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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!
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
If they have so much money they made fraudulently, why don't they pay a meaningful penalty?
>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.
Dead, flat, wrong.
Illegal activity is one example of something that can pierce the corporate veil.
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