Even the dating services are desperate…
I was just reading in reuters.com an article (see the comment to this post) that said that both Match.com and Yahoo were “accused in [seperate] federal lawsuit[s] of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees.” It goes on to say that they paid employees to create hot profiles to help sales.
I can’t really say I’m surprised at all… I routinely come across things that seem odd and out of place. For example, one of the most common scams going on is that you’ll see a beautiful girl. So you’ll write. You get a nice personalized letter back and she will give you her ‘personal’ email. WOW, you think, she actually replied. So you’ll write again. This time she’ll invite you to watch her on her private cam. As soon as you sign up for the free service, she (more likely he) gets a hefty affiliate commission and you get screwed without even paying for dinner. This is a totally common scam. But it’s not all that odd or out of place:) What IS odd though is when you see a really hot girl and she doesn’t reply. Ok, maybe that in itself isn’t all that odd…. I mean lots of people don’t reply, but then again, who’s to say this girl ever replies? I’ve run into a few of these girls and then later found their same picture with a totally different profile associated with it…. different age, height, location, profession, etc. And then, I’ll find their profile text somewhere else but associated with a different picture. In this case there were 3 girls from the same town, all smoking hot. The town maybe had 200 people in it. Just seems funny that there could be that many notably pretty girls in a town that small. So I wrote them…. no reply. So they arent webcam scammers. In fact, if they don’t write back, they aren’t just your typical butt ugly girl looking for a little conversation either. So why create multiple fake profiles? Doesn’t make sense…. unless they are just being seeded…. (?)
ok, I know you were expecting some kind of witty punchline, but I don’t have one this time… just thought it was an interesting article because I had been wondering about this for some time. Looks like we are all desperate.
November 19th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=media&storyID=nN18708924&imageid=&cap=
Online daters sue matchmaking Web sites for fraud
Friday 18 November 2005, 11:56am EST
By Martha Graybow
NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) - It’s not easy finding love in cyberspace, and now some frustrated online daters say they were victims of fraud by two top Internet matchmaking services and have taken their complaints to court.
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.
“This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in,” said H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit.
Match “promotes the policies of integrity to protect members, and yet they themselves, we allege, are misleading their entire customer base,” he said.
The company said it does not comment on pending litigation. But Match spokeswoman Kristin Kelly said the company “absolutely does not” employ people to go on dates with subscribers or to send members misleading e-mails professing romantic interest. The company has about 15 million members worldwide and 250 employees, she said.
In a separate suit, Yahoo Inc.’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 did respond to requests for comment.
The suits, which both seek class-action status, came as growth in the online dating industry has slowed, although Web matchmaking still remains a big business.
U.S. consumers spent $245.2 million on online personals and dating services in the first half of 2005, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Online Publishers Association. That’s a slower growth rate compared with several years ago.
At the same time, competition among online dating services is fierce, with some sites offering newfangled features such as extensive compatibility surveys to match up people with similar temperaments and outlooks.
ALLEGATIONS OF ‘DATE BAIT’
The Match lawsuit was filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by plaintiff Matthew Evans, who contends he went out with a woman he met through the site who turned out to be nothing more than “date bait” working for the company.
The relationship went nowhere, according to his suit. Evans says Match set up the date for him because it wanted to keep him from pulling the plug on his subscription and was hoping he’d tell other potential members about the attractive woman he met through the service, according to Leviant.
His lawyers said Evans, of Orange County, California, was not available to comment, but described him as a working professional in his 30s.
Leviant said his client found out about the alleged scam after the woman he dated confessed she was employed by Match. The lawsuit also claims the company violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, a law best known for being used in prosecuting organized crime.
The Yahoo suit was filed last month by Robert Anthony, of Broward County, Florida. The suit, brought in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, accuses the company of breach of contract, fraud and unfair trade practices.
Anthony’s lawyer, Peter McNulty of the McNulty Law Firm in Bel Air, California, did not respond to requests for comment.
April 7th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
It seems that this type baiting is rampant throughout the entire online dating industry. I’ve had the exact same word-for-word message sent to me on different sites, and they always ended with basically the same thing about “check out my webcam”. I’ve never responded to these come-ons, but I sure there are plenty of people that do.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
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