Tinder Must Stop Charging Its Older Users More For 'Plus' Features, Court Rules (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The online dating service Tinder must change one of its key monetization strategies. A Los Angeles appellate court reversed a lower court's decision on Monday and told Tinder to stop charging older users more money per month for its "Tinder Plus" service. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed by Tinder user Allan Candelore in February 2016, alleged that Tinder engaged in illegal age discrimination by charging its 30-and-older users $19.99 per month for Tinder Plus while offering younger users either $9.99 or $14.99 monthly subscription rates for the same services. Tinder Plus includes app perks such as additional "super-likes" which are more likely to attract a dater's response. In an initial trial, Tinder's defense argued that the pricing was based on market testing that showed a market-driven reason to offer lower prices to "budget constrained" users.

"Nothing in the [original] complaint suggests there is a strong public policy that justifies the alleged discriminatory pricing," Judge Brian Currey wrote in the appeal court's 3-0 ruling. "Accordingly, we swipe left" -- a joke based on the app's popular "swipe to reject" gesture -- and reverse." That reversal hinges largely on California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which was passed in 1959 and protects "equal access to public accommodations and prohibits discrimination by business establishments." The ruling noted that some business-led discrimination is allowed by California state law, but it agreed with Candelore's argument that Tinder's age-targeted pricing is not.

Comments

Multiple execs had to agree to this

[raymorris]

I can imagine one person having a brain fart and doing something stupid. One person doesn't decide the pricing and change it at a whom, though. This had to be multiple executives agreeing this pricing discrimination sounded like a good idea.

Who the heck in running Tinder? I wonder how many of them have graduated high school, because this is a pretty obvious screw up. I notice the various bios of their CEO don't list any other jobs he's ever had. Looks a bit like this may be his first job.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[Hadlock]

Anything is possible as a business, until law enforcement decides you're acting in a criminal manner, or someone sues you for infringing upon their freedoms. Discrimination by age is such an infringement. Most companies are too small for people to try and sue them though.
 
Uber's whole business model hinges on the idea that non-commercially licenced drivers can operate a taxi service in any city, irregardless of the city/jurisdiction's rules. Then the local taxi group sues Uber after a number of months and then they reach some sort of settlement typically.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[omnichad]

Well there are other acceptable discriminations like haircuts

Which doesn't actually fall along the lines of sex. If you're a woman and get a basic butch haircut, then your overcharging should be considered illegal discrimination.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[Anonymous Coward]

What about senior discounts at restaurants, how is that allowed? Honestly curious.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[diamondmagic]

Why do you act as if it's a stupid idea? The biggest correlation with wealth, more than anything else, is how old you are; and that's a fact that doesn't change by which generation you're in, family upbringing, or anything else.

Re: Multiple execs had to agree to this

[sabri]

Thank you, Dr Pedant, for that learned and enlightening commentary.

Speaking English as a second language, I appreciate it if people point me to mistakes like that. It helps me avoid it in the future. Sometimes, a grammar nazi is captain. He just forgot to fly away.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[sg_oneill]

Its a reasonable question in this context.

The principle reason for "Senior discounts" is that elderly folks are often poorer (Not always, theres plenty of rich old folk), and have likely been of a "service to the community" in the sense of having lived through conscription wartimes, and so on. So therefore its reasonable to offer a discount to the elderly, in the same way some businesses might offer a discount to the disable or unemployed.

Tinder in fact argued that in this case users under 30 where more likely to be "budget constrained" than a user over 30 and thus it justifed the policy. The supreme court considered this in detail and noted that the difference is that a 25 and a 35 both have a capacity to earn more money, however a retired senior citizen or a child does not have that capacity and thus the underlying generalizations are different, particularly as the same legislature that enables the anti discrimination laws also limits the ability of the very elderly or the very young to work and thus it carves out its own excemptions there to permit discounts for seniors and children.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[diamondmagic]

If you want to be pedantic about it I'm pretty sure number of digits in your bank account is the biggest correlation with wealth.

Re: Multiple execs had to agree to this

[mapkinase]

I have very little knowledge of Tinder and my perception is that it is an application of finding casual sex partners, mostly.

If that is not the reason to immediately realize how antisocial the whole idea is, I do not know what is.

Following un-ethical behavior of salesmen is just a logical continuation.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[dfm3]

Senior discounts are typically a very soft policy, and I've never actually seen one strictly enforced (a reasonable request refused or ID checked, for example). It's the same with military discounts, or college student discounts. I'm in my early 30's yet I've been given a "senior" discount many times for a variety of reasons: because I was nice to a cashier, showed patience while they dealt with a belligerent customer ahead of me, commented on a cashier's haircut, because I was neighbors with the cashier, or because it was easier than waiting for a manager to fix a pricing error. I've also seen cashiers "forget" to offer the discount to a senior who was rude.

Many folks in their 40's or 50's, if they mention the senior discount, will have their request honored, since it's generally considered bad manners to question someone's age. Now, if I were to ask for the same discount, I'd probably get some dirty looks, and I'd feel like I was taking advantage. But if the cashier was in the right mood they'd probably, more often than not, roll their eyes and give me the discount anyway, since that's easier than arguing with an unreasonable customer request.

I never served in the military, but I've noticed that sometimes if a cashier asks if I qualify for that discount, and I reply with a laugh that no, only my parents did so I was a military brat who decided they'd had enough of living on base as a kid, they'll sometimes give me the discount anyway.

If Tinder had phrased this as a "college student discount", it would have been allowed to stand; instead they not only chose to use one of the legally protected classes (age) as a factor, they strictly enforced the pricing scheme based on birthdate.

Re: Multiple execs had to agree to this

[swb]

AFAIK, it is for finding casual sex partners. I don't know that it's inherently anti-social, if anything, it's at least matching men and women with a shared intent of sexual involvement and potentially reduces some of the chances for sexual harassment which happens when one party wants sex but uses poor cues or inappropriate settings to seek it.

It doesn't surprise me that they would charge older people more. My expectation is that older men prefer younger women, have less access to younger women in their real lives, and would thus be inclined to overwhelm a service like Tinder. Tinder lives and dies by its ability to attract young women to the platform, and these young women are probably generally interested in partners in their peer group, not 40-something men.

If Tinder is flooded with older men, it will lose appeal to younger women and probably fail as a platform as women leave it due to too few desired partner matches. So it makes sense that Tinder wants to charge older people more for access. This will reduce the number of men on their platform and compensate them somewhat for whatever marginal loss in female users it causes.

I'm not sure any of this is unfair to older users. In real life, age discrimination against sexual partners happens. A 45 year old man simply is less desirable to 25 year old women.

Re:Multiple execs had to agree to this

[Opportunist]

Well, judges are mostly old men, so ...

Tinder suxs anyway...

[b0s0z0ku]

Tinder sucks. No way to know more about a person than pictures and brief one-liner. Also easy enough to create throwaway accounts. OKCupid and similar free dating services keep the bar higher than a gallery of random mugshots.

Re:Tinder suxs anyway...

[110010001000]

I thought Tinder was just for meeting people for sex. I only use Grindr, so I have no idea.

So, that means...

[ScentCone]

So, that means that as someone who doesn't get "senior discounts" because I'm below a certain age, I'm being discriminated against? This cuts both ways.

Re:Key words

[mark-t]

Kids are always accompanied by adults, so the zoo still sells a full priced ticket (or two) to a family. Also, it is an incentive to go with your kid rather than leave him at home. The age cutoff for cheaper tickets is usually quite low (7 or so), so the cheaper/free ticket is also offered as a convenience for the parents (a 2 year old kid probably won't get a lot out of the visit, but you take him there when visiting the zoo with your older kid so as not to leave him alone).

I think it's much more complex than that. Child bus tickets and passes cost less than adult ones, for instance, even if the child is not accompanied by an adult (which would often be the case for say a 12 or 13 year-old taking a public transit bus to or from school).

It's not stupid - lots of businesses do it

[Solandri]

Except instead of explicitly charging older people a higher rate based on an age cutoff, they simply offer a discount for students and children. The correlation is very close to an age-based cutoff, except you don't get in trouble for age discrimination. Kinda like how insurance companies can't charge more based on race, but they can charge more if you live in a certain zip code which just so happens to correlate strongly with race.

So what they were trying to do wasn't stupid. They just implemented it wrong.

Really stupid..

[jcr]

As a Libertarian, I believe that businesses should be free to make any pricing decisions they want, even if they piss off some of their customers. As a businessman, I'm amazed that Tinder's management can be so fucking stupid.

-jcr

Re:Really stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is non-valid. Tinder users can specify the age brackets of the people they are shown. If you only want to see [20,28], you'll never be shown the older people.

Cheaper for Younger

[dohzer]

I should also have to pay less if I'm only targeting the young women!

Re:Can we sue car insurance companies?

[Dog-Cow]

Are they? Insurance companies charge by the statistics. If younger people are statistically more likely to cost more, that's not the Insurer's fault.

Re:Senior Discounts.

[jarkus4]

Not necessarily. Seniors are mostly retired and have lots of free time during the day when others are at work. By getting them to come more frequently you are filling up time with few regular customers and so you are using your employees and space more efficiently.

Re:Can we sue car insurance companies?

[lister king of smeg]

The stats make sense though, in auto insurance statistically those under 25 are riskier drivers. In heath insurance and life insurance those that are older are statistically more expensive/less profitable.

and over 60 to but my active 90 year grandmother pays less than me even though she is a greater risk.

Re:All words are made up.

[murdocj]

Irridiculous!