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Online Daters Sue Matchmaking Web Sites for Fraud
BBCWatcher writes "According to Reuters, Match.com and Yahoo! are the subjects of separate class-action lawsuits from 'frustrated online daters.' Yahoo! Personals is accused of advertising fictitious profiles in order to make the service look more popular. In the Match.com case, 30-something professional Matthew Evans contends that Match.com sent a female employee as 'date bait,' hoping he'd tell others about the attractive women they could meet. 'The relationship went nowhere, according to his suit,' which claims Match.com violated the RICO Act."
Now, that's a stretch. The Feds have a hard enough time nailing mobsters on that. Even if that woman was employed by Match, it would just doubtless be a case of "our service is so wonderful even our employees use it." I can't imagine any female wasting an evening with some dweeb just to keep him from quitting their service. This whole lawsuit doesn't pass the giggle test.
Maybe they should just offer the plaintiff an inflatable woman and tell him to go away.
99% of the things you can pay for on the Internet are a scam if you don't get something tangible out of it that you can hold in your hands. And even then, there's things you can hold which are still a scam like drugs.
Don't spend what you can't afford to lose.
That being said though, I'm pissed off at Yahoo now, since I signed up for a month to try it out and was possibly scammed since someone had "messaged" me before I signed up, but never messaged after I contacted them back. Not even a note to blow me off, which I found strange, but figured she'd found someone else or my reply wasn't interesting. While I accepted that my shortlived subscription was just a Blind Date that was a bit expensive and failed, now I feel victimized too. There's no way to know if she was a Yahoo shill, or just some woman that didn't find me interesting. Either way it's not a happy outcome. There can't be too many happy online daters out there in cyberland today upon hearing this news.
Fortunately I've since been tipped off to the existence of 100% free sites like http://www.craigslist.com/ and http://www.plentyoffish.com/ which don't require you to pay. Plenty of Fish makes their money from Google advertising instead of scamming people with fake people.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I have complaints from female friends that online dating sites will often retain the profiles despite them having removed their accounts (to inflate the number of purported users, I'd assume). On the other hand, many of the sites I've used (lavalife being the biggest, also one of the above accused) have enabled me to meet many 'real' people.
For all those seeking, I would offer advice. Don't look for love on the internet. Look for people of similar interest to hang around with, if things work out it might go further. If you go expecting something more however, you'll probably seem way too needy and throw off a negetive vibe.
Whilst if the company is found to be guilty they should be punished I really hope this guy doesn't get a big payout personally, there is something sickening about society when you can sue your way to multi-million $ retirement through class-action suits because something stupid happened to you in life. I mean in any other era of society it would be laughed off but now yesterdays jokes can make todays millionairs while other people have to work for a living. I Really think this idiot should've just reported the sites to whatever advertising regulatory agencies there are and got on with his life... but that couldn't give him a chance to retire now could it!
Sometimes you have to wonder why any decent attractive woman in her right mind would ever create a profile on one of those things. It is possible that some of the profiles are fake to convince people to actually sign up for the service. Sending employees out to date people would be expensive, but just creating fake profiles or sending email from one of the fake profiles just before someone is about to let their account expire would not be.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I'm talking not about the contents of the article, but the point at which society stopped dealing with personal issues and problems and instead desperately started seeking someone to blame, and ultimately, to sue. Is there a definitive point in history where we went from dealing with something, to trying to extort 'comfort money' from those that we deem responsible?
People who sue in cases like this are trying to quantify something that can't be quantified, usually 'emotional damage'. Last time I checked, I couldn't produce a dollar amount for what I'm currently feeling, but as soon as someone with a lot of money seems to be responsible for my emotional state, I can pull a figure from the ether and claim that's the precise economical value of my pain.
I realise this isn't much to do with the article, but it's starting to get beyond a joke. As far as I know lawsuits were originally intended as a way to recoup actual, tangible losses. Not as the new get rich quick scam.
Disclaimer: I am British, but our country is getting just as bad as that of our neighbours to the west.
C17H21NO4
If they really are paying women to go on "dates", then they might be looking at charges a bit more sensational than fraud!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
A lot of women frown on the negative connotations that go with that sort of thing, so unless they have hookers on the payrole I would find it very doubtful that a woman would agree to doing something like that, especially if they are getting paid as it puts them right down there if their general social group finds out.
Maybe, but no necessarily from Mate1's site. 17-18 year old girls want to chat dirty with anyone, especially guys in different states or countries that pose no direct threat.
I met a great girl on Match, and it's the best relationship I've ever had. I had to go through a lot of "coffee dates" and meet a lot of non-compatible women to get there. I don't think Match puts up fake profiles, but a lot of users do falsify information on that site, but then again, those people would lie about themselves in the real world as well.
I think where people go wrong is that they expect way too much. They just look at the photos and only email the women who put up the hot bikini shots... then supidly expect a reply. Every other guy on the system emails the girl with hot bikini shot, so your chances are pretty slim. Stick to women who are more your speed and you'll do just fine.
If you go into it with lower expectations and take the time to actually read the profiles rather than look at the pictures, you can meet some very nice people. I know I have.
If the girl was a Match employee, then that would be more like an escort service almost, wouldn't it? How much does an escort cost? How much did he pay at the dating site? This guy shouldn't complain, he got A GREAT BARGAIN !!!
please excuse my apathy
Well that and well broiled.
/SFL!
I'm socially inept. I'll admit that. But why do chicks hate it when I get a good gander at the chest when they're the ones wearing the skimpy cloth that barely covers them in the first place. I don't actually stare or follow but when sitting in a public place I make it my duty to check out the scene.
Frankly, if you don't want to be treated as a meatbag wear something half-way dignified.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This would be outstanding. I would love to see the clusterfuck that would ensue.
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[insert funny
Not only the online dating sites and ads sound like scams.
Just think of the personals pages in the newspapers. This seems to be a worldwide phenomenon; at least some of the constantly very bad personal ads can be seen in Italy, UK, Finland....
"44 years old, fabulous looking, model body, great job with big income, high moral values, sportive, likes travelling, arts, extremely highly educated and well behaving female, is looking for a male of 40-60 years with equal details."
"great looking, age xx, female or male, with PhD, speaks fluently 4 languages, has lived abroad, likes to engage in intellectual discussions, wants to meet a male or female for serious relationship and family."
And so on. Seeing any of these ads on printed paper (and in the Internet too) makes me want to scream. If you are attractive, educated, smart, have so many interests that you tell you have, why do you have to place an ad to some newspaper? Men and women should be raining on you.
All those "great" ads sound like scam to me. If you are such a perfect person, there is no way you are still a single, given the fact there are so many lusers who are not single either. Or scamming offices --- people actually pay for offices for finding their soulmates.... offices in the real life. With their selected few hundred applicants they browse and select the criteria for selection... I can't decide if I see them as business, or as a scam. You can look for the people of the sex you are interested in, but you can't force love in that criteria. Maybe only the mail catalogs for exotic women (to marry) are actually more real; people know they will find someone else there, and who is most likely not how they had imagined their ideal 'other half' to be. I can't believe the descriptions in those catalogs would be as lame as in any of these normal newspaper dating ads are. These people are a scam.
I have no idea where you are pulling the fact that emotional damages are usually "a few million dollars." At least, those aren't the numbers they teach us in law school. You might ask for a few million, but it's rarely going to be that much.
As for punitive damages... they are SO infrequent in this country that you really shouldn't be too worried about them. Our tort system is not designed to punish people, it is designed to compensate. You need to show amazing wrong-doing with malice and the whole bit in order to be eligible for punitive damages. As for who it goes to... some states take the money for themselves. Sometimes the court puts the money into a trust that is used to compensate other victims. It's really far more equitable than the media makes it out to be.
But then, you know that... or do you think that the media only slants the technology industry?
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
I won't self rate, if you wanted you could find my pics online and find for yourself, but most people wouldn't consider me unattractive. There are, however, many no-so-attractive specimens of either gender to be found in the world of online dating. The problem is that for many people internet dating is a last resort. Currently, it seems to be mostly populated by second-comers (30-40something, out of a relationship/marriage, don't know how to get back into the scene), as it's not quite hip with those younger.
For people like me, I'm not a bar person, there aren't many social places around here, and I'm just too bloody busy. I've had quite good success at meeting people online (and later offline) since I can trade emails etc at my own pace. Online also tends to give you a 'social distance' wherein you can learn if others are worth meeting in person (there are some crazy crazy people out there), and people tend to divulge more personal information, etc when they don't have to look you in the eye and be embarrassed.
My advice to those male geeks who find themselves girlfriendless... go find more female friends and try to not date them. If you find yourself able to talk with various women without becoming a drooling idiot, they'll probably improve your social skills and/or point you in the right direction. Heck, some of them might even have cute+interesting friends.
It's just business.
It's just false advertising, and that gets you in trouble, emotions or no.
But why do chicks hate it when I get a good gander at the chest when they're the ones wearing the skimpy cloth that barely covers them in the first place.
They want to show off their sexuality while testing your self control. They're more interested in guys that wont put out for them on the first date; that which takes more work to obtain is more desired.
Isn't sending out "employees" on dates also known as pimping?
Isn't pimping illegal?
She does not need to go out with the same guy over and over again, what you need is
is for her to see a whole lot of guys once. Just like a slot machine... Just a little of bit of reward will keep the people putting quarters in for hours.
Arrgh- I get replies to my profile all the time. Maybe because I use a picture I scanned from an Abercrombie catalog, and I added 100K to my income.
On a serious note, even the most unattractive person has a couple photos where the lighting is just right, their outfit flatters them and they look pretty good. So even with a real pic, yuo still may end up with a sea monkey.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I've done the online dating thing on Spring Street networks (those are the personals advertised through the Onion and the SF Chronicle; they also have a sort of "central" site, nerve.com.)
People commenting here are right about a number of things. A large fraction of folks are "second time around" (I'm not.) There is a fraction of crazy people (none of whom I've met in person), and a fraction of insanely dull people (I mean, really, who would have thought you needed the internet to find the most boring person in the world.)
If you are outside a major urban area, the majority of people are either older divorcées (40-50) or have some major problem that prevents them getting dates in the real world. In the cities -- especially places like New York or San Francisco, major magnets -- huge numbers of very cool twenty and thirty somethings are on them. You're post-college, you've moved to the big cheese to make it big in your urban professional job, and suddenly you know nobody and nobody knows you. You can either date colleagues (ugh), or you can go online. A lot of grad students do it as well.
I'm not surprised the larger sites have had problems. It's hard to make money running a personals site. You have to attract women (and very few women pay anything to use them), and at the same time get the boys to cough up. Server costs, promotion, and maintenance add up very quickly. Springstreet was just sold to some other company which is actually incredibly sketchy, and they've had some issues (that seem to be clearing up, but it was bad for a month or so.)
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Women (and men) use online dating and social sites to meet people because they aren't into bars, alcohol, and cig smoke. Meeting people online is pretty cheap compared to partying all the time, too. It's also like the old "penpals" system that science fiction nerds (and lonely punk kids) used to meet each other - they had friends, but, the entire social circle was, like ten people, and it was fun meeting more people with the same interests and outlook on life.
If you have a wide social circle, and a lot of opportunities to meet people, and a lot of money and time, then there's no reason to use the online services. If you're not all these things, then, the online thing is a great option. It doesn't take much time or money, and you get to meet people with whom you have something in common, but maybe not a social network or daily schedule that's identical. Nowadays, any reasonably popular online site will connect you with people nearby, if you're in the US or some European countries. Many are strictly local, so these aren't long-distance hookups.
Also, a lot of people use these sites to meet new people and socialize, not to "date", although that goal's always there too.
I have met some cool people online who I otherwise would not have met. Also, I've met people online who know people I already know (from offline). So it's not like a weird universe of strangers out there.
I just got out of a relationship with a girl that was a part of the paid popular night life. Liquor promotions, Entertainment Sales, sensual massage, etc. etc..
You'd be quite surprised what a woman relevates to whoring. I find that the general consensus among young women is that as long as they aren't getting paid for "Happy endings", they're working a legitimate job. Same goes for strippers, they don't feel as if they're whores, they think they're giving an audience what they want to see; nothing more. In this day and age, socially acceptable jobs and hobbies have come a long way. Used to be pen and paper games such as Dungeons&Dragons was the work of the devil, now it's for the most part widely accepted and even a curiosity for most people. Walking around downtown with tops off (bikini's replacing) used to be something only gangsters and mobsters do, now it's commonplace on hot days. Socially acceptable has come a long way and women are very keen to this.
But on a more relative note, I myself use an online dating site and have found it to be quite worth my time. Have already met with several attractive and intelligent women, and am meeting with another tomorrow. Now here's something you'd never guess, alot of women are using sites such as Match.com to meet men for no strings attached sex. It varies between site to site, but women too these days are looking for NSA sex, and using the fact they're rarities to their advantage and boning only the most attractive guys they can find on the site. I've met a couple of these women and was surprised to see that they were actually quite attractive! Imagine the look on my face when they say "You ready to go fuck?"
Personally, I promptly turned around and walked away, there's no way to know how many diseases they have if they had been on a romp with every attractive guy on the site. As I said, socially acceptable has changed in this day and age, and women are very keen to that fact.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
If I wore a police uniform and some guy came up asking me for help could I say "Hey! Just because I'm dressed as a policeman doesn't mean I am one." No man, that's just confusing. So next time you decided to dress up like a whore, just remember that you may not be a whore, but you're wearing a whore's uniform.
(Paraphrased from a David Chappelle standup bit.)
My blog
It's just business.
Y'know, I've heard that line excuse some of the most foul, unacceptable behaviour, and I'm tired of it. No, it's not just business. Business is like any other interaction-- you treat people fairly, or you don't fucking treat them at all.
I see all kinds of posts lambasting frivolous lawsuits and the general decline of morals in America; often, those posts are from the same people who stand up for ill-behaved corporations and say inane things like, "It's just business."
Well, fuck them in the ass with a spinning roto-rooter.
Things done in the name of business represent some of the most immoral things in our culture today-- the purchasing of government by corporations, for instance. So, no, it's not just "business;" business should include treating each other with decency and ethics, just like all human interaction.
Now, where the hell did I put my lithium?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I would also suggest that another reason to use these sites is that there are only so many people in your social circles and groups that you might be interested in and over time they end up paired up with someone else, and the remaining are not quite what one is after.
I admit I have tried a couple of sites over the last 3 months, looking for the right lady to settle down with, have had success in meeeting for coffee and/or dinner, but no success for a long term relationship. So far I'm not sure if this is going to be way I'll meet my next partner, but I'm making it an option, work on/polish my profiles once a week.
I've thought about what qualities I'm looking for, and of those what I'm willing to pass up and those I'm sticking to, so I'm being a bit picky aiming at 90%+ compatibility.
I've done most of the initiating of convesations on these sites, and of the ladies that make the contact me, most of those give russian email addresses which I ignore. Have had no scam emails from the providers of the sites that I can tell, but at least I'll be aware of them if/when they happen.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
I used to work for CitySearch, which was at one time the same company as Ticketmaster. I worked there for over three and a half years.
The outbreaks of these articles were the first that I'd heard of this practice. It was not a rumor around the office, much less "common knowledge".
In actual fact, the entire employee base of the umbrella corporation (InterActive Corp) was offered a free 6-month subscription to match.com as part of our inter-company perks. So, which company would likely have a higher representation of its employees on the service? That's right.. the one giving paid subs away for free.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
"Adult Friend Finder" -- they must do an IP lookup to target the ads, so I, living in Hong Kong, see all these ads with the captions "Hot woman in Beijing/Shanghai/Urumqi wants to meet you". Strangely, all these Chinese women are skanky blondes (usually depicted naked with their legs spread).
Not nearly as lucky as an 18 year old bloke would be to get a 35 year old woman.
You post on slashdot and you wanna talk about a girl not liking you? Give up, you don't even know what a girl looks like.
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