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Classmates.com Settles Lawsuit Over Phony Friends
Hugh Pickens writes "Techflash reports that Classmates.com has agreed to pay up to $9.5 million to its users to settle a lawsuit that accused the social network of sending deceptive emails that made people believe their old friends from high school were reaching out to connect — only to discover, after paying for a membership, that their long-lost buddies were nowhere to be found. Lawyers for the plaintiffs asserted that Classmates had 'profited tremendously from their false or deceptive e-mail subject lines and related marketing tactics.' Under terms of the proposed settlement, Classmates.com members who upgraded to premium memberships after receiving one of the 'guestbook' emails will be able to choose either a $3 cash payout or a $2 credit toward the future purchase or renewal of a Classmates.com membership. Classmates.com is also among companies that have come under scrutiny for their use of 'post-transaction marketing' tactics — in which customers are given additional offers as part of the online payment process, sometimes in such a way that they aren't aware they're also signing up to pay more. A November 2009 US Senate Committee report said Classmates made more than $70 million through its relationship with post-transaction marketing firms. The Classmates Media unit posted $58.8 million in operating profit for 2009, up more than 24 percent from the previous year, making Classmates 'the most profitable social network in the world,' according to CEO Mark Goldston."
Even if you love Classmates.com after they scammed you, why wouldn't you take the $3, apply $2 yourself to your renewal, and spend the other $1 on a hamburger or something.
Classmates.com members who upgraded to premium memberships after receiving one of the 'guestbook' emails will be able to choose either a $3 cash payout or a $2 credit toward the future purchase or renewal of a Classmates.com membership.
Huh? They're offering a cash payout or 33% less money that you can only spend on the site that scammed you?
Better get working now on a decision-making chart if this applies to you.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Not indescribably wacky: the settlement specifies that the court determines the final amount, with an upper limit of $1.3 million.
Of course, members of the class still barely get enough to make it worth checking it out.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Classmates has notified me weekly of multiple sign-ins to my guest book for years, adding up to more guest book sign-ins than students in my graduating class. Apparently I had not realized how popular I was! Being a nerd led to a reluctance to socialize that saved me from this fraud.
The legal system! What kind of justice is this? Classmates.com made $70million for being deceptive ($60million less this judgment) while getting a slap on the wrist, the lawyers get the bulk of the $10million, and what has changed? Nothing! Companies can continue to make profits, abuse customers and the public, and know that in the end all they will lose is just a tiny bit of the profit they made even if they break the law!
They should just be shut down. Especially for the policy of committing people who are unaware to further payments with other entities.
Man, all of those transaction fees probably cost more than $2/user. What a waste of time - except for the lawyers involved! On the flip side, thankfully there are prosecutions of marketing and selling techniques such as these. Somewhere out there is a future of simpler, more secure and less scammy online transactions... somewhere... over the rainbow...
Why the hell wasn't a full refund the lowest option.
Or are most of the better-known social networking sites run by scum? I can think of an exception or two, but they happen not to be profitable yet.
Any moron who paid money to join a "social network" like classmates, instead of just spending a few minutes googling for the persons they wanted to reach, deserves to be punked. Seriously, who really cares about this?
I've experienced something very similar with a genealogy site in the UK. I signed up to have a look (in the course of which I gave them my name, date of birth and town of birth) and a little later I received an e-mail saying that I was probably in someone else's family tree - all the details which I'd given matched, plus they'd added the hospital in which I was born. It's a sufficiently small hospital that there couldn't have been two people with the same name born there on precisely the same day. And yet I know my family tree very well and there's no way the person purporting to have me in her tree could actually be related.
Sure enough, when I tried to get more details they wouldn't give any details unless I paid, and then after I'd searched a few times the purported relative disappeared from their hits.
The extra information is exactly what they could have got from the register of births marriages and deaths. It was enough to make me cancel my whole subscription.
I have been getting these emails for years, and I *always* knew it was a fake - I never logged on to actually see that it was a fake robot posting, because that would have been too depressing.
I think probably everyone on this sight has enough experience with "popular" not to have fallen for this :-)
If you did fall for it, well what a pathetic loser you are! :-)
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/classmates_com_employees
Japanesepod101.com and other language learning websites run by Innovative Language Learning also practice similarly deceptive marketing.
They offer a 'free trial', access for a month to their language learning website and then persuade you to give them your credit card details so that they can send you a 'free gift' (you only pay for the postage). However if you do this, you have just signed up to their subscription which will begin automatically charging your credit card and renewing your subscription every month ones the free trial is over. To opt-out you need to follow the websites instructions which tell you where to stop the renewal. However this only works after you have singed up again to one of their paid accounts, giving you access to the actual menu under which the opt-out is ... or you can just send their sales department an email and get the automatic subcription terminated.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
... the next thing you are going to tell me is that all these hot girls in my neighborhood advertising on various web sites aren't real either. That would be a tragedy.
After being stood up by a bunch of high school friends that never gave be the time of day when I was there, I was looking forward to some female companionship just to sooth my bruised ego.
Have gnu, will travel.
Excuse me, but where are the punitive damages?
The chick with the big rack that's been go googling me according to the ads on my Facebook page...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
There are many class action lawsuits that end up being complete BS like this one. The lawyers made a ton of money and the people scammed get $2. Not that classmates dot com deserves any sympathy whatsoever. IMO they should be forced out of business, because the only thing this will do is make them get even more "creative" with their advertising and spam.
At the same time I haven't got a lot of sympathy by anyone taken in by the classmates scam. Darwin should be allowed to work his magic at some point. The first time I got spam from classmates dot com it took me exactly 2 seconds to evaluate the "service" and decide it was a bullshit operation.
Having said all that, I wouldn't want to see class action lawsuits go away entirely. The laws that govern them do need an overhaul IMO.
I'll take the $3.
I want it in 300 separate $0.01 payments, through paypal, at your own expense.
Then I'm going to submit you to my marketing partners as you go through the checkout process, and add about $40 in fees through additional 'offers' you probably never even saw.
Justice will be served.
These lawsuits take months or years to grind through the courts and yet I had one of these pieces of spam just a couple of days ago from them. You'd think that they would at least stop the activity while they are being sued. But from the looks of it, they are going to pay the fine and continue doing it anyways as it's cheaper than stopping their illegal activity.
You scammed your users but part of accounting is to consider goodwill. Just like SCO, you are now in the negative.
I can't wait for Google to enter that market and bankrupt you.
After a bit of googling (since you won't find out the price until you hand over your information), Classmates.com charges $39.00 for membership. I could be wrong but as I said until you hand over your info (which I am sure as hell not doing) you arent told the price. But my point is, if these people are getting $3 back after paying $39 then they are hardly getting a refund? Can someone clear this up?
I have created a site that lets you meet up with the cash that is due to you from class action lawsuits - at classactions.com!
Our records indicate that the following class action receipts can be claimed by YOU! Yes YOU could have this money in YOUR hand next week*: $40, $2.50, $7, $13.25 ! Membership is only $9.99 per month!
* Examples of money that could be claimed by a person that isn't representative only and should in no way be construed as claiming or representing that they could be claimed by you.
Yeah, i think meetup.com would do this. I remember tying to start a pickup soccer group a while back.. we had maybe a dozen people confirm a meeting, and then two showed up.
...I've been a member of always have a payoff to the consumer members that reads like an advertisement to benefit the wrong doer? hell I've seen typical store coupons worth more than any of these class action suits were to give the members.
.....like we didn't have such in school long before the internet was here.
It's better to not deal with companies that need a CC for "free" trials; but if you screw up and get in a situation like this, just call your CC company, complain, and tell them to reject any charges from them. It's not like it's the power company and they can turn off your lights. They'll eventually just stop provisioning you with (service you don't need). Problem solved.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All you need to glass every man, woman and child from Greece to India is to read what they write themselves.
Due to scamming? What an accomplishment.
The activitities of the robber barons sure have changed over the span of a century. Gone are the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, and the Vanderbilts as well as their great industrial empires from which did flow, directly or indirectly, much material prosperity. They have been replaced by the Internet shysters and their feeble realms of illusion from which emenates absolutely nothing.
I'd rather have yesterday.
One hopes that the lawyers are paid in Classmate credits, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Still waiting until someone sues JDate several times over for similar practices.
classmates.com just plain sucks. I don't know a single person who uses it.
If they have so much money they made fraudulently, why don't they pay a meaningful penalty?
A corporation is Joe Schmo's way of doing something unlawful on behalf of an artificial entity, rather than on behalf of himself. A corporation gives limited liability to such a Joe Schmo, and if he can make more money doing it this way then that is just one more benefit of incorporation.
Now here's a predicament: U.S. Army is not the dejure Army of the United States, because U.S. Army is a corporation that has nothing to do with army but a corporation employing persons. So if there is a fictional "war" declared by anyone but a Congress of the United States, then you have otherwise "civil unrest" agitating another company with such immigration. Civil War is an oxymoron, and I agree with the hillbilly that said that to me, so do you have mercenaries that created a corporation to limit their liability by pretending a civil presence and civil remedy(if not a warranted, but seen as violent) to the lack of protection when obvious aggressors rouse a civilians presence to defend himself and his retinue?
Fraud, everywhere.
>The Classmates Media unit posted $58.8 million in operating profit for 2009,
Funny how this correlates with the fact that I have recently received all these emails from them saying my old buddies had left me messages etc,...and wanted to talk to me, however close i came to joining, i didn't, and am glad now, cause i saw more of them on facebook then here...they should offer this for free and offer extra features for some profits, or turn to ad revenue completely to remain competitive to facebook.
Those lesbians think of everything...
but I would've thought Alah-bama would turn into a muslim capitol as planned, but then our Irish descendents in MicHagen would root them out through using their Whitecastle Hamburger-Core Infantry.
seems like every lady I try to contact would read my mail within the second and rename to an other user ID.
Good thing Plenty-Offish is free, so I don't know what they're trying to gain other than Profile the suggested Income of the world for Interpol and New World Order to screen to their databases for those of us `eRapists that got away.
All of the adult dating sites have fake members that send messages to intice you to join.
I get 1-2 messages a day from 'HotToTrotJen' and 'HornySue' or some other obvious name with a picture on AdultFriendFinder. The profile has no information beyond the minimal needed to create an account.
problem solved when I notarized and certified copy to all interested parties that I am revoking and rescinding said signature to contract for such & such reasons of non-disclosure and lack of interest from parties not present when said contract was signed.
If they continue, give them notice that every day they use your name they will owe you double the subscription cost. When they don't pay in 7 days, take the man you discussed over the phone to County court over the cost they owe you for subscribing to use your hypotheca and trademark associated to your name.
again and again.