cancel his subscription. Talk about viral marketing! This is a classic, however I would be shocked if the allegations are true. Come to think of it, if I were a Match employee out on brand-oprtecting viral dating, I’d be asking for some serious overtime.
They would do better to leave the viral marketing to the experts and hire BzzAgent to have their bevy of “associates” out and about talking up the dating services instead of using company employees after-hours.
The news is sure to give legal counsel at major dating sites something to think about over the weekend.
The release mentions RICO, the organized crime-fighting tool as a possible legal tool.
[tags: match.com, yahoo personals]
{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t see this article being true either. Not sure if it’s some sort of oddball ploy for attention, or if he’s affiliated with some other site that has a beef with Match. But if it’s true, it’s definitely ridiculous.
Cully Perlman
Degreedate.com
But even numerically the accusation is completely stupid.
- match.com has 1 million paying subscribers.
- Guess 500.000 of them are “quite content subscribers” who are able to organise dates on their own.
- Guess, for some strange reasons match wants to increase the number of content subscribers a bit - let’s say from 500.000 to 750.000, so there would be at least a small sustainable effect.
- As said one “date-baiter” can handle 100 clients per month (what a performance!) = 1000 per year.
- So match would need 250 professional date-baiters - and all of them have to keep their mouth shut forever!
What a risky project for not too much beneft!
- Guess 500.000 of them are “quite content subscribers” who are able to organise dates on their own.”
First off….back up these figures with actual facts ok?
500k of them are content? LMAO! Who?! The women on there? 99.9% of which just want you to go to their paysites…lol
Match.com (formally love@aol) used to be a successful dating site…cuz it was a free site. Ever since AOL turned it into an evil paysite…its over run by “fake” accounts. Its not real at all. Waste of time and money.
FriendFinder.com
This is one of the worst of them all. Surprise, surprise that the guy (yes thats right, a GUY that lives in the czech republic) that owns this site uses this site primarily to route men to his other paysites (guys faking out to be girls, and emailing guys). Its a complete and utter scam…the entire site.
99% of paid dating sites dont contain real people at all. Why? Cuz theres too many FREE dating sites that arent overrun by this crap. Nobody will pay for something they can get for free..simple.
You accuse people of being angry and targeting these companies? Well what would you do if I promised you a service for $$, took your money, ran off with it, and gave you a FAKE product? Yeah….stfu buddy.
Hasta!!
Slider
Above you wrote, “they would have a lot easier time sueing True.com because former employees have posted that part of their job description was to pose as members to try and get people to convert to paid by sending out fake emails. Look at the internet rip off report and a few other sites.”
I have looked at the Ripoff report for this documentation and did not see it. Please let me know what sites have this documentation. I am extremely interested in obtaining documentation on any and all allegations of unethical business and HR practices by True.com.
Thx,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Research Psychologist
I believe these types of things are actually industry standard operating procedures.
You can tell some of these sites employ professional photography services…in more ways than the flashy Homepage. Many pretty models are professionaly photgraphed, yet have poorly done incomplete profiles, and they just never seem to find Mr. Right for some reason, or send/respond to any inquiries.
I would visit a site, look around, sign-off, check my regular email…and behold, I have a new message waiting for me back at the site I just signed-off.
Not being a subscriber, it does not let me view the message, much less respond to it.
But let me digress. When I did subscribe, the message was sent by another non-subscribing member! How did they send me a message? Non-subscribers can’t send messages OR view them.
Also, how do I know the message is NOT a fraudulent and/or useless message generated by AS staff in an attempt to get me to subscribe in order to view it?
One example would be: “We miss you at ****.com. Please re-new your membership with us.”
I should pay to read that???
They need to provide a proveable guaranty that these types of things do not happen. Otherwise fraud IS an important part of the game.
Now Match is saying that they’ve gotten the employee to sign an avidavit that she was never and employee. Yeah right.
Isn’t that too easy. If anybody brings up an allegation against a giant like Match that seriously damages its reputation, do you really believe that all Match would do would be to get the person to sign an avidavit? No way, it’d be more like suing the pants off that woman.
The case of her signing an avidavit just means she’s been bribed with a few millions to keep here quiet. Scams will never end. Support the free sites and end the greed.
Another point that really concerns me is lets say you do a search by proximity to your zip code. You limit it to 20 miles. You can do a search for all the active members. All of a sudden when your trial membership runs out, you get an email from someone that never showed up in any of your searches.
The following seem to be key for fake ads or employee written ads: 1) If they look like a profesional model 2) If it takes them a week to get back to you and they share your exact same beliefs and put in their email “I am not on thet much these days due to work” which is a clever way of saying “I am employeee for datecompany.com and have 100 other emails to write.
Also, keep in mind free as for the free sites, it doesn’t mean they dont have scams going on. Nothing in life is free.
PabloOsito
russ
Raylene?
http://personals.yahoo.com/us/preview/preview?search=1&resulttype=1&kws=0&searchinternal=1&position=5&total=1000&adid=personals-1143085178-714296&affid=&searchview=1&searchsort=1&speed=2&advanced=&primary=&searchname=My+First+Search&frmsrch=1
Some Porn star, forget name
http://personals.yahoo.com/us/preview/preview?search=1&resulttype=1&kws=0&searchinternal=1&position=60&total=1000&adid=personals-1116115518-884931&affid=&searchview=1&searchsort=1&speed=2&advanced=&primary=&searchname=My+First+Search&frmsrch=1&added_sa=1&searchcode=2&savedid=personals-1116115518-884931
Hillary Scott?
http://personals.yahoo.com/us/preview/preview?search=1&resulttype=1&kws=0&searchinternal=1&position=11&total=1000&adid=personals-1144853758-323365&affid=&searchview=1&searchsort=1&speed=2&advanced=&primary=&searchname=My+First+Search&frmsrch=1
This was a great comfort and discomfort to me. I was trying to find another dating site. I went to eharmony but the process is so long. I have been in and out of two of the friend finder sites with nibbles, but no bites. It’s usually the samething, an email with a hook to another website for a number. And yes I have seen some supermodels in the profiles. Thanks for this site, good to hear truth for a change. Glenn
I agree with the person who mentioned RIO. Match.com would not pay salary for a person to go on dates to earn $30/month.
Fake profiles are not posted by the big players in online dating. If you are finding fake profiles, they’re posted by a person who has ulterior motives. Match.com does not have control over such people.
Don’t blame lack of response to your profile on the company that merely provides a database of people. Try improving your profile, slick.
If you can not see that you are clearly not as intelligent as you think. My thought is that anyone defending this type of action must be involved in some facet because any reasonable and halfway intelligent person would easily recognize that noone would post the name of their trailer park, and the fact that half the goldmembers on HORNYMATCH.COM do, it is obvious.
Dont be an idiot. Quit defending an obvious deciet. QUIT BEING STUPID.
Amateurmatch.com uses many fake profiles of women to get you to pay for subscriptions. Its amazing how many women E-mail you messages when your not paid up, and when you are paid up, none will E-mail you. Then I have more proof. To many profiles not completed. Sometimes small towns (Gaylord, Michigan) will have a large number of available women, far to many for that size town (25 available women). You want more proof, E-mail the same woman twice within an hour and see the same response again. THIS DATE WEBSITE IS A SCAM. [/Quote]
You said it! I created a real profile there, got 6 messages from women in like 2 days! Then before I decided to pay them, I created another profile with a different email address, state, city, and name. I made the profile horrible. 400 pound fat guy looking to squish some skinny chicks. Lots of body hair….. well you can imagine, sure enough…. I got a ton of emails from women with that crap…. the same women who were messing my main acct….. look at the differences:
KiraSkye
26 year old Woman
alabama, AL, US
KiraSkye
26 year old Woman
georgia, GA, US
They just changed the state to match that of the account they are spamming.
This is very bad business. They probably have a 50 man per 1 woman ration on that site. Very Very fraudulent business.
Thinking I was a total loser, I joined Singlesnet.com and had 30 emails the first week! A few were frauds but I had several dates, legit people, etc. Not all of them worked out and there are still a few I haven’t been out with yet, but how do I go from Miss loser on match to Miss popularity on another site. I used the same pic, profile, etc.
What I am saying is match used to be legit but very little of it is now. If you are going to try online dating use a free site or a smaller site. Eharmony is pretty bad as well.
and as for nigerians shes been approached several times…on yahoo dating…
since she is a user of these sites every day I trust what she tells me…she will recieve this link in her email for sure
and as for the fake ads I noticed them right away on plenty of fish and other sites
the incorporation of userplane will facilitate more sex cyber hookups ….for those who frequent the sites for that purpose…..and as for actually getting a date well I’ll believe it when my fren tells me she finally get to meet someone
PS- WHERE ARE ALL THE COOL LONELYCHICKS OUT THERE ANYWAY? DO THEY RUN INTO THE SAME NONSENSE?
LADIES DO TELL!
Another problem with dating sites is spam and fake profiles. Something needs to be done about that too. I don’t know what the clear answer is to that problem, but I’m sure that there is some sharp minds out there who are smart enough to figure something out on that subject.
I tested this theory out. I modified my profile by stating at the bottom that I could not answer my emails because I wasn’t a paying subscriber. I then submitted this modified profile and and it was rejected even though it did not violate any of the rules of the site. It was very clear that they did not want subscribers to be aware of the fact that they could not contact you.
http://netshams.blogspot.com/
The “tell” as they say in poker is the response to your emails if you get that far. Check for constant one sentence responses with lots of “babe” or “baby”, in broken, fragmented English eventhough the profile appears to have been written by someone other than an iliterate. My suspicion is that non paying members who abandon their profile and pics come back to life long after the author has moved on.
I wonder if Al Gore ever envisioned this :-)
First off, I should say that I think online dating sites are a waste of time; they have never paid off for me and I don’t know of anyone who had a positive experience with them.
1 - Stay away from russian women. This goes for any women from eastern europe as well. They are generally gold diggers and aren’t the kind of women you’d want to settle down with. My sister looks up weird stuff on the net and she was telling me about russian mail order bride testimonials she’d read…that scared the crap out of me. I wish I still had the link, but the long and short of it is stay away from the russian women.
2 - Avoid cam sites. This should be a no-brainer, but every day thousands of horny men wander into overpriced chat rooms on iFriends and other sites. Those are NOT dating sites. The women on those sites are basically online strippers and they are WAY overpriced. They charge upwards of $5 per minute to chat with you, and some of them do shit to rack up the minutes. Most don’t, they just talk to you for at least a minute then take off the clothes. Bottom line, there are less expensive (and more gratifying) ways to get off, and these sites aren’t designed for you to meet girls, since most of the women who do the cam shows are from russia, eastern europe, or the phillipines. I don’t think I’ve ever found an american woman on ifriends. It’s just not worth your time.
3 - Most pay sites don’t make the fake profiles; at least the ones I’ve joined didn’t. I’ve been on adultfriendfinder, eroticy (which wasn’t too bad the last time I was there), and a few others I can’t even remember. Most of the fake profiles are created by “girls” trying to get you to join their cam site. Cam sites make LOTS of money. Some of these sites (like adultfriendfinder) have links to cam whores on their site, but you should note that in most cases you are required to make a seperate username/password in order to view said cams. They’re technically seperate from the dating site. I actually did date a cam girl (which is a LONG story that I won’t go into here) and she explained a lot about how the whole thing works. Anyway, back to dating sites; you have to guess (and this is speculation here) that at least 1/3 of all the profiles on ANY site are fake in one way or another. Also, just because you don’t get a response doesn’t mean that the girl isn’t really there…some of those women DO get tons of email, sometimes DAILY, and it’s hard to keep track of that. I do think that some dating sites are doing things that might be unethical (like adultfriendfinder adding a link to cam whores) and I do think that it’s possible that the dating sites in question here actually did what they were accused of doing, but that doesn’t mean that every profile on every dating site is fake. That’s a bit absurd. Besides that, if anyone is behind the fake profiles, it’s usually some third party trying to sell porn (or something else).
4 - If you do join a dating site, don’t bother looking at profiles without pictures or profiles that have professional looking pictres. If you think every pair of tits you see on one of these sites is “professional” please hit yourself right now. Believe it or not, those sites DO remove users who do stuff like that. About a year ago I got a message on adultfriendfinder and I responded to it…the profile DID seem to match what I was looking for. The next day I got a message from the adultfriendfinder staff saying that the person was removed because they turned out to be running some kind of scam. It is in the interest of these companies to keep their members happy…sometimes they may drop the ball, but I do think that most of the sites that I joined were trying to do just that. I personally never received an email from a “mystery user” right when my membership was about up, though I have no doubt that some sites use tactics like that.
Bottom line, yes there are scams, but not all of them originate with the site itself. Any time you are dealing with horny and lonely (and sometimes desperate) people, you will have creeps that come out of the woodwork to try to take advantage of them.
this continued for several weeks until i finally did cough up some money and join properly as opposed to just having a profile posted…. as soon as i’d paid my subscription… NO MORE AMERICAN DOLLYS…. where had they all buggered off too….. So yes i believe there is a scam
PLENTYOFFISH.com
Why?
Because it’s TOTALLY FREE. Yes, I’m telling the truth. No, I don’t work for them. No, there are no catches.
Will you instantly get women flocking to date you?
Probably not.
But I bet you’ll have a good experience. And you can’t beat the price!
As for pay sites, FASTCUPID.com is great. The profiles attract a more intelligent, select crowd. (Bad if you’re dumb; good if you’re selective.)
Best of all, you pay a small fee for each email you send. Like mailing a letter. And it’s FREE to read and respond to any mail you receive. I once paid maybe $10 to buy credits, and even after sending out several emails, I still have tons of credits left. Great site.
Enjoy!
Amateurmatch.com seems to be the most overt abuser of the email tease. If you google the shell company -Deniro Marketing- you’ll find it fronts for a wide range of useless dating services. It seems to benefit from an affiliate web cam site that has its girls blindly send out teases. Most of the girls (or posers) don’t even bother to read member bios. From the poor way they write, maybe they can’t read, either. Some are dumb enough to use photos imprinted with said web cam URL. Can we say preying on the gullible?
Other sites to avoid - LuvOO (a pink sheet stock that’s also involved in scammy herbal remedies), AdultFriendFinder, FastCupid, Go4Friendship, Kiwi, LoveHappens, Lurve(now defunct?), Matchmaker, Mate1, PlentyofFish, Swoon, TRUE, LuvCuve and WebDate.
Kinda surprised nobody lauds what may be the only legit site out there… OKCupid.com
FYI- Several collegians launched it using a unique business model: totally free - from joining to posting pictures to real time instant messaging to email. This results in a lot of user participation/contribution. They’ve begun accepting donations, recently snagged some venture capital. Maybe it’ll degenerate into a moneygrubbing site eventually or maybe they’ll keep improving, such as offering a background check. All I can say is that I’ve seen no spam, pop ups, or scams in over a year. It’s the only site where I have encountered real females. No soul mates or beauty queens yet, but many above average. Not just for daters, it can serve as a networking platform for hobbyists, travel companions, etc.
Allowing users to post detailed bios and photos, answer an array of questions and have the house computer calculate match quotients using proprietary algorithms (nice explanation in FAQs) and criteria, as well as to communicate amongst themselves at no cost actually works. Most scam artists and prostitutes won’t invest the time it takes to fill out a profile or answer OKCupid’s initial questions, although it’s hardly as onerous a task as eHarmony’s grueling, costly hurdles.