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The Shady Business Practices of Classmates.com
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Nov 13, 2008 01:58 PM
from the let-her-stalk-you-for-a-change dept.
from the let-her-stalk-you-for-a-change dept.
eldavojohn writes ""Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!" reads one e-mail. Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute. Well, Ars Techica brings us news of a suit against Classmates.com. You don't need to look far for anti-classmates.com sentiment spreading like wild fire across the tubes." Good next target: ads that say "you've already won" some expensive toy.
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Damn (Score:5, Funny)
"Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!"
Does this mean they aren't? I'll just lay down and cry!
on the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
i still owe three or four of them money...
classmates.com aren't a collection agency for them...
guess it's not that bad.
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry. They (the classmates) probably just want to collect the money you owed them when you finished school.
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Classmates did come out before MySpace and FaceBook but they made a mistake in trying to get money out of their customers before they had a reasonable userbase. They could have started out a completely free service(by completely, I mean allowed all features for free and not have to pay to contact people like dating sites...and even dating sites allow you to see somebody's complete profile without charging!) and then charged small fees as necessary.
I can't stand when Classmates sends me mails telling me how many people viewed my profile, only to find that it was only a ruse to get me to build a profile in the first place! Reminds me of trillian when I always had annoying AOL or Yahoo(can't remember which) mail notifications which served no purpose but to nag me into signing up for the respective mail service.
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:5, Interesting)
I kept getting messages from Classmates.com telling me that former classmates of mine sent me messages. Of course, you can only view those messages if you pay Classmates.com. I knew this was a scam, but decided on a test. I altered my profile (first time I did that since setting it up years back) to include my e-mail address and a short message: "I don't read messages posted here. If you want to contact me, e-mail me at USERNAME at DOMAIN dot COM." (That e-mail address gets enough spam that I didn't mind exposing it like that.)
I keep getting "people" leaving me messages on Classmates.com and no real classmates have sent messages to my e-mail address. My theory is that these "messages" are:
1. Nonexistent with the e-mails serving only to goad people to pay for their "premium" service.
2. From Classmates.com itself or some third party company trying to get me to buy stuff from them.
3. From an actual classmate who is such a huge idiot that he/she doesn't know how to read in which case why would I want to pay money to contact them back?
Classmates.com is nothing but one huge scam.
Parent
Re:Damn (Score:4, Funny)
You have to open the trojan to see the pics! Duh!
Parent
Never got anything from them (Score:5, Insightful)
And they'll never get anything from me. Hell, if I wanted to (not that I do) I could simply go to the website of the college I graduated from and look up the contact information of other alumni who have registered there. Some universities, like Harvard, offer lifetime e-mail addresses, etc. for alumni. There's a whole post.harvard.edu domain just for alumni there. Even my high school keeps track of alumni and has mailing lists, etc. available. I've never gotten spammed by classmates.com and I wouldn't bother visiting if I did. I'll just go straight to my schools websites.
Re:Never got anything from them (Score:5, Funny)
Or worse....
You've already won!(tm)
And then in the fine print:
Note: "You've already won!" is a trademark of [insert company name here] and is not meant to state or imply that the reader has, in fact, won anything. More to the point, the mere fact that you clicked on this guarantees that you cannot possibly have won because you are a loser.
Parent
Accountability? (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is how surprising it is to see classmates.com being taken to task. I've reached the point where I hear of an organization sending unsolicited lies to people in order to trick them and flood them with advertising, and I think nothing of it. It's the way he world works - but maybe it doesn't have to be the way the world works.
classmates service that people would pay for (Score:5, Funny)
"Which one of your former classmates is doing hardcore pr0n now? Find out!"
Reminds me of that 4chan motivational poster, I think they called it "expectations," showing the yearbook photo of a girl and her "what I want to be when I grow up" quote with a close-up of her a few years later taking a facial on some gonzo pr0n shoot. Funny in a "yikes, not really" sort of way.
Re:classmates service that people would pay for (Score:5, Funny)
I laughed at your post, then thought, "you know, I really would pay for that."
Parent
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, bla bla bla, social networking, bla. Classmates.com, facebook, myspace, and everything else like it exist for two purposes: Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information. No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then.
However, the people behind classmates.com have gone one step farther--they're actively lying to get people to (a) sign up, and (b) pay for a "premium" membership. This is absolutely clear fraud on their part, and I hope they get kicked to the curb for it. Being a sleazy company operating within the law just wasn't enough for them.
Hopefully "eCrush" is next. The fact that they keep getting in trouble and keep popping back up with the same crap is reason enough to throw them in jail.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well they make their money selling advertising and collecting data for marketing information. That isn't necessarily bad as they offer a service that people actually like, and means if you are going to get advertising you will probably see more that is based on what you are interested in and less in the random stuff. However you must realize these services will not be around unless they know of a way to use it to maintain revenue. Not that being said. Trying to trick people into paying for a service is wrong. Yes it works but good business is to make people want to on their own free will happy to pay for the service. Not try to trick them into it.
Parent
They are also giving out your credit card... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They are also giving out your credit card... (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody else think that a single-click, deceptively labeled, is adequate for disclosing credit card information?
Deceptive and infringing on Amazon's One Click patent!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If they're doing that sort of thing on a regular basis, disputing the charge is trivial. I had it happen once with a one-time membership fee at a web site that was not only turned in to a recurring membership, but double charged, to boot. I didn't even have to fill out the usual chargeback paperwork when I called my credit card company. It was the usual, skeptical, "Well, let me just pull this up and see what we have" attitude until I told him which charge, and he pulled up the chargeback history on that me
Happens often. (Score:5, Insightful)
AS part of my job, I get calls from angry card holders who've have been billed fraudulently by websites such as this one.
Another scam is when websites require a CC for their "Free Trial" and all you have to do is cancel before 30 days so you don't get billed. Well, in most cases, folks who do cancel somehow have their cancellation "lost" or "never received" by the company. And those are the folks who actually remembered to cancel on time. Unfortunately, there wasn't much the CC company would do for them. Call your own company and see - some will back their card holders a bit more than others. Credit Unions are the best in my experience. Big monster mega banks are the worst.
Never give a CC for a "Free Trial". Take your business elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I knew an operator that counted on most people forgetting and then when they get their bill the following month, canceling in writing, and then being billed for another month because they were already in a second billing period. He made at least 2 months of revenues off of those people. He was actually honest. When you canceled, he canceled you.
And for the very few legitimate businesses out there that use that technique; well, find another method to limit free trials.
If you do have a problem with those cheating assholes, file a complaint with your State's Attorney General's office of consumer affairs, your bank, the FTC, and if your bank gives you a hassle, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [occ.gov] will kick their ass. The BBB is worthless.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Classmates blew it (Score:5, Insightful)
I signed up for classmates.com (Score:3, Interesting)
... but I've left instructions there to look for me elsewhere, since classmates.com wants money for anything useful.
If all the other social networking sites can do it for free, why use classmates.com?
Next in my sights . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
reunion.com
Same misleading type of message, but I've apparently gotten signed up for them by some chucklehead can't type his own gmail address. The first email I got from them said "confirm your membership" which of course I didn't. And big surprise, there's nothing in that email that will let me say "hey, you've got the wrong man." (I spell my name . . . Danger). And even though I didn't confirm "my" membership, I still got additional email with "1 Search for Joe Doaks - Find Out Who!"
Thank $DIETY for gmail's instantly trainable spam filter.
How about some positives? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mostly negative stuff about classmates here; and I don't disagree with the lawsuit, which is about tactics, not content. But let me tell you a couple of stories about how classmates contributed positively to a couple of situations.
I had a colleague who told me an intriguing and sorrowful story. She got pregnant during her very first sexual experience. Her mother was in denial until the baby started kicking. Her mother then proceeded to put her daughter in an apartment in a nearby city, cut her red hair and dye it black, and wait for the baby to come to term. It was born and whisked away for adoption before my colleague laid eyes on it. (What a mother, eh?) The father was never informed and told my colleague was spending the semester overseas. Mother arranged letters to be sent from France until they dwindled to nothing. I was told this story maybe 20 years ago, and the thing is, I knew the father slightly because I knew I had see a picture of him on the swim team in my annual, who had gone to my high school (along with Ted Bundy). About 5 years ago my colleague, through her own research, found her long-lost son. We decided to try to contact the father. I went through classmates.com and found him. My colleague paid for my gold membership for a year. I contacted the father via email, set up a meeting, and he and my colleague were re-united. He was, of course, very surprised to know he had a grown son. Father and son got into contact, and, for better or worse, both natural parents are in contact with their son. Naturally, they do not replace the 'real' family who raised the kid, but it certainly expanded all their lives. I didn't re-up with Classmates. I get an email once in awhile, but it's certainly nothing overwhelming or particularly bothersome.
The second thing classmates has allowed me to do is researh in genealogy. A few of us were into DNA analysis of the family (for our own reasons) going back to the late 1700's when our ancestor in question lived. His name was Jeremiah Pack and we wanted to know his ethnic background along with that of his wife. We found direct descendents of Jeremiah pretty readily, but finding direct descendents of his wife was a daunting task because surnames of females change every generation. After several years of research we finally found a 4th cousin or so who had a complete chart with names. I was able to go onto classmates.com and find the names, and write to the likely suspects. I found a couple of women who were direct descendents of Jeremaih's wife through the female lines, therefore their MtDNA was a match. We were able to do the testing and come to a suitable conclusion. This is not as 'heart-rending' a story as the first one, but I have to tell you it settled a generations-old mystery and legend for our families.
In both cases, the positive conclusions would not have been possible without classmates.com. That doesn't forgive their questionable marketing tactics, but let's not claim the service has no value. It depends on what you are looking for.
Thank God (Score:5, Funny)
Thank God I was universally hated, loathed, ridiculed, and mocked in High School for my interest in history (WWII, Pacific Theater) and computer science. Anyone from classmates.com trying to reach me is either:
A: Trying to kill me because I stole their girlfriend after college because I actually had a decent paying job.
B: Trying to kill me because I ended up as their boss and fired them for showing up to work drunk after I stole their girlfriend.
C: An ex-girlfriend planning to sue me for emotional damages after they found out I in fact did a piss-poor job writing thier final paper.
D: A former classmate who is going through a mid-life crisis and is desparately trying to reach a former classmate in hopes thier life turned out worse then their own.
E: A former classmate named Robert who now is named Donna and want's to meet
F: A former classmate that needs help hiding a body in a New Mexico desert.
G: A former girlfriend who was in band class who's boyfriend turned out to be a sexual predator and needs someone to talk to...
H: A former classmate I owe money too!
Ok, I will admit it... (Score:4, Interesting)
... I am the one who took the bait and signed up for the gold membership. Classmate.com emails were already going to my spam folder, but I look that over before I empty it, and their's claimed that I had "2 New Guestbook Entries!" or something like that. At that point I decided to see if anyone I knew had recently added themselves to the list, and sure enough, and old friend had not very long ago.
Suspecting that this person may have left me a guestbook entry, I bought the gold membership, instead of just tracking down his phone number. Upon logging in with my new gold status, I was rewarded by finding two guestbook entries from names I had never heard of and not from my school.
In my defense, I am usually smarter than this. However, the good news was that when I emailed support asking to have any and all of my information removed, they complied without complaint in a timely manner, and even refunded my payment. I was shocked.
The moral here is, if you get caught in a moment of weakness and stupidity like I did, send them an email demanding to have your info removed immediately, and maybe you will get a refund too.
eHarmony is much worse... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I fell for eHarmony. They are much worse. You know, us technical guys get so wrapped up in our work, we don't have time to meet any decent women.
Well, eHarmony will bug the heck out of you and "convince" you to sign up for a 7 day trail. During that 7 days you will get all kinds of "Matches" with interesting, and attractive women. Some will start communication with you.
You're thinking to yourself - this is great! I'm meeting more women then I've ever met in bars or anywhere else! Multiple matches keep showing up and your communicating with more of them. And you are thinking: "Wow - I'm going to be dating 3 or 4 woman!".
Then the 7 days passes. All the sudden, the matches slow down. A lot of the ones you were talking to suddenly stop communication with you. ( were they even real women in the first place? Or just employees of eHarmony.com masquerading as potential dates? ) Down to 3 or 4 matches a week. None very interesting. Not nearly as attractive as the matches in the first 7 days.
You email eHarmony and you call them ( finding the phone number takes a little work - they didn't have it on their website when I was trying to contact them ). A refund is not available after 7 days. You are out 165 dollars, if you paid for the 6 months.
They say you need to tweak your match "settings" to get more matches. Well, heck, I have every race and religion checked, plus I have from 23 to 38 in the age range, and I have 100 miles from my zip code checked. I live in a city with over 5 million people in the metro area as well.
After a few weeks, the matches are 1 or 2 a week. One a few ever respond. Most don't even communicate. After 3 months, the "trickle" of women is a steady 1 to 2 a week.
If you call eHarmony at this point, they either give you the "you have to be patient, it takes time to find the perfect match" line of BS. If you keep asking for a refund, they start getting annoyed with you.
Emails aren't responded to. I even wrote a snail mail certified letter to the CEO of eHarmony asking for a refund. Nothing. Not even a phone call or a letter. No response. It's like your emails and snail mails go to /dev/null.
Classmates.com? Just a minor annoyance. Someone needs to sue the heck out of eHarmony.com. They are the real scammers. I wish they would get sued big time. I would do it myself, but I didn't keep good records and this happened over a year ago.
Somebody please sue eHarmony??? Please!!!
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Funny)
Because they don't care about you. They are looking for the 10 year old alumni from psychology browsing some employment site for the 3000th time that gets a big ad in her face talking about classmates. She hopes to reunite with her undergrad sweetheart hoping he's made something of his life and will take her out of her life of futility.
Well, no, bitch. I'm through with you. Mark might have been better looking and knew how to talk and stuff being a communications major, but who's laughing now? Me! Hah! hahahaha...
Parent
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Funny)
You're not bitter at all are you?
Parent
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Interesting)
I signed up a long time ago, before myspace or facebook existed. It's a totally worthless site.
I've done my part to screw with their business model... they let you post a picture, and my "picture" is a gif of my email address. :)
Parent
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com?
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd. I'm sure that's probably changing as their userbase ages, but that's first impressions for you. If anybody my age had a myspace page, my first reaction would be that he's a total loser or way too interested in teenagers to be healthy.
Parent
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Informative)
That's true for MySpace, but not for Facebook. Sounds like you're basing your opinion on Facebook on MySpace.
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's true for MySpace, but not for Facebook. Sounds like you're basing your opinion on Facebook on MySpace.
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
Agreed facebook is laregly poney free.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Except for all these 'Ride a pony!' apps requests my friends keep sending me..
We can stop dancing around the obvious... Facebook/Myspace=GeoCities
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for all these 'Ride a pony!' apps requests my friends keep sending me..
We can stop dancing around the obvious... Facebook/Myspace=GeoCities
Close....the real formula is Facebook/Myspace=GeoCities/AngelFire
Parent
Re:Why use that? (Score:4, Funny)
Fatal error: divide by zero.
The real formula is Facebook/|ln(Myspace)| == something somewhat useful over an absolute log of shit.
Parent
re: Facebook (Score:3)
Yep! Same experience here. I avoided those "social networking" sites for a long time, because I'm 37 - and didn't see a need to put my profile right next to all the teens and early 20-somethings. I wanted to post pictures of interesting events I attended, or of my kid, or what-have-you. No point putting that up in the same place everyone else has their 250 poorly focused snapshots they took from last night's big party.....
But Facebook really did let me re-connect with a lot of people I last saw as long
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Facebook for dummies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd.
I'm one of those. Ehm, the old guys, not the pony crowd. I took the opportunity to try to find out what Facebook is like because someone recently asked me if I had a page there, but it seems that you can't do anything unless you have an account and are logged in. The help section of the site doesn't seem to feature screenshots. Is there a way to get a feeling of what the site's about without creating a fake account? My old age keeps me from just entering all my personal data and worry later. Maybe there are some pages set to "public for everyone", so some URLs would be nice.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a very rational approach, I see you're taking. BUt you seem to be hung up on a bit. You don't ever need to supply them with any personal data at all if you don't want to. Oh sure it asks for things like birthdate, place of birth and various other pers
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
MySpace does the exact same thing but for free. In my opinion Classmates is a scam. I signed up, paid for 3 months, decided I didn't need it & canceled my account. 2 months after the original 3 months were over those fuckers were still billing my account. Even though I a.) didn't sign up for any kind of auto-renewal to start with & b.) canceled my pay account.
Fuck Classmates. I hope a lawyer jumps into their collective asses with both feet.
Re:Already illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it's misleading and the actual probability of having won is statistically insignificant? Why not have a banner ad that says "You might be able to play the piano with your feet!", cause then, by some fluke chance it might be true..? In the end, it's lying, plain and simple.
Parent
Re:Already illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Feeding the Anonymous troll, but. . .
Putting "may" or "might" in there doesn't make it any less false. It is simply not true that you may have already won. There is ZERO chance that you have already won. It would be accurate to say "You may win, just as soon as you click here," no matter how slim the chance is, but you absolutely have not "already won" if you haven't clicked on the banner yet.
Unless you seriously believe that they have created their list of winners beforehand, and just need your information to check against this established list.
And if you believe that. . . well, um. . . Good! Because you may already have won the Zenaku Cash Prize for Exceptional Cleverness! Just give me your real name, social security number, date and place of birth, and the middle names of your parents and grandparents so I can open the top secret "Envelope of Winners" and see if YOUR name is inside!
Parent
Re:Already illegal (Score:5, Informative)
"I've never seen such an ad"
how about the "you're the site's 2,000,000th visitor. click here for your prize!" banner ads? Funny thing... several of these sites I have been the 2 millionth visitor every time I visit for the past month, and no matter which computer or internet connection I use I still am the 2M'th visiitor.
I especially like seeing the ads for dating sites where they stole users profile pictures to use them as examples of who is in your area that "wants to meet you". Funny thing; I travel alot on business. There is one very memorable user picture that I have seen "in my area" as I surf from hotels all over the eastern half of the country, every time she is in my city. At least some of those sites have started putting disclaimers of "photos are for illustrative purposes only" in fine print. Better but still not good.
This reminds me of one of the dating sites where a whistleblower came out a while back telling the story of how they were instructed by management to watch for expiring accounts, and when someone appeared ready to drop off the system they would send an email from a bogus user account feigning interest in the member. This would prompt the member to renew for fear of losing contact with this possible newfound love. Once the account was renewed the customer service person would stop corresponding with the person because the bait was taken and they had their money.
And I too have received those classmates emails. too bad I was a social outcast for the most part and those I see with classmates accounts generally I dont care about (and they probably dont remember me anyway). Luckilly I am smart enough to know better so I just ignore them.
Besides, now that I think back, I remember being a gold member and getting "you have a new message" email from the system and not finding anything in my inbox. I cant remember what the help desk's response was, or if there even was one when I asked about it.
Parent
Re:Already illegal (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, she's following you! Either get her phone number, or get a restraining order.
Parent
Re:Already illegal (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
?!?
What advertisements? Seriously, haven't seen one.
Sometimes I forget what I'm not missing with FF ABP and NS installed.
-nB
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Luckily my ISP subcontracted their normal email out to Google, so while I don't have the Gmail domain name on those accounts, I get the Gmail interface with no ads displayed. Best of both worlds.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ok sir, I'll get off your lawn.
Re:Social networking, web 2.0 - all crap. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, you have contact information on every person you've ever met in your life?
I congratulate you, sir, on your extensive record keeping.
Parent