Customers Sue Match.com

BIZ JOURNALS - Jan 4 - Match.com is facing a class action lawsuit filed by former customers who allege the company is misleading clients by having them pay for access to dating profiles that are often expired or false profiles created by spammers. In the suit, the plaintiffs say the company is responsible for inactive profiles that are left active on the site because “Match takes virtually no action to remove these profiles.” FULL ARTICLE @ DALLAS BUSINESS JOURNAL

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Comments

[Mark Brooks]

Dating sites know that scammers are good for short term profits and very bad for longer term. A certain level of scammer ctivity will boost short term conversions and profits. For the longer haul, scammers kill dating sites, an the entire user experience.

Mark Brooks
OnlinePersonalsWatch
usa 212-444-1636 / uk 020-8133-1835

[Tom Mack]

Several years ago, I was the technical consultant for Jon van Helsing and Anna Alden-Tirril, helping them write a book about how scammers use dating sites to to rake in millions. I had hoped the book would curb this trend, but unfortunately, it has only gotten worse. I still talk to people who have been burned by these scammers. While I hope this class-action suit will succeed, I am sure the only people who will make money will be the lawyers. When I was working on the book project, we looked into starting our own class-action suit. The AV-rated firms (the highest rated in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory) we contacted wanted over $20,000 in retainer fees before they would start work. The BV-rated firm we contacted would start for $10,000, but since we were just writing a book and not the victims, we did not have the funds to start the proceedings. Most of the victims we talked to did not have the funds either, since they sent their money to West Africa. However, one of the attorneys admitted flat-out that the only people who make money in a class-action suit are the lawyers. The victims will get far less than they deserve.

[Peter Greene]

I hope the lawsuit will also address the practice of only allowing communication when both members pay.
You pay the contribution to get in touch with other people - but find that you can't because those others need to pay too!

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

What next - some guy will sue to force women to talk to him?

[Joe]

I think the man should pay for communication for both he and the girl, like the girl should have a meter and a guy buys her virtual flowers for that meter to get access to her. ON Match, what does the Green Box mean, is that persona a paying member? I don't pay for match, so I can never tell who is paying or not, and don't talk to anyone.

[Peter Greene]

@Sam: now that is a very innovative concept! :-)

But seriously - for a straight male, it's very hard to get positive attention from a woman on a dating site. Simply because there's so much competition. That is why I find it unfair for match.com to add an extra threshold by requiring the other party to pay as well.
But at least these women might still be reading your message. Where it comes to dead and inactive profiles, the effort you put into a message simply goes to waste. Not my idea of a good user experience!

[Peter Greene]

I don't think this is about scammers - it's not good business for match.com to become associated with scam anyway.
The way I read the article, it's about all the dead and inactive profiles being presented as if they're active members.

[Peter Greene]

Oops, made a mistake there. This article is about scammers. Sorry!

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

The dead profiles issue is annoying and almost all dating sites have them, to my knowledge. It is all about claiming you have x million members, to sound bigger than you actually are. Of course, that includes all those dead profiles. So, someone who hasn't used the site since 2007 (or whenever) could still be being counted. I don't know about Match's policy on removing dead accounts, but when I was single and searching on different sites, I came across dead accounts all the time.

We remove inactive profiles within 90-120 days, based on last activity. We go after these accounts to try to get them to come back, but if they still don't, they are removed. It isn't fair to active members to have inactive accounts.

The 90-120 period is reasonable, we believe, as it allows for temporary absences such as vacations or not being sure of their commitment level. After that, though, what is the point of keeping them?

We have always operated this way (since inception 12 years ago). To our knowledge, we are the *only* dating site that removes inactive accounts this quickly. It is good business, we believe - and goes a long way to explaining why we are still here all these years later:)

[Peter Greene]

Glad to hear there's at least one site that takes these things in consideration, Sam!

[JB]

There's really 2 different issue's here.The first is,does Match have a large amount of old inactive profiles or "unpaid lurker profiles" as well as totally fake one's the answer is yes and they love them all.To most of these sites(except maybe Sam's)it's about quantity not quality.Obviously if someone sees that a person hasn't logged on in "over 3 weeks" most of the time they're gone but Match will never delete the profile especially if it's "visible" and comes up in search results.It could be 4 yrs old and the person hasn't logged on in 3 yrs but it will still say "active over 3 weeks" which is absolutely ridiculous but not "false".My question always is,why do these people leave their profile "visible" if they're not logging in? Match doesn't make them but the people do for some reason.Match doesn't(for obvious reasons)let you search for only those who have been on "in the last week" but you can at least view your results by "activity date" so you can see who was last on when.This isn't "rocket science" any idiot knows if someone hasn't been on in over 3 weeks you don't email them....duh!
The question then becomes should any paying customer have the right to know if someone they're emailing is in fact an "active PAYING member"? As for the "scammers" that ARE active paying members??(and there are,Yahoo used to have a lot of them)People have to use their own intelligence and common sense sometimes.Nobody should be able to "sue" a site because they themselves aren't intelligent or patient enough to deal with all the bullsh*t that comes with online dating. Now if Match themselves was putting up fake gorgeous profiles and "winking" at non paying members in order to get them to join and it could be proven(although I don't know how it ever could unless someone hacks in and has access to the Match back office)that would be a completely different story.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Peter & JB,

We also permit searches based on "new since" & "last-on date".

Among our regular search options, we have:
*Members who are new since:*
Doesn't matter
Today
Yesterday
Last week
Last month

*Find members who have been on-line since:*
Doesn't matter
Today
Yesterday
Last week
Last month

Why don't some (a lot of?) other sites do this? We think we know why.

Sam