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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."
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?
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!
And they're both so small amounts that in the end no one will care about it and classmates.com probably needs to spend 0.5% of the amount they were asked to pay up.
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.
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?
'cept the lawyers, who were probably on a % of max payout. Which is why we get a huge total amount, made of negligible individual payouts: lawyers win big, classmates pays nothing besides the lawyers.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
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.
If you are accusing meetup.com of having phony people RSVP to your event, I kind of doubt it. What purpose would it serve? You've already paid for the subscription before anyone signs up for your event, and having a bunch of fake sign-ups certainly isn't going to help encourage you to renew your subscription in the future since you'll know they are no-shows before your next payment is due (in sharp contrast to classmates.com, where the fake stuff is used to grab your initial payment). I belong to several meetup groups, and I've never gotten the impression that the no-shows weren't real; they're just flaky people.
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.
I'll bet if you look at the logic trail you followed to reach that conclusion, you'll find that it was a path the average user won't be able to follow. People who commit fraud should be punished.
Qxe4
Class action lawsuits are *never* for the benefit of the actual aggrieved parties. They're simply cash cows for tort lawyers. Bill Lerach actually got caught *paying* people to be plaintiffs in shareholder class action suits - he went to jail for that, but how many others didn't?
Not true; "class actions" are simply lawsuits where one or more parties represents a class of persons because joining ALL those persons would be impractical. You can have class actions that have nothing to do with torts. And the idea that individual class members never benefit is just not so. I've seen class actions where individual class members received millions of dollars. It all comes down to what the nature of the underlying claim is, not whether it's a class action or not.
hehe .. I never have a problem.
I have a Bank of America credit card I use for things like this. BofA lets you create a 'fake' credit card number that is tied to your card, but that you have absolute control over. I can cancel it at will, change the limits up to my card limits, and set the expiration date to any period up to my own credit card expiration date. The cool part is you can also extend them if you choose to, and they are tied to one and only one merchant.
Whenever I buy anything online, I create a new number with a two month expiration date, and a limit that is $10 more than what the fee is. So next year, the card is no good and they have to come and ask me for a new card number.
Works GREAT!!! I wish more credit card companies offered it.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Something is better than nothing, at least they are paying some kind of penalty. For example how much do you get back when someone goes to prison, hmm, nothing in fact you get a bill for keeping them there. Fraud is fraud though, paying back the money really isn't enough, those corporate executives responsible for the decision should be given the opportunity to spend a bit more of our money, the cost of the rehabilitative accommodations. They lied, cheated and stole, where are the punishments for them, they lock up shoplifters and pick pockets that steal a couple of dollars, these people steal millions and there is a civil suit, now that is just bullshit, especially as there is all this evidence floating around of their criminal activities, especially when false perceptions of profitability based upon criminal activities can be used to attract investors.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen